Islam in the Ancient World

Related civilizations: Byzantium, Persia.

Date: beginning in 622 c.e.

Locale: Western Asia and North Africa

Islam in the Ancient World

Many centuries before the mission of the Prophet Muḥammad (c. 570-632 c.e.), Syria and Mesopotamia (now Iraq) were important seats of trade, culture, and politics. These two areas affected the different faiths and civilizations in the interior of the Arabian Peninsula, largely through trading relations that, in biblical times, were associated with the frankincense route from Yemen. Rare commodities found their way from what the Romans called Arabia Felix (“well-blessed” or “happy” Arabia), and valuable goods from the east, principally from India and China, created prosperous commercial dealings for Syria and Mesopotamia. Historically, these areas were often dominated by powerful imperial overlords who vied for control over the cities at the ends of the trade routes such as Damascus or the ancient cities located where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers flow closest to each other (a site that later became Baghdad).

In the centuries that followed the rise of Christianity in historical Palestine, the two imperial overlords who rivaled each other across the vast extent of desert separating Syria and Mesopotamia were the Roman and the Sāsānian Empires. During this time, at least one Arab state, that of the Nabataeans in Petra, dealt with the Romans as trade intermediaries in southern Syria. Later, just before the rise of Islam in Arabia, two other less developed Arab tribal states, the Ghassānids in Syria and the Lakhmids in Mesopotamia, served similar intermediary functions, approaching auxiliary status for the Roman and Persian Empires, respectively.

Meanwhile, in Mecca, the Umayyad and Hāshimi clans of the Arab Quraysh tribe vied with each other for both the prestige and material gain associated with control over caravans carrying goods from the Red Sea to Syria. The Meccan system involved an entire network of special trade relations, including the principle of ḥaram, which forbade intertribal hostilities on Meccan territory. Mecca’s bid to influence Arab tribal life was reinforced by declaring the “black stone” (eventually adopted as a monotheistic symbol by Islam) as a focal point for the then polytheistic ceremonies of tribes visiting Mecca for trade.

The Meccan Islamic community

The Prophet Muḥammad was a Hāshimite. An orphan, he lived under the guardianship of his influential uncle Abū Ṭālib, who may have helped sponsor his early career as a merchant. Probably Muḥammad went with caravans as far as the trade terminus in Syria and had contact there with Christians and Jews. According to Islamic history, around 611 c.e., Muḥammad received revelations from God, which Allāh commanded him to recite. The name of Islam’s holy scripture, the Qur՚n, derives from the Arabic root for recitation.

The Qur՚n urged believers to acknowledge the oneness of God and to follow all precepts laid down in the Qur՚n, including belief in a day of judgment. The Qur՚n also refers to “people of the book,” Christians and Jews who believed in earlier prophets and possessed monotheistic scriptures. Islam argues, however, that earlier monotheists had fallen away from the essence of God’s message and that Muḥammad’s revelation represented the “seal of the prophets.”

Muḥammad’s prophethood passed through several phases. Reactions to the Qur՚n, especially its rejection of the religious and social practices of the Meccans, brought threats of persecution. Prominent opponents of Muḥammad came from the Umayyad clan heads. In the year 622 c.e., year one of the Muslim calendar, a handful of believers followed Muḥammad on the flight (hijrah) to nearby Medina, where other tribes helped him in return for his arbitration of local disputes. These helpers (ansar) spawned other alliances, increasing the community of believers until Muḥammad was able to bring pressure, including military might, against the Meccans. He returned to Mecca a scant year or so before his death to assume control of a united Islamic community, which had been joined by the former rival clan of the Umayyads.

The first caliphs

The early decades following Muḥammad’s death in 632 c.e. saw two major developments that would affect Islamic civilization for many centuries: emergence of the caliphs (from khalīfah, successor to the Prophet) and the start of a military conquest that would eventually stretch to India to the east and the Straits of Gibraltar to the west.

