ANCIENT ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION

As Thomas Lippman, author of "Understanding Islam", has remarked, the Muslim religion is based on behavior as well as belief. Although this generalization applies in broad terms to most major religions, it seems to be particularly true of Islam. To be a Muslim is not simply to worship Allah but also to live according to his law as revealed in the Qur’an, which is viewed as fundamental and immutable doctrine, not to be revised by human beings. Thus in Islamic society, there is no rigid demarcation between church and state, between the sacred and the secular.
As Allah has decreed, so must human beings behave. Therefore, Islamic doctrine must be consulted to determine questions of politics, economic behavior, civil and criminal law, and social ethics. To live entirely by God’s law is of course difficult, if not impossible. Moreover, many issues of social organization and human behavior were not addressed in the Qur’an or in the Hadith or Shari’a. There was therefore some room for differing interpretations of holy scripture in accordance with individual preference and local practice. Still, the Islamic world is and has probably always been more homogeneous in terms of its political institutions, religious beliefs, and social practices than most of its contemporary civilizations.

Political Structures

For early converts, establishing political institutions and practices that conformed to Islamic doctrine was a daunting task. In the first place, the will of Allah, as revealed to his Prophet, was not precise about the relationship between religious and political authority, simply decreeing that human beings should ‘‘conduct their affairs by mutual consent.’’ On a more practical plane, establishing political institutions for a large and multicultural empire presented a challenge for the Arabs, whose own political structures were relatively rudimentary and relevant only to small pastoral communities.
During the life of Muhammad, the problem could be avoided, since he was generally accepted as both the religious and the political leader of the Islamic community - the umma. His death, however, raised the question of how a successor should be chosen and what authority that person should have. As we have seen, Muhammad’s immediate successors were called caliphs. Their authority was purely temporal, although they were also considered in general terms to be religious leaders, with the title of imam. At first, each caliph was selected informally by leading members of the umma. Soon succession became hereditary in the Umayyad clan, but their authority was still qualified, at least in theory, by the principles of consultation with other leaders.

The Wealth of Araby: Trade and Cities in the Middle East

As we have noted, this era was probably one of the most prosperous periods in the history of the Middle East. Trade flourished, not only in the Islamic world but also with China (now in a period of efflorescence during the Tang and Song dynasties;with the Byzantine Empire, and with the trading societies in Southeast Asia. Trade goods were carried both by ship and by the ‘‘fleets of the desert,’’ the camel caravans that traversed the arid land from Morocco in the far west to the countries beyond the Caspian Sea. From West Africa came gold and slaves; from China, silk and porcelain; from East Africa, gold, ivory, and rhinoceros horn; and from the lands of South Asia, sandalwood, cotton, wheat, sugar, and spices.
Within the empire, Egypt contributed grain; Iraq, linens, dates, and precious stones; Spain, leather goods, olives, and wine; and western India, pepper and various textile goods. The exchange of goods was facilitated by the development of banking and the use of currency and letters of credit. Under these conditions, urban areas flourished. While the Abbasids were in power, Baghdad was probably the greatest city in the empire, but after the rise of the Fatimids in Egypt, the focus of trade shifted to Cairo, described by the traveler Leo Africanus as ‘‘one of the greatest and most famous cities in all the whole world, filled with stately and admirable palaces and colleges, and most sumptuous temples.’’ Other great commercial cities included Basra at the head of the Persian Gulf, Aden at the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula, Damascus in modern Syria, and Marrakech in Morocco.
In the cities, the inhabitants were generally segregated by religion, with Muslims, Jews, and Christians living in separate neighborhoods. But all were equally subject to the most common threats to urban life - fire, flood, and disease. The most impressive urban buildings were usually the palace for the caliph or the local governor and the great mosque. Houses were often constructed of stone or brick on a timber frame. The larger houses were often built around an interior courtyard where the residents could retreat from the dust, noise, and heat of the city streets. Sometimes domestic animals such as goats or sheep would be stabled there. The houses of the wealthy were often multistoried, with balconies and windows covered with latticework to provide privacy. The poor in both urban and rural areas lived in simpler houses composed of clay or unfired bricks. The Bedouins lived in tents that could be dismantled and moved according to their needs.
The Arab empire was clearly more urbanized than most other areas of the known world at the time. Yet the bulk of the population continued to live in the countryside, supported by farming or herding animals. During the early stages, most of the farmland was owned by independent peasants, but eventually some concentration of land in the hands of wealthy owners began to take place. Some lands were owned by the state or the court and were cultivated by slave labor, but plantation agriculture was not as common as would be the case later in many areas of the world. In the valleys of rivers such as the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Nile, the majority of the farmers were probably independent peasants. A Chinese account described life along the Nile:

"The peasants work their fields without fear of inundation or droughts; a sufficiency of water for irrigation is supplied by a river whose source is not known. During the seasons when no cultivation is in progress, the level of the river remains even with the banks; with the beginning of cultivation it rises day by day. Then it is that an official is appointed to watch the river and to await the highest water level, when he summons the people, who then plough and sow their fields. When they have had enough water, the river returns to its former level".

