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- By the mid 9th century the Abbasids were losing control over their vast
Muslim empire.
- Distance hampered efforts to move armies and control local
administrators.
- Most subjects also retained local loyalties.
- Shi'i dissenters were particularly troublesome, while slave and peasant
risings weakened the empire.
- Mongol invasions in the 13th century ended the very weakened state.
- Despite the political decline, Islamic civilization reached new cultural
heights, and Islam expanded widely in the Afro-Asian world through
conquest and peaceful conversion.
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- The Abbasid Empire disintegrated between the 9th and 13th centuries.
- Peasant revolts and slavery increased.
- Despite the artistic and intellectual creativity of the age, the
position of women eroded.
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- Signs of decline were present during the reign of Caliph al-Mahdi
(775-785).
- He failed to reconcile moderate Shi'i to Abbasid rule.
- Al-Mahdi abandoned the frugal ways of his predecessor and surrounded his
court with luxury.
- He failed to establish a succession system resolving disputes among his
many sons, leaving a lasting problem to future rulers.
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- One son, Harun al-Rashid, became one of the most famous Abbasid caliphs.
- The luxury and intrigues of his court were immortalized in The Thousand
and
- One Nights.
- The young ruler became dependent on Persian advisors, a trend followed
during later reigns as rulers became pawns in factional court struggles.
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- Al-Rashid's death led to the first of many civil wars over the
succession.
- The sons of the winner, al-Ma'mun, built personal retainer armies, some
including Turkic nomads, to safeguard their futures.
- The armies became power centers, removing and selecting caliphs.
- Their uncontrolled excesses developed into a general focus for societal
unrest.
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- The continual civil violence drained the imperial treasury.
- Caliphs increased the strain by constructing costly new imperial
centers.
- Peasants had imposing tax burdens, often collected by farmers which
forced the taxes upon them.
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- Agricultural villages were abandoned and irrigation works fell into
disrepair.
- Bandits and vagabonds were everywhere.
- They participated in peasant rebellions often instigated by dissident
religious groups.
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- The freedom and influence possessed during the 1st centuries of Islam
severely declined. Male-dominated Abbasid society imagined that women
possessed incurable lust, and therefore men needed to be segregated from
all but the women of their family.
- The harem and the veil symbolized subjugation to males.
- The seclusion of elite women, wives and concubines, continued, and the
practice of veiling spread to all.
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- Abbasid wealth generated large demand for concubines and male slaves.
- Most came from non-Muslim neighboring lands.
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- By the mid-10th century breakaway former provinces began to challenge
Abbasid rule.
- The Buyids of Persia captured Baghdad in 945.
- The caliphs henceforth became powerless puppets controlled by sultans,
the actual rulers.
- The Seljuk Turks defeated the Buyids in 1055 and ruled the remnants of
the Abbasid empire for two centuries.
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- The Seljuks were staunch Sunnis who purged the Shi’i.
- For a time Seljuk military power restored the diminished caliphate.
- Egyptians and Byzantines were defeated, the latter success opening
Anatolia, the nucleus of the later Ottoman Empire, to settlement by
Turkic nomads.
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- West European Christian knights in 1096 invaded Muslim territory to
capture the biblical Holy Land.
- They established small, rival kingdoms that were not a threat to the
more powerful surrounding Muslim leaders.
- Most were recaptured near the close of the 12th century by
Muslims reunited under Saladin.
- The last fell in 1291.
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- The Crusades had an important impact upon the Christian world through
intensifying the existing European borrowing of the more sophisticated
technology, architecture, medicine, mathematics, science, and general
culture of Muslim civilization.
- Europeans recovered much Greek learning lost after the fall of Rome.
- Italian merchants remained in Islamic centers after the Crusader defeat
and were far more important carriers of Islamic advanced knowledge than
the Christian warriors.
- Muslim peoples were little interested in aspects of European
civilization.
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- The political and social turmoil of late Abbasid times did not prevent
Muslim thinkers and craftsmen, in states from Spain to Persia, from
producing one of the great ages of human creativity.
- Rapid urban growth and its associated prosperity persisted until late in
the Abbasid era.
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- Employment opportunities for skilled individuals remained abundant.
- Merchants amassed large fortunes through supplying urban needs and from
long-distance trade to India, Southeast Asia, China, North Africa, and
Europe.
- Artists and artisans created mosques, palaces, tapestries, rugs,
bronzes, and ceramics.
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- Persian replaced Arabic as the primary written language of the Abbasid
court.
- Arabic was the language of religion, law, and the natural sciences.
- Persian became the language of "high culture," used for
literary expression, administration, and scholarship.
- The development of a beautiful calligraphy made literature a visual art
form.
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- Perhaps the greatest work was Firdawsi's epic poem, Shah-Nama, a history
of Persia from creation to Islamic conquest.
- Other writers, as the great poet Sa’di and Omar Khayyam in the Rubiyat, blended
mystical and commonplace themes in their work.
