THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD did not build the Kaaba at Mecca, nor did he originate the concept of Allah, the creator of the world. Both existed for centuries before him. What the Prophet did was to explain the nature of God and of God’s Law (Shari’a). He purified the concept of God by stripping away the icons, images, and symbols of hundreds of animist gods and goddesses that in his time were worshiped and fought over by the Arab people.
Kaaba in Arabic means “cube,” which aptly describes the fifty-foot-high temple in the center of the western Arabian trading city of Mecca, where Muhammad was born. Its origins had been lost long before the coming of the Prophet, but tradition says that the Kaaba was built by Abraham. At the time of Muhammad’s birth about A.D. 570 it was filled with idols and relics that, according to one historian, represented 367 different deities, all under a supreme being who was God, or in Arabic, Allah. The polytheism was very profitable for Mecca, because a wide variety of worshipers had manifold reasons for making their pilgrimages to prostrate themselves before their own gods. They brought funds to pay their living expenses in the city, and animals and farm products to sell in the local market. They bought salt, spices, cloth, and weapons to take home with them. The merchants of Mecca enjoyed a steady stream of revenues, so it is easy to understand why the business community would frown on anyone who denounced all those gods, thus threatening to reduce the steady flow of pilgrim profits.
Although poor, Muhammad’s family was part of the Qaraish, one of the strongest clans in the area. Raised by relatives because his parents were dead, Muhammad may have had boyhood experiences that influenced his later revelation that hideous tortures in hell were waiting for those sinners who mistreated orphans.
Growing up surrounded by the traders, Muhammad, while still a young man, was employed by a wealthy widow named Khadija, who operated caravans into Arabia and Syria. Khadija was very pleased with her handsome, well-spoken young employee and rapidly entrusted him with more responsibility. Her approval went beyond business, and the two were married when Muhammad was about twenty-five years old, fifteen years younger than his affluent wife. One of the couple’s daughters, named Fatima, married a young cousin named Ali, who was later to become a key figure in the new religion. For years Muhammad led their caravans to other cities and other peoples, always ready to engage in discussions, always ready to listen.
He met both Jews and Nestorian Christians, asked probing questions about their beliefs, and was intrigued by their frequent references to holy books that governed their faiths. In the city of Yathrib, about 275 miles north of Mecca, Muhammad became friendly with several Jewish merchants. The city, whose population was about 50 percent Jewish, was later to shelter the Prophet in his time of greatest personal danger.
Muhammad’s thoughts were drawn increasingly toward the conflicts within the local religions. The religious leaders did nothing to condemn or even curb the corruption and immorality around them. The polytheists, who agreed with each other about almost nothing, had confused and obscured the supremacy of Allah, the almighty God. Muhammad was profoundly troubled and began to wander off by himself to meditate.
He left his home in Mecca one night in A.D. 610 to seek the solitude of a cave in the nearby mountains. As he meditated, he was suddenly surrounded by a radiant light in which the Archangel Gabriel appeared to him, ordering him to proclaim the true word of God. Allah had chosen him to teach the people. Muhammad confided only in his wife, who believed the truth of his experience completely and gave her husband her full support. The Prophet received more divinely inspired visitations, until one night he was exhorted to take the message to the whole world that there is no God but God. Allah is not just the supreme God, He is the only God. Allah has no consorts, no offspring, no alternate manifestations.
Thus was born the First Pillar of the Islamic faith, the assertion of belief, or shahada. It is heard in the calls to prayer and from the lips of every worshiper every day of his life: La ilaha illa Allah: Muhammad rasul Allah. (“There is no God but God: Muhammad is the messenger of God.”)
As might be expected, Muhammad’s first converts were from among the poor and the slaves. Muhammad’s condemnation of polytheism was not good for business, and those who suffered financially from his conversions were bitterly resentful, but he did find believers among his relatives and friends. Abu Bekr, who would become Muhammad’s father-in-law, and the Prophet’s son-in-law Ali were among the most fervent of his followers. The enemies he created, however, far outnumbered the converts.
Muhammad stayed in Mecca, in spite of the growing antagonism, because his wife’s substantial business was based there. After her death, however, he moved to a nearby smaller town to spread his message from God, but his words were met with stinging insults and angry rejection. One day he was stoned by a mob of town ruffians and went back to Mecca, where, even if he was shunned, he was not physically abused. It was during this period of rejection and despair that Muhammad experienced another religious revelation. Some claim that it was actual, while others say that it happened in a dream, but all Muslims recognize its importance to their faith. It was this experience that held the most personal interest for the Knights Templar.
One night the Prophet was awakened by the Archangel Gabriel, who led him to the Kaaba. There outside the Temple was a magnificent snow-white winged beast, half mule and half donkey. Muhammad was ordered to mount, and as he sat in the saddle the beast, whose name was Buraq, unfolded its mighty wings and flew upward, soaring north into the starry night. As Buraq descended, Muhammad recognized the city of Jerusalem. He was taken to the Temple Mount and set down by a temple on the west side, on the abandoned site of the ancient Temple of Solomon. Inside the temple he met all the prophets who had preceded him. There was Moses, tall and thin, with curly hair. Here was Jesus, of medium height, with straight hair and freckles. Muhammad was most struck upon meeting Abraham, for as he said later, “Never have I seen a man who looked more like myself!”
