HB-08-Islam

Islam

The Religion of Submission to God in Interaction with Various Cultures

On route 22 in eastern Pennsylvania not long ago a big Greyhound bus drew over toward the shoulder of the highway. It was late in the afternoon, and when the considerate bus‑driver opened the door, a Muslim emerged with his prayer‑rug, performed his ablutions with the dust he could gather from the ground (remembering how the