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- Muslim society for several centuries surpassed all others in scientific
and technological discoveries.
- In mathematics thinkers made major corrections in the theories learned
from the ancient Greeks.
- In chemistry they created the objective experiment.
- Al-Razi classified all material substances into three categories:
animal, vegetable, mineral.
- Al-Biruni calculated the exact specific weight of 18 major minerals.
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- Sophisticated, improved, astronomical instruments, like the astrolabe,
were used for mapping the heavens.
- Much of the Muslim achievement had practical application.
- In medicine improved hospitals and formal courses of studies accompanied
important experimental work.
- Traders and craftsmen introduced machines and techniques originating in
China for paper making, silk weaving, and ceramic firing.
- Scholars made some of the world's best maps.
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- The conflicting social and political trends showed in divergent patterns
of religious development.
- Sufis developed vibrant mysticism, but ulama (religious scholars) became
more conservative and suspicious of non-Muslim influences and scientific
thought.
- They were suspicious of Greek rationalism and insisted that the Quran
was the all-embracing source of knowledge.
- The great theologian al-Ghazali struggled to fuse Greek and Quranic
traditions, but often was opposed by orthodox scholars.
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- The Sufis created the most innovative religious movement.
- They reacted against the arid teachings of the ulama and sought personal
union with Allah through asceticism, meditation, songs, dancing, or
drugs.
- Many Sufis gained reputations as healers and miracle workers; others
made the movement a central factor in the continuing expansion of Islam.
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- In the early 13th century central Asian nomadic invaders, the Mongols,
threatened Islamic lands.
- Chinggis Khan destroyed the Turkic-Persian kingdoms east of Baghdad.
- His grandson, Hulegu, continued the assault.
- The last Abbasid ruler was killed when Baghdad fell in 1258.
- The once great Abbasid capital became an unimportant backwater in the
Muslim world.
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- Muslim invasions from the 7th century added to the complexity of Indian
civilization.
- Previous nomadic invaders usually had blended over time into India’s
sophisticated civilization.
- Muslims, possessors of an equally sophisticated, but very different,
culture, were a new factor.
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- The open, tolerant, and inclusive Hindu religion, based in a social
system dominated by castes, Islam was doctrinaire, monotheistic,
evangelical, and egalitarian.
- In the earlier period of contact, conflict predominated, but as time
passed, although tensions persisted, peaceful commercial and religious
exchange occurred in a society where Muslim rulers governed Hindu
subjects.
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- North India remained politically divided between rival dynasties after
the 5th century fall of the Gupta until Harsha in the 7th century
created a stable successor empire in the central and eastern Ganges
plain.
- Although he ruled an area larger than any contemporary European realm,
Harsha failed to unite India’s subcontinent.
- Harsha's reign was a time of peace and prosperity.
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- He built roads, rest houses, and hospitals; he endowed temples and
Buddhist monasteries.
- Urban areas, as the capital at Kanuji, flourished and artistic
creativity revived.
- Harsha, a Hindu, was tolerant of all faiths and strongly attracted to
Buddhism.
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- Harsha's empire collapsed with his death in 646.
- Hindu culture continued to flourish, but political divisions left north
India open to Muslim invasions beginning in 711.
- The Umayyad general Muhammad ibn Qasim conquered and annexed Sind, and ,
despite quarrels among succeeding Muslim dynasties, the occupation
endured.
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- Many Indians, treated as "people of the book," welcomed the
new rulers because they offered religious tolerance and lighter taxes.
- Most indigenous officials retained their positions, while brahmin castes
were respected.
- Few Arabs resided in cities or garrison towns, and minimal conversion
efforts did not change existing religious beliefs.
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- Although Islam's impact in India was minimal, Islamic civilization was
enriched by Indian culture.
- Indian achievements in science, mathematics, medicine, music, and
astronomy passed to the Arabs.
- Indian numerals were accepted, later to pass to Europe as
"Arabic" numerals.
- Colonies of Arabs settled along India's coasts, adopted local customs,
and provided staging points for later Islamic expansion to island and
mainland Southeast India.
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- After the initial Muslim conquests, internal divisions weakened Muslim
rule and allowed limited Hindu reconquest.
- In the 10th century a Turkish dynasty gained power in Afghanistan.
- Its third ruler, Mahmud of Ghazni, began two centuries of incursions
into northern India.
- In the 12th century the Persian Muhammad of Ghur created an extensive
state in the Indus valley and north-central India.
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- Later campaigns extended it along the plains of the Ganges to Bengal.
- A lieutenant to Muhammad, Qutb-ud-Din Aibak, later formed a new state,
with its capital at Delhi on the Ganges plain.
- The succeeding dynasties, the sultans of Delhi, were military states.
- Their authority was limited by factional strife and dependence upon
Hindu subordinates.
- They ruled much of north-central India for the next 300 years.