Eating habits varied in accordance with economic standing and religious preference. Muslims did not eat pork, but those who could afford it often served other meats, including mutton, goat, poultry, or fish. Fruit, spices, and various sweets were delicacies. The poor were generally forced to survive on boiled millet or peas with an occasional lump of meat or fat. Bread - white or whole meal - could be found on tables throughout the region except in the deserts, where boiled grain was the staple food. Pasta was probably first introduced to the Italians by Arab traders operating in Sicily.

Islamic Society

In some ways, Arab society was probably one of the most egalitarian of its time. Both the principles of Islam, which held that all were equal in the eyes of Allah, and the importance of trade to the prosperity of the state certainly contributed to this egalitarianism. Although there was a fairly well defined upper class, consisting of the ruling families, senior officials, tribal elites, and the wealthiest merchants, there was no hereditary nobility as in many contemporary societies, and the merchants enjoyed a degree of respect that they did not receive in Europe, China, or India.
Not all benefited from the high degree of social mobility in the Islamic world, however. Slavery was widespread. Since a Muslim could not be enslaved, the supply came from sub-Saharan Africa or from non-Islamic populations elsewhere in Asia. Most slaves were employed in the army (which was sometimes a road to power, as in the case of the Mamluks) or as domestic servants, who were occasionally permitted to purchase their freedom. The slaves who worked the large estates experienced the worst living conditions and rose in revolt on several occasions. The Islamic principle of human equality also fell short, as in most other societies of its day, in the treatment of women.
Although the Qur’an instructed men to treat women with respect, and women did have the right to own and inherit property, the male was dominant in Muslim society. Polygyny was permitted, and the right of divorce was in practice restricted to the husband, although some schools of legal thought permitted women to stipulate that their husband could have only one wife or to seek a separation in certain specific circumstances. Adultery and homosexuality were stringently forbidden (although such prohibitions were frequently ignored in practice), and Islamic custom required that women be cloistered in their homes and prohibited from social contacts with males outside their own family.
A prominent example of this custom is the harem, introduced at the Abbasid court during the reign of Harun al-Rashid. Members of the royal harem were drawn from non-Muslim female populations throughout the empire. The custom of requiring women to cover virtually all parts of their body when appearing in public was common in urban areas and continues to be practiced in many Islamic societies today. It should be noted, however, that these customs owed more to traditional Arab practice than to Qur’anic law.

The Culture of Islam

The Arabs were heirs to many elements of the remaining Greco-Roman culture of the Roman Empire, and they assimilated Byzantine and Persian culture just as readily. In the eighth and ninth centuries, numerous Greek, Syrian, and Persian scientific and philosophical works were translated into Arabic and eventually found their way to Europe. As the chief language in the southern Mediterranean and the Middle East, Arabic became an international language. Later, Persian and Turkish also came to be important in administration and culture. The spread of Islam led to the emergence of a new culture throughout the Arab empire. This was true in all fields of endeavor, from literature to art and architecture.
But pre-Islamic traditions were not extinguished and frequently combined with Muslim motifs, resulting in  creative works of great imagination and originality. Philosophy and Science During the centuries following the rise of the Arab empire, it was the Islamic world that was most responsible for preserving and spreading the scientific and philosophical achievements of ancient civilizations. At a time when ancient Greek philosophy was largely unknown in Europe, key works by Aristotle, Plato, and other Greek philosophers were translated into Arabic and stored in a ‘‘house of wisdom’’ in Baghdad, where they were read and studied by Muslim scholars. Eventually, many of these works were translated into Latin and were brought to Europe, where they exercised a profound influence on the later course of Christianity and Western philosophy.
The process began in the sixth century C.E., when the Byzantine ruler Justinian shut down the Platonic Academy in Athens, declaring that it promoted heretical ideas. Many of the scholars at the Academy fled to Baghdad, where their ideas and the classical texts they brought with them soon aroused local interest and were translated into Persian or Arabic. Later such works were supplemented by acquisitions in Constantinople and possibly also from the famous library at Alexandria.
The academies where such translations were carried out - often by families specializing in the task - were not true universities like those that would later appear in Europe but were private operations under the sponsorship of a great patron, many of them highly cultivated Persians living in Baghdad or other major cities. Dissemination of the translated works was stimulated by the arrival of paper in the Middle East, brought by Buddhist pilgrims from China passing along the Silk Road. Paper was much cheaper to manufacture than papyrus, and by the end of the eighth century, the first paper factories were up and running in Baghdad. Libraries and booksellers soon appeared.
What motives inspired this ambitious literary preservation project? At the outset, it may have simply been an effort to provide philosophical confirmation for existing religious beliefs as derived from the Qur’an. Eventually, however, more adventurous minds began to use the classical texts not only to seek greater knowledge of the divine will but also to seek a better understanding of the laws of nature. Such was the case with the physician and intellectual Ibn Sina (980-1037), known in the West as Avicenna, who in his own philosophical writings cited Aristotle to the effect that the world operated not only at the will of Allah but also by its own natural laws, laws that could be ascertained by human reason.
Such ideas eventually aroused the ire of traditional Muslim scholars, and although classical works by such ancient writers as Euclid, Ptolemy, and Archimedes continued to be translated, the influence of Greek philosophy began to wane in Baghdad by the end of the eleventh century and did not recover. By then, however, interest in classical Greek ideas had spread to Spain, where philosophers such as Averroes (Arabic name Ibn Rushd) and Maimonides (Musa Ibn Maymun, a Jew who often wrote in Arabic) undertook their own translations and wrote in support of Avicenna’s defense of the role of human reason. Both were born in Cordoba in the early twelfth century but were persecuted for their ideas by the Almohads, a Berber dynasty that had supplanted Almoravid authority in Andalusia, and both men ended their days in exile in North Africa.
By then, however, Christian rulers such as Alfonso VI in Castile and Frederick II in Sicily were beginning to sponsor their own translations of Greek classical works from Arabic into Latin, whence they made their way to the many new universities sprouting up all over Western Europe. Although Islamic scholars are justly praised for preserving much of classical knowledge for the West, they also made considerable advances of their own. Nowhere is this more evident than in mathematics and the natural sciences. Islamic scholars adopted and passed on the numerical system of India, including the use of zero, and a ninth-century Persian mathematician founded the mathematical discipline of algebra (al-jabr, ‘‘the reduction’’). Simplified ‘‘Arabic’’ numerals had begun to replace cumbersome Roman numerals in Italy by the thirteenth century.
In astronomy, Muslims set up an observatory at Baghdad to study the position of the stars. They were aware that the earth was round and in the ninth century produced a world map based on the tradition of the Greco-Roman astronomer Ptolemy. Aided by the astrolabe, an instrument designed to enable sailors to track their position by means of the stars, Muslim fleets and caravans opened up new trading routes connecting the Islamic world with other civilizations, and Muslim travelers such as al-Mas’udi and Ibn Battuta provide modern readers with their most accurate descriptions of political and social conditions throughout the Middle East.
Muslim scholars also made many new discoveries in optics and chemistry and, with the assistance of texts on anatomy by the ancient Greek physician Galen (c. 180-200 C.E.), developed medicine as a distinctive field of scientific inquiry. Avicenna compiled a medical encyclopedia that, among other things, emphasized the contagious nature of certain diseases and showed how they could be spread by contaminated water supplies. After its translation into Latin, Avicenna’s work became a basic medical textbook for medieval European university students.