The prophets invited Muhammad to refresh himself with a choice of wine or milk. He chose the milk. Gabriel told him that he had made a wise choice for himself and his followers, for from that night forward wine was forbidden to them. He was then led from the temple to a great rock in the center of the Mount, on which was resting a ladder. Muhammad was told to climb the ladder and he obeyed, ascending past all the strata of hell and heaven to the very throne of Allah. On the way, the angel Malik, the Keeper of Hell, lifted the lid of the flaming pit to show Muhammad the punishment accorded the abusers and robbers of orphans. The prophet reported that those sinners were ugly, with lips like camels. “In their hands were fiery coals which they put into their mouths to pass through their bodies and come out of their rectums.”
Moving higher past the levels of heaven, Muhammad saw unbelievably beautiful maidens with red lips and sparkling eyes, who catered to every desire of those whose virtuous lives had earned for them an eternity in paradise. When he recounted his mystic nocturnal journey to followers, a few left the Prophet in disbelief, deciding that his mind was slipping. Others accepted the revelation as conclusive evidence that Muhammad was indeed the chosen of God.
The Prophet’s experience earned for Jerusalem its place as the third most holy location to men of the faith. The Temple Mount became revered under a name that identified its sanctity, the Harames-Sharif, the Sacred Sanctuary. In A.D. 691 the caliph Abd al-Malik decided to honor the celestial temple described in the seventeenth sura (chapter) of the Koran as the mosque then most distant from Mecca:
Glory to God
Who did take His Servant
For a Journey by Night
From the Sacred Mosque [the Kaaba]
To the Farthest Mosque
Whose precincts we did bless . . .
Abd al-Malik built a great mosque on the site of the Temple of Solomon, the location of the temple of the prophets in the night journey of Muhammad. He gave it the name it had been given in the Koran, “the Farthest Mosque,” or in Arabic, the al-Aqsa. This was the al-Aqsa Mosque that King Baldwin II assigned to the newly-formed Knights Templar, on the site from which they took their name. The caliph also built a beautiful domed mosque at the center of the Mount, in reverence of the spot where the ladder had rested on the great rock. Some believed that this was the same rock on which Abraham had been prepared to sacrifice his son. It was called Qubbat al-Sakhra, the Dome of the Rock. Although rebuilt and reworked from time to time, both buildings still stand as houses of Islamic worship on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
After his transcendental night ride, Muhammad began to make a written record of his instructions from God. His collection of writings, divided into 114 chapters, or suras, was called al-Qur’an, “to be read”; in English it is called the Koran. The writings were not just to be read, they were to be explicitly obeyed in total submission, for which the Arabic term is Islam. The follower, a Muslim, is “one who submits.” Muhammad’s injunction that the Koran be reproduced only in Arabic not only prevented theological disputes created by translation errors and inadequacies but provided a great common bond for all the peoples who came to follow him. His exhortation that the Book was to be read by all the faithful was a strong force for literacy, a stand exactly opposite to that taken by the Roman Church, which ordered that the Holy Bible was not to be read by any except those with specific authority to do so. Muhammad said that a man must read God’s word and gain direct understanding. The Roman Christian Church said that the layman, with his limited knowledge, must not try to understand God’s word, and must let the Church interpret its meaning. Muhammad said that there is nothing and no one between the worshiper and God. No intercessor was necessary and none permitted, not even the Prophet himself. The Roman Church said there was no contact with God except through its intercessor the pope, the Pontifex Maximus, who held the keys to the kingdom of Heaven. The differences between the Muslim and Christian beliefs and practices were so fundamental that most missed the most fundamental point of all—that with the roots of their faith deep in the Old Testament, they both worshiped the same God.
As Muhammad gradually revealed the word of Allah, he began to teach the moral code that God required of his followers. They were to desist from all stealing, lying, cheating, and fornication. They were to stop murdering their unwanted infant daughters. Each revelation gained new converts—and new enemies among the merchants of Mecca as the nomadic pilgrims welcomed Muhammad’s orders to stop throwing their money away on gifts to false priests serving false gods. He told them that their pilgrimages to do homage before idols and images were offensive to the one True God and that they would find more favor with Allah and save their money if they would simply stay home and pray.
While the steadily mounting opposition to Muhammad in Mecca grew uglier and more threatening, his teachings were enjoying success and attracting followers in the trading city of Yathrib. He gained such a positive reputation there that a delegation from Yathrib met with him in secret to invite him to establish his base in their city and to bring his followers with him. Their city was being torn apart by two Arab factions, and they felt that Muhammad’s compassion, his respect for justice, and especially his skills at reasoning and oratory might bring him success as the mediator who could bring peace.