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- Although Muslims came as conquerors, interaction with Indians early was
dominated by peaceful exchanges.
- The main carriers of Islam were traders and Sufi mystics, the latter
drawing followers because of similarities to Indian holy men.
- Their mosques and schools became centers of regional political power
providing protection to local populations.
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- Low and outcast Hindus were welcomed.
- Buddhists were the most numerous converts.
- Buddhist spiritual decline had debased its practices and turned interest
to the vigorous new religion of Islam.
- Others converted to escape taxes or through intermarriage.
- Muslim migrants fleeing 13th and 14th century Mongol incursions also
increased the Islamic community.
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- In most regions Islam initially had little impact on the general Hindu
community.
- High-caste Hindus did not accept the invaders as their equals.
- Although serving as administrators or soldiers, they remained socially
aloof, living in separate quarters and not intermarrying.
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- Hindus thought the Muslims, as earlier invaders, would be absorbed by
Hindu society.
- Muslim communities did adopt many Indian ways.
- They accepted Hindu social hierarchies, foods, and attitudes toward
women.
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- Muslims, despite Indian influences, held to the tenets of Islam.
- The Hindu response, open to all individuals and castes led to an
increased emphasis on devotional cults of gods and goddesses (bhakti).
- The cults, open to men, women, and all castes, stressed the importance
of strong emotional bonds to the gods.
- Mira Bai, a low-caste woman, and Kabir, a Muslim weaver, composed songs
and poems in regional languages accessible to common people.
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- Reaching a state of ecstatic unity brought removal of all past sins and
rendered caste distinctions meaningless.
- Shiva, Vishnu, and the goddess Kali were the most worshipped gods.
- The movement helped, especially among low-caste groups, to stem
conversion to Islam.
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- Similarities in style and message between Sufis and bhaktic devotees led
to attempts to bridge the gaps between Islam and Hinduism.
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- By the close of the sultanate period there were two distinct religious
communities.
- The great majority of the population remained Hindu.
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- Southeast Asia had been a middle ground where the Chinese part of the
Eurasian trading complex met the Indian Ocean zone.
- By the 7th and 8th centuries southeast Asian sailors and ships were
active in the trade.
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- When Muslims, from the 8th century, gained control of Indian commerce,
Islamic culture reached Southeast Asia.
- The 13th century collapse of the trading empire of Shrivijaya, ruled by
devout Buddhists and located on the Straits of Malacca and northern
Sumatra, made possible large-scale, peaceful, Muslim entry.
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- Peaceful contacts and voluntary conversion were more important to the
spread of Islam than conquest and force.
- Trading contacts prepared the way for conversion, with the process
carried forward by Sufis.
- The first conversions occurred in small northern Sumatran ports.
- On the mainland the key to the spread of Islam was the city of Malacca,
the smaller successor to Shrivijaya.
- From Malacca Islam went to Malaya, Sumatra, and the state of Demak on
Java's north coast.
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- Islam spread into Java and moved on to the Celebes and Mindanao in the
Philippines.
- Coastal cities were the most receptive to Islam.
- Their conversion linked them to a Muslim system connected to the
principal Indian Ocean ports.
- Buddhist dynasties were present in many regions, but since Buddhist
conversions were limited to the elite, the mass of the population was
open to the massage of Sufis.
- The island of Bali and mainland Southeast Asia, where Buddhism had
gained popular support, remained impervious to Islam.
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- The mystical quality of Islam in Southeast Asia was due to Sufi
strivings.
- They often were tolerant of the indigenous peoples’ Buddhist and Hindu
beliefs.
- Converts retained pre-Islamic practices, especially for regulating
social interaction.
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- Islamic law ruled legal transactions.
- Women held a stronger familial and societal position than they had in
the Middle East or India.
- They dominated local markets, while in some regions matrilineal descent
persisted.
- Many pre-Muslim beliefs were incorporated into Islamic ceremonies.
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- Great civilizations and world religions have been closely associated
throughout world history.
- World religions, belief structures that flourish in many differing
cultures, have to possess a spiritual core rich enough to appeal to
potential converts.
- They have to possess core beliefs that allow new members to maintain a
sense of common identity, but also must be flexible enough to allow
retention of important parts of their local culture.
- The capacity for accommodation allowed Islam, and later Christianity, to
spread successfully into many differing communities.
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- Despite the political instability of the Abbasids, Islam's central
position in global history was solidified.
- The expanding Muslim world linked ancient civilizations through conquest
and commercial networks.
- Islam was the civilizer of nomadic peoples in Asia and Africa.
- Its cultural contributions diffused widely from great cities and
universities. .
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- There were tendencies that placed Muslims at a disadvantage in relation
to rival civilizations, particularly to their European rivals.
- Political divisions caused weaknesses in many regions.
- Most importantly, the increasing rigidity of the Ulama caused Muslims to
become less receptive to outside influences at a time when the European
world transformed its culture and power.
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