Original perceptions of the role of the caliphs emphasized the political importance of having a recognized leader over the community of believers. Religious functions initiated by the Prophet were not transmitted to the caliphs but formed the corpus of ritual obligations to be practiced by all believers. These centered on the Pillars of the Faith, including prayer, fasting during Ramaḍān, alms giving, and pilgrimage at least once in the believer’s lifetime to Mecca. Tradition has it that the principal, if highly theoretical, function of the caliph was to “command the good and prevent evil.”

Muslims distinguish between a first line of almost literally personal successors to the Prophet, referred to as the “rightly guided,” and the beginnings of the first dynastic line of Umayyad caliphs in the conquered capital of Damascus from about 661 c.e. until their defeat by the ՙAbbāsids in 751 c.e.

The “rightly guided” caliphs to 661 c.e. included Abū Bakr, ՙUmar ibn al-Khaṭtāb, ՙUthmān ibn ՙAffān, and ՙAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib. The main role of Muḥammad’s close confidant Abū Bakr seems to have been to maintain unity among the disparate tribes that had sworn loyalty to Muḥammad under the common banner of Islam. ՙUmar ibn al-Khaṭtāb not only began expanding the Islamic empire by defeating Byzantine forces in Syria and Persian forces in Iraq but also forged some of the earliest traceable governing institutions supervised by the caliphate. These included a systematic listing of warriors for the faith (the diwan) and modes of taxation to be applied to peoples under Islamic rule. Distinctions were made between those who converted and those who retained their original monotheistic religions. Nonconverts (dhimmis) paid a special head tax.

Caliph ՙUthmān was a member of the Umayyad clan but apparently was less affected by a sense of clan loyalty than an idealistic sense of his responsibility to lead the Muslims. When ՙUthmān was assassinated, however, a call for vengeance came from Umayyad governor of Syria Muՙāwiyah I and others who assumed the new caliph, Muḥammad’s cousin (and son-in-law) ՙAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, would punish the guilty parties. When ՙAlī was challenged by forces supporting Muՙāwiyah on the field at Ṣiffīn in 657 c.e., differences were solved temporarily by arbitration, not war. Nonetheless, the first religious schism in Islam occurred just after the conflict at Ṣiffīn, when a faction with clear egalitarian tendencies, the Khārijites, or seceders, denied that either side was sufficiently meritorious to claim succession to Muḥammad’s leadership. Later, when ՙAlī was killed by a Khārijite assassin in 661 c.e., Muՙāwiyah became caliph. His descendants ruled what became a hereditary caliphate based in Damascus until 750 c.e.

Although the Umayyad caliphate continued to spread Islam through military expansion at a vigorous rate, it faced a number of uprisings from within. Certainly supporters of what became known as the ahl al bayt (“people of the house of the Prophet”) constantly challenged the Damascus caliphate in the name of ՙAlī and his two martyred sons, Ḥusayn and Hassan. Key Islamic cities in Iraq, especially Basra and Al-Kufa, rose up several times in denunciation of both the Umayyads and the Arab tribal-dominated ruling elite. Other rebellions, including conservative supporters of a disappointed Meccan “aristocracy,” also had to be forcefully suppressed.

Most historians agree that the Islamic community experienced social and religious as well as political stability only from the mid-ninth century onward. This was caused in part by the replacement of the Umayyads by the longer-lived hereditary ՙAbbāsid caliphate. Mainly, however, stabilization would come when the ՙAbbāsids evolved more effective modes of administration over widespread conquered territory (by means of a bureaucratic network run by wazirs, or first ministers under the caliphs). The ՙAbbāsids also viewed Sunni Islamic law as providing universalist precepts in Islam and used the law to manage the large Muslim empire.

Bibliography

Esposito, John, ed. Oxford History of Islam. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Murata, Sachiko, and William Chittick. The Vision of Islam. New York: Paragon House, 1994.