The idea was appealing because the Quraish of Mecca had become menacing to the point that Muhammad feared for his life. He ordered his followers to move to Yathrib, but to leave over a period of several weeks in groups of four or five to avoid alerting their enemies. The migration to the safety of Yathrib began, and finally the Prophet was forced to join his followers when he learned of an assassination plot to kill him as he left his house. His son-in-law Ali wrapped himself in Muhammad’s green cloak and stretched out on his bed. The Prophet fled the city with the faithful Abu Bekr. As the assassins waiting outside his house peered through the windows, they thought they were seeing him on his bed. They waited for hours with swords drawn while Muhammad pushed hard on his eight-day flight to Yathrib. In Islamic history this flight of Muhammad and his followers is remembered as the “migration,” Hijra, or Hegira. From it came the pillar of Islam called the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca that every Muslim is expected to make at least once in his lifetime. When he has done so, he may add the honorific hajji to his name.
The year of the Hegira was A.D. 622, Anno Domini, “In the Year of Our Lord.” From now on Islam would govern its calendar by the great migration, so that the following year of A.D. 623 became 1 Hijria, or in English 1 A.H., “After the Hegira.” The city of Yathrib was revered by followers as the place where Muhammad found protection. It was known thereafter as Madinat al-Nabi, the City of the Prophet, and came to be called simply The City, or Medina. The great mosque at Medina is the second holiest place in Islam.
It was greed, not an interest in theology, that induced the Crusaders to learn about and plan for the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, which the Prophet had decreed should be made in the twelfth month of the Muslim calendar, the Dhu al-Hijjah. Their motivation was identical to that which inspired the Bedouin and other Arab bandits to attack the Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem, which in turn had inspired the founding of the Knights Templar. Pilgrims almost always carried supplies, expense money and gifts. The month of the Muslim pilgrimage thus became a kind of human hunting season, when the Christians of Galilee, the Transjordan and Judea stalked the roads, passes, fords, and oases on the popular paths to Mecca, ready to pounce on the pilgrims who were not likely to be professional soldiers.
In Yathrib the Prophet did not enjoy unqualified success as a mediator between the rival tribes. He actually created a new rivalry between those who were his followers and those who were not. He was safe, but not successful, because his great ambition to cleanse the holy Kaaba of corruption had only led to his own flight for his life. The people of Mecca were still antagonistic to him and to his converts. In frustration, Muhammad exposed a side of himself never before seen. He decided to strike back at the leaders in Mecca by striking at their purses, an agonizing wound for merchants anywhere.
In A. D. 624 Muhammad gathered a group of about three hundred aggressive followers and led them in a mounted attack on a great Quraish caravan guarded by almost a thousand men. He lost only fourteen men in this first decisive military victory, and so had no trouble attracting others among his converts to join him on a series of profitable raids. Determined to end the depredations, the rulers of Mecca assembled an army of ten thousand men to take Medina and put an end to the Prophet Muhammad and his offensive religion.
Whether it was the Prophet’s own idea or whether he copied something he had heard about on his travels we do not know, but while the Meccans were recruiting their forces, Muhammad had his people build a series of deep ditches around Medina, a technique completely new to contemporary Arab warfare.
When the Meccan army approached the ditches, they found themselves at too great a distance to inflict any real damage with their short bows, yet they were fearful of advancing down into and across the hazardous, steep-sided ditches, either on their camels or on foot. They raged and hurled screaming threats, but they didn’t attack. Even as they turned for the long march home, leaving Medina unharmed, the story was starting to spread with lightning speed throughout Arabia. More and more converts elected to follow this man who indeed seemed to be favored by Allah.
After a couple of years of inconclusive fighting, a truce was agreed upon between Mecca and Medina. Then the Meccans broke the truce by attacking a tribe that had converted to Islam. This time it was Muhammad who was able to assemble an army ten thousand strong, an army that fought for God and His Prophet. They took Mecca with no trouble, and Muhammad reentered the city of his birth as its ruler. He ordered his followers to remove and destroy the abominable idols in the Kaaba, then had them cleanse and purify the ancient building. After his order had been carried out, Muhammad entered the temple to pray. Thus did the Kaaba at Mecca become the holiest place in all Islam, the primary objective of the hajj. It became the quibla, the “niche of God” toward which the whole Muslim world, from then until now, would turn in prayer five times a day for a lifetime, for generation after generation.
In 630 Muhammad went back to Medina, where he continued to set down his revelations during the remaining two years of his life. When complete, the Koran set forth God’s commands as to belief, prayer ritual, moral conduct, charitable works, and matters of law. It was from these writings and from the experiences of the Prophet’s lifetime that the Five Pillars of Faith emerged, the central core of Islam.
As already mentioned, the First Pillar is shahada, the testimony of faith in the overriding principle that there is no God but God, and that Muhammad is the Messenger of God. Muhammad had clarified the ancient commandment from “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” to “There is no God except me!” This basic belief made the Christian concept of a Triune God of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit totally unacceptable to Muslims. Allah had no offspring. Muhammad recognized Jesus of Nazareth as a genuine prophet, beloved of God, and venerated his mother Mary and the virgin birth. But he denied that Jesus was God or the Son of God. He also denied that Jesus died on the cross. That made the central claim of the Christian Crusades a sham in the eyes of devout Muslims, who believed that these crazy people had come to die for nothing.