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The Gift of the Robe

Ibn Battuta (1304–1377), a travel writer born in the Moroccan city of Tangier, is often described as the Muslim equivalent of his famous Italian counterpart Marco Polo. Over the course of a quarter of a century, he voyaged widely throughout Africa and Asia, logging over 75,000 miles in the process. The fascinating personal account of his travels is a prime source of information about his times. In the excerpt presented here, he describes a visit to the city of Balkh, one of the fabled caravan stops on the Silk Road as it passed through Central Asia.

The Travels of Ibn Battuta

After a journey of a day and a half over a sandy desert in which there was no house, we arrived at the city of Balkh, which now lies in ruins. It has not been rebuilt since its destruction by the cursed Jengiz Khan. The situation of its buildings is not very discernible, although its extent may be traced. It is now in ruins, and without society. Its mosque was one of the largest and handsomest in the world. Its pillars were incomparable: three of which were destroyed by Jengiz Khan, because it had been told him, that the wealth of the mosque lay concealed under them, provided as a fund for its repairs. When, however, he had destroyed them, nothing of the kind was to be found: the rest, therefore he left as they were.
The story about this treasure arose from the following circumstance. It is said, that one of the Califs of the house of Abbas was very much enraged at the inhabitants of Balkh, on account of some accident which had happened, and, on this account, sent a person to collect a heavy fine from them. Upon this occasion, the women and children of the city betook themselves to the wife of their then governor, who, out of her own money, built this mosque; and to her they made a grievous complaint. She accordingly sent to the officer, who had been commissioned to collect the fine, a robe very richly embroidered and adorned with jewels, much greater in value than the amount of the fine imposed. This, she requested might be sent to the Calif as a present from herself, to be accepted instead of the fine.

The officer accordingly took the robe, and sent it to the Calif; who, when he saw it, was surprised at her liberality, and said: This woman must not be allowed to exceed myself in generosity. He then sent back the robe, and remitted the fine. When the robe was returned to her, she asked, whether a look of the Calif had fallen upon it; and being told that it had, she replied: No robe shall ever come upon me, upon which the look of any man, except my own husband, has fallen. She then ordered it to be cut up and sold; and with the price of it she built the mosque, with the cell and structure in the front of it. Still, from the price of the robe there remained a third, which she commanded to be buried under one of its pillars, in order to meet any future expenses which might be necessary for its repairs. Upon Jengiz Khan’s hearing this story, he ordered these pillars to be destroyed; but, as already remarked, he found nothing.

By William J. Duiker & Jackson J. Spielvoger in the book "World History", Wadsworth (Cengage Learning) U.S.A, 2010, excerpts p.204-211. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

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