The Second Pillar of Islam is salah, prayer, a ritual to be observed only in the Prophet’s native Arabic tongue. Prayers are to be offered at dawn, at noon, at mid-afternoon, at sunset (when the new day begins), and in the evening. Preparation includes ritual ablutions, washing the face, hands, and forearms. Muhammad knew the conditions of the desert, so an exception was provided for times when there was no water available, or when supplies were dangerously low. At such times, the ritual ablutions could be performed symbolically with sand instead of water. The devout remove their shoes and, if possible, stand and kneel on a rug reserved for that purpose. Obviously, the prayers may be said anywhere, in a tent or in a hotel suite, but on Friday, the Muslim Sabbath, special effort is to be made to reach a mosque for a communal salah.
The Third Pillar of Islam is zakah, the alms tax, because the Koran absolutely requires acts of charity. Allah looks with special favor on those who give to those less fortunate than themselves. The zakah in some Muslim states is collected exactly like a national tax, with the government in charge of its distribution. In other areas it is collected by the Muslim community, which decides for itself where it will do the most good. A poor woman begging on a street or by a city gate may be regarded by some as a nuisance, but to the truly devout she performs an important function by providing the opportunity to earn a blessing from God whenever a few coins are dropped in her lap. Many fundamentalist Christians like to emphasize the point that good works have absolutely nothing to do with salvation. To a Muslim, they are vital.
The Fourth Pillar is sawm, the sacrifice of fasting. The most important and longest period of fasting in Islam commemorates the first revelation to Muhammad in his lonely mountain hideaway. It usually takes the name of the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, the period of the fast, so is called Ramadan. For the entire month during the daylight hours the Muslim refrains from eating, drinking, smoking, and sexual relations. In an urban area, sunrise and sunset may be announced on radio or television, but the traditional method in rural areas is to hold up a piece of white yarn and a piece of black. If there is enough light to tell them apart, it is still daylight. If the eye cannot detect the difference in color, the sun has set.
Over the centuries the adjustment to Ramadan has caused many Muslims to turn their daily lives inside out for the month. They sleep during the day, then work, play, and feast at night. I was in the old city of Fez in Morocco during Ramadan, which was like a ghost town in the daylight hours. At sundown, shops opened, restaurants fired up their stoves, bonfires blazed, and the children ran and played in the streets.
The end of Ramadan is signaled by the appearance of the new moon, the slender crescent that has become the worldwide symbol of Islam. This explains why the Islamic international relief organization, which can hardly call itself by the Christian name of Red Cross, is called the Red Crescent. Many Christians, in their condemnation of Muhammad as the Antichrist and agent of Satan, made any Islamic symbol an automatic symbol of the Devil, including the crescent moon. In the Islamic world the coming of the new moon heralding the end of the month-long fast is celebrated with three days of Id al-Fitr, the Breaking of the Fast, a happy time of feasting, gifts, and extra voluntary almsgiving.
The Fifth Pillar is the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. Every Muslim has the obligation to make the ritual journey at least once, unless prevented by circumstances such as an illness or handicap. The pilgrimage recalls Muhammad’s flight to Medina, but has its traditional roots in pilgrimages said to have been made by Abraham. The primary destination of the pilgrimage is the Great Mosque at Mecca, where the courtyard holds the sacred Kaaba and the nearby holy well of Zem-Zem. The pilgrims circle the Kaaba seven times, struggling through the crowd to touch or kiss a small, mysterious black stone set in the side. The origin and purpose of the stone are long-forgotten, but its very existence is sacred. The pilgrims observe days of ritual, including the gathering of stones to throw at a pillar representing Satan and a run between two hills, followed by drinking from the sacred well of Zem-Zem in memory of the Old Testament story of Hagar’s search in the desert for water for her son, Ismail.
On the fourth day, a ritual takes place that is especially important because it is duplicated on that same day by every Muslim family in the world. It is called id al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, in remembrance of Abraham’s willingness to obey God in all things, even to the sacrifice of his beloved son, Isaac. The festive meal is prepared, but not all of it is eaten by the family. A share of every meal must be given to the homeless and the poor. The portion given is the sacrifice. The part eaten is the celebration of Abraham’s submission and God’s mercy.
It was the cash taken on the pilgrimage for this feast, as well as for almsgiving and living expenses, that made the pilgrim caravans such an attractive target for Crusader attacks. For many pilgrims, of course, other perils plagued them on the long journeys to Mecca. They climbed through bleak, high mountain passes and crossed vast, scorching deserts, through country toally alien to them. Many pilgrims died along the way. (This fact did not escape the atheistic communist hierarchy in the Soviet Union in later years. They used it during the oppressive totalitarian regime as just one more point to reinforce their efforts to stamp out the Muslim faith within the U.S.S.R. A few years ago I made a visit to an elementary school in the Muslim republic of Tadzhikistan. A classroom of ten-year-olds was decorated with the usual crayon drawings done by the students. One picture caught my eye because of a bright yellow sun dominating the scene. I could identify palm trees, but not the crude figures scattered among them. My Russian guide explained, “On the ground are dead men and dead camels. This picture shows the evil law of Muhammad that makes men die of thirst trying to get to Mecca.”)
The Five Pillars of Islam defining the faith could be expected to provide a strong common bond for all Muslims and help them to achieve and maintain complete unity, but the written word cannot be free of the changes caused by different interpretations and teachings. So it has been from time to time with Christianity, and so it was with Islam.
It was the deep split dividing the adherents of Islam that made possible the victories of the First Crusade. At that time there was no thought of cooperation between the Shiite empire of Egypt on one side and the Orthodox Sunni Muslims of Syria on the other. Thus the land between, the Holy Land, was vulnerable to any attack from an invader. Once the two sides were joined together they became like the two handles of a nutcracker, with the Crusader states in the middle. A working knowledge of the sects of Islam became vital as a basis for Templar diplomats, anxious to keep the Islamic divisions from joining forces against the Christians.
The great rift had begun soon after the death of the founder of the faith. When Muhammad died in 632, it was his friend and father-in-law Abu Bekr who made the announcement: “O, Muslims! If any of you have been worshiping Muhammad, then I will tell you that Muhammad is dead. But if it is God that you worship, let me tell you that God is living and will never die!”
In selecting a man worthy to take Muhammad’s place as the leader of Islam, his followers adhered to ancient tribal tradition. The elders and important sheikhs, meeting to select a man of maturity, character, and wisdom to guide them, quickly chose Abu Bekr, who became the first caliph (khalifa), or “successor.” Their choice was aided by the fact that Abu Bekr was related to the Prophet by marriage and was a member of his own family clan, the Hashim.
As frequently happens, a number of followers in more distant areas, such as the Bedouin nomads, decided that there was no authority without the Prophet and began to drift away. Some even became militantly antagonistic and had to be brought under control. The aging Abu Bekr selected a younger, more vigorous man for the task, a skilled fighter named Khalid ibn-al-Walid, whose string of victories for the faith would earn him the title of “Sword of Allah.” Khalid swiftly and brilliantly defeated all of the enemies of Islam in Arabia in the first jihad, or War for the Faith.
The victorious Muslim soldiers were exhilarated by their triumphs and eager for more opportunities to prove with their swords the supremacy of Allah. They broke out across the northern border of Arabia, crossed Syria into Iraq, and took the city of Hira on the Euphrates. Now well supplied and enriched with plunder, the Muslim army, mounted on camels, turned back in an unprecedented march across the Syrian desert to capture the Byzantine city of Damascus.
Caliph Abu Bekr died during that campaign, to be succeeded as caliph by Umar ibn-Khattab, also a father-in-law to Muhammad and a member of his Hashimite clan. Umar displayed unexpected talents for organization and encouraged the jihad. Khalid added to his reputation for valor by defeating a Byzantine army in the field, then went on to capture Jerusalem in 640. At the same time, another Muslim army was well on its way to the conquest of Persia.
The next prize the Muslim warriors went after was Egypt, the jewel in the crown of the Byzantine colonies. The fertile Nile valley was the most heavily populated region in the Middle East, leading out to the Mediterranean and to port cities that had become highly profitable trade centers. Now mounted on swift Arabian horses as well as the desert-oriented camels, the Arab army galloped across the Nile delta with one sweeping victory after another, taking the walled port city of Alexandria in 646. The Muslim holdings, which had begun with the single city of Medina, had grown into a country, and were now exploding into an empire stretching from Egypt to Afghanistan.
Once again a caliph died during a military campaign when Umar was murdered by a Persian slave. With the selection of Umar ibn-Khattab’s successor, the stage was set for the rupture of Islam. The man picked was the elderly Uthman ibn-Affan. Already in his seventies, the new caliph took immediate steps to secure as many riches as possible for his own family during the lifetime remaining to him. Uthman ibn-Affan was not of Muhammad’s Hashimite clan, but from a clan called the Umayyad. The Hashimites watched as the highest posts in the new government were given to members of the Umayyad, who were sent to rule over conquered cities and provinces, while the Prophet’s own people were totally cut out of the leadership of the religious movement that had begun with them. The jealousy and resentment threatened to degenerate into civil war, but the disputes were brought to a halt for a time beginning in 656, when Caliph Uthman ibn-Affan was murdered by a son of Abu Bekr.
Muhammad’s fourth khalifa was Ali-ibn-Abi-Talib, the cousin who had married the Prophet’s daughter Fatima. The inter-clan animosity surfaced again when Caliph Ali asked for the resignation of all Umayyad officials, whom he intended to replace with his own Hashimite supporters. Muawiza, the new head of the Umayyad clan, flatly refused to give up his power as governor of Syria, and civil war became a reality.
After months of petty fighting the two massed armies confronted each other on a wide plain in Iraq. As they clashed and then parted to regroup, it was clear that Ali’s army would have the victory. Then occurred a strange event in the chronicles of military and Islamic history. The leaders of Muawiza’s losing army collected every copy of the Koran that could be found. The pages were torn out and distributed to every man. When the forces faced each other again, Muawiza’s men all carried pages of sacred scripture impaled on their swords and lances, which were pointed upward, not toward the enemy. Their words rang out: “Our weapons are raised only for God. Let God decide this conflict!” The clash of weapons was not heard, as Ali’s bewildered men hesitated to attack when striking the enemy blades would mean slashing the divine revelations of the Prophet.
The heat of the expected combat cooled into unfocused disorder. Both sides looked for direction to their leaders, who decided to appoint delegates to settle the issue. The delegations agreed that neither Ali nor Muawiza should remain as caliph, and both should stand aside so that a new caliph could be chosen. Ali refused the settlement, convinced that he was the only possible legitimate successor. Arguments continued, but not the war. The two sides eventually went home, leaving the main issue unresolved.
Ali would have won the war on the battlefield, but he lost it through his behavior. His followers began to desert him because they felt that his manhood had deserted him first. Men argued that Ali had shown only weakness, and fighting men are always angry to have an assured victory talked away by politicians. No one knew which side the murderer was on, but the still unresolved split in Islam took shape when an angry man ran his sword through Ali, who was walking to a mosque to pray.
Muawiza now declared himself to be the true caliph. He called upon all Muslims to follow him and announced that his son Yazid would succeed him as caliph. Muhammad had said nothing about the leadership of Islam being hereditary, but to many Muslims it solved the problems of succession that had resulted in the murder of three of the first four caliphs. They accepted Muawiza, who thus founded the dynamic Umayyad dynasty of the caliphate.
The Umayyad caliphs moved their headquarters away from the Prophet’s family at Medina and Mecca to the Syrian city of Damascus. From there they planned the Muslim conquests that built their empire. To the east, their horsemen moved all the way across Afghanistan into India. To the west, they conquered the North African lands all the way to the Atlantic coast. When they reached the coast, curiosity prompted them to send scouting parties across the narrow strait into southern Spain. Reports came back that the ruling Visigoths, who centuries earlier had wrested the land from the Romans, did not appear to be prepared for war. In 710, ships were gathered to carry an army of seven thousand Muslims onto the continent of Europe under the Berber general Tariq, a former slave. Tariq landed his army near a monumental rock rising nearly fourteen hundred feet above the water, so they named the rock the Mount of Tariq, Jabal Tariq, a name that would evolve over the course of history into Gibraltar.
When all of Spain had fallen to Muslim might, they pushed on to investigate a fair land on the other side of the Pyrenees. Liking what they saw, an army was organized to invade France, advancing as far as the city of Bordeaux. Charles Martel, a French leader whose grandson would become the emperor Charlemagne, rallied the towns and tribes to put together an army to stem the tide of Islam. In October 732 they met near the city of Tours. The Muslim army was all mounted, while the French were almost all on foot, so Martel elected to take a defensive role. The two armies stared at each other for a week until Abd-al-Rahman, the Muslim ruler of Spain who was in command, grew impatient with the delay and ordered the charge.
The French foot soldiers, armed with spears, should have been overwhelmed by the horses and camels crashing into them, but they were fighting for their lives and their homes and fiercely held their ground. Neither side would yield, and only the coming of darkness forced the Muslims to fall back, leaving more dead on the field than they had ever anticipated. Fortunately for the French, one of those bodies was that of the Muslim leader Abd-al-Rahman.
The next morning the French took their positions again, battered but resolute, ready to receive another Muslim charge. It never came. Scouts sent out by Martel reported that the enemy had retreated under cover of darkness. The Battle of Tours had turned the tide, preventing Europe from becoming another Islamic nation. Charles Martel’s exalted reputation as the decisive battle’s victorious hero reached such proportions that he was able to found a dynasty.
Meanwhile, there had been no Charles Martel to hold the Muslims in check as they flooded into Central Asia. They marched all the way to the Aral Sea, seizing the fabled cities of Bokhara and Samarkand. By the time the First Crusade was launched, the Muslim empire stretched from Spain across North Africa, into Iraq and Armenia, and through Persia and Central Asia to the Indus River. Much more of the world’s surface was Muslim than was Christian, and there were millions more men who followed the caliphs than followed the pope.
Back when the caliph Ali was murdered, a number of his followers rejected the Umayyad claim to the caliphate. They clung to the belief that Muhammad would have wanted the disputed leadership bestowed on the husband of his beloved daughter Fatima. They formed the Shiat Ali, the Party of Ali, from which they came to be known as the Shiites. The sect exists to this day, although very much a minority. Claiming no more than 15 percent of the total Muslim population of the world, they still number about sixty million. Taking root first in Persia, now called Iran, they have remained the dominant religious and political force in that country, making up almost 50 percent of the Iranian population. Shiites are led by Imams, or teachers. The most famous—and notorious—imam in recent times was the Ayatollah Khomeini. At the time of the First Crusade, there was a Shiite caliph in Egypt, but that position would be wiped out during the crusading period.
The infallibility of the imams’ teachings comes from Allah, to Muhammad, to Ali. Husayn, the grandson of Muhammad and son of Ali and Fatima, established a bloodline of succession that provided nine of the first twelve Shiite imams. Most of them met violent deaths through murder, death in battle, or execution for treason. The twelfth imam, however, who also was named Muhammad, disappeared into a cave in the year 878. Imam Muhammad’s mysterious absence provides the basis for a messianic belief that he will one day return, just as many Christians believe Jesus Christ will return, before the end of the world. The imam Muhammad is awaited as the Mahdi, The Expected One.
Several times throughout the centuries a leader has appeared who claimed to be the Mahdi. By far the most famous was Muhammad Ahmed Ibn Seyyid Abdullah, who proclaimed himself to be Mahdi in 1881 and rose to power in the Sudan. His followers murdered the English general Charles “Chinese” Gordon at Khartoum, but were finally put down in the last great British cavalry charge at Omdurman in 1898, recently enough to have been witnessed by the young Winston Churchill.
The Shiites, frequently identified as the “fundamentalist” or “radical” Muslims, branched off into over seventy different divisions or sects. Of these, a major division was based on the belief that it was not the twelfth imam but the seventh, named Ismail, who was the Expected One. As a result, the adherents to this belief, called the Ismailis, became preoccupied with the number seven, endowing it with spiritual, mystical, and even magical properties.
One of the sects that sprang from the Ismailis was feared more than any other Muslim faction, because it claimed the right to murder anyone who stood in its way. The sect was founded by an Ismaili missionary who led his followers in the capture of their first fortress at Alamut, in Persia, less than ten years before the First Crusade was launched.
Legend claims that it was at Alamut that the leader of the sect had a private garden of infinite beauty, with the sparkling fountains so precious to the desert dweller and a selection of the most beautiful and most sexually accomplished young women in the land. A young member of the sect would be given hashish to numb his mind to the point of unconsciousness. When he awoke, he found himself in the fabled garden, where the beautiful young ladies fed him morsels of the most delicious foods. They treated him to every sexual delight he had ever heard of, and to some that he had never even imagined. As the day progressed, more and more hashish would be pressed upon him until he passed out again.
When he woke the next morning to his usual surroundings he was encouraged to recount his drug-induced adventure. After he had spelled out the unbelievable delights, he was told that he had been favored by Allah by being given a tiny glimpse of the highest level of heaven reserved for those martyrs who die for their faith. For such loyalty and devotion to God, the delights he had experienced so briefly were available for all eternity. Now he longed for nothing more in this world than the chance to die in the service of Allah.
In answer to his plea, he was given intense training to kill an enemy of God, who would be identified for him by the leader of the sect, called by chroniclers the grand master. Thus would he earn eternal bliss in paradise, because his would be a suicide mission. His mind and heart must be set on a successful kill and not at all on his own escape. He learned the techniques of the dagger: where and how deep to strike, and how to circumvent armor. He was taught the use of poisons. He was instructed in the use of disguises and, if necessary, instructed in other religions, including Christianity, in order to be able to pass himself off convincingly as a member of the victim’s own faith.
With a corps of such young men ready to kill and die, the grand master had a weapon that was often as powerful as an entire army. It inspired such fear that even the greatest rulers would think twice before going against the wishes of the grand master.
Based on their alleged use of hashish to trick the young followers, or perhaps just to give them courage, the sect became known as the Hashshashin. It proved to be a difficult word for the Crusaders, who took it into Church Latin as the Assassini, and into English as the Assassins, giving a sinister new word to the language.
In truth, the Garden of Paradise legend is probably just that, nor would such elaborate trickery have been necessary. There has never been a shortage of young Shiite Muslims ready to die for their faith, as has been dramatically proven in our own time. The Shiite group in Lebanon called the Hezbollah did not hesitate to have one of its members drive a truckload of explosives at full, suicidal speed into a Marine barracks in Lebanon. As we shall see, the Assassins were finally stopped by the Mongols in Persia and by the Egyptians in Syria, but the Ismaili sect lives to this day, with hundreds of thousands of adherents who call their leader the Agha Khan.
The tales of sexual delights in the Islamic heaven intrigued Europeans, whose Christian concept of heaven was totally devoid of even thoughts of sexual contact. They exaggerated the already exaggerated stories brought home to them, culminating perhaps in Gibbon’s description. In his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire he revealed that even on the lowest level of the Islamic paradise the celestial euphoria would include orgasms that lasted for a thousand years:
“Seventy Houris, or black-eyed girls of resplendent beauty, blooming youth, virgin purity, and exquisite sensitivity, will be created for the use of the meanest believer; a moment of pleasure will be prolonged to a thousand years, and his [sexual] faculties will be increased a hundred-fold to render him worthy of felicity.”
Another sect evolving from the Ismailis was the Qarmations. Membership required going through an initiation rite, and although based on the Koran, the teachings were relaxed sufficiently to admit men of all religions or races. The Qarmations were active in organizing formal guilds of craftsmen before that structure became popular in Europe. In his book, Islam, Beliefs and Practices, C.E. Farah says, “Some authorities believe that their concept and organization of the guilds within a fixed ceremonial and ritualistic structure led to the rise of Freemasonry, with its clear reflections of Arabo-Islamic influences, and the Medieval guild system.”
The Druzes, still active today in the mountains of Lebanon, have their own identity for the Muslim messiah. They await the return of the Shiite caliph of Egypt, al-Hakim, who met death in a plot engineered by his own sister, after he had publicly questioned her chastity. The Druzes are best known for exercising their religion in the strictest secrecy. They hold their services on Thursdays, usually on top of a high hill from which it is easier to detect the approach of strangers. Scholars ache for information, but to a Druze there is nothing more sacred than his vow of secrecy. He will not discuss his faith with anyone.
All of these sects and the dozens more that together make up the Shiites are still just a small minority, although a very aggressive minority, within Islam. By far the greatest number of Muslims, over 85 percent, adhere to the faith known formally as Ahl al-Sunna wa’l-Hadith. The Sunna is the “path” laid down in the Koran, while the Hadith is made up of the sayings and acts of Muhammad as collected after his death. Thus they have two guidebooks for their faith, much as the Jews have both the Talmud and the Torah. This is the substantial majority of Muslims known as the Sunni. The Shiites and the Sunnis do occasionally work together in the face of a common enemy or to achieve a common Islamic purpose, but the animosities are as strong as they are ancient in their origins and not likely to disappear. In the course of my research for this work, I talked to a devout Sunni Muslim. When I asked several questions about the Shiites he said, “Why do you want to know about Shiites? They believe in a false God!”
It was that incessant animosity between the Shiites, who controlled Egypt, and the Sunnis, who controlled Syria, that made the successes of the First Crusade possible, especially in that the Sunni Syrians also had to contend with Shiite enemies to the other side of them in Persia. At the time of that Crusade, the Sunni caliph was based in Baghdad, while the Shiite caliph was resident in Cairo. It became the focal point of Christian diplomacy to play off one side against the other, until the time came that all of the Middle East was united under one dynamic leader who was given the honorary title of Salah-ed-Din, or Saladin.
Within the context of the Crusades, the Christian leaders had to learn with whom they were dealing. They had to learn that the leader of their enemies, the spiritual successor of Muhammad, was the khalifa, the caliph. He was the ruler, because Islam began with no separation of church and state. The secular administrative duties were usually assigned by the caliph to a chief executive officer, called the wazir, or vizier. A military general or governor of a city-state was frequently known as amir or emir. A male descendant of Muhammad’s bloodline was honored with the title of sharif Hussein of Jordan has a title much more important to certain of his followers than that of king, in that he is also the hereditary sharif of Mecca. Since he is of the clan named after the Prophet’s great-grandfather Hashim, the official name of his domain is The Hashimite Kingdom of Jordan, just as the Egyptian empire was called “Fatamid” because Caliph Ali had been married to Muhammad’s daughter Fatima.
There are still both Shiite and Sunni states that believe they must conform to Shari’a, the Koranic law, as administered by a judge called a qadi, or kadi. At the time of the Crusades the punishments called for under Koranic law were, if anything, less brutal than those levied upon Christians in medieval Europe and in the Holy Land. Today, however, many people, including some Muslims, cannot accept that someone guilty of adultery should be stoned to death, although there are probably those who would approve the law that says if a man accuses a woman of adultery and cannot prove it with witnesses, he should be punished with eighty “stripes” of a whip on his bare back. Sura IV of the Koran sets forth the rights of women, but Verse 34 would give trouble in many places today because it permits a husband to beat his wife for disobedience. It says in part, “Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made one of them to excel the other, and because they spend their property [in the support of their women]. So good women are the obedient . . . as for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and ban them to beds apart, and scourge them.”
Perhaps the best known punishment is that set forth in Sura V, Verse 38: “As for the thief, both male and female, cut off their hands. It is the reward of their own deeds, an exemplary punishment from Allah.” In practice, the punishment was reserved for a third offense and meant the loss of the right hand only, for social reasons. Eating in any family or other group was from one large communal bowl, with the selected bits removed with the right hand only, because the left hand was used for wiping after a visit to the toilet. The loss of his right hand made the thief a social outcast, never for the rest of his life permitted access to the communal food pot, into which he could only dip his contaminated left hand. He had to eat alone as best he could for the rest of his days. One might be tempted to believe that the enforcement of Koranic law will steadily decline, but the evidence suggests that it will be a slow process. The government of the Sudan announced the reinstatement of the Koranic code in January of 1991. Seven months later, Pakistan announced a return to the death penalty for anyone who defames the Prophet Muhammad. At the time of the Crusades, Koranic law was universal to all Islam and strictly enforced.
This was the new world the Templar order had to learn, a world different in religion, law, custom, tradition, and language. They would learn to deal with the leaders of Islam, often as enemies, frequently as allies. They would have Muslim tenants on their grazing lands, farms, and sugar plantations, and in their factories. They would meet Muslims in death struggles, but also in trade, and even in banking. Some Templars would master the Arabic tongue and be selected by Christian kings as their envoys to Muslim courts. They would come to rely on Muslim craftsmen and employ Muslim servants. The Templars, after all, were not involved in a crusading pilgrimage that would find them returning home in six months to a year’s time. They had signed up for the duration, not the duration of a war, but the duration of their lives. They were in the Holy Land to fight for their God, and so were their adversaries. Many a Templar would die on the battlefield, where the last words he might hear would be the battle cry of his enemy: Allahu Akbar! “God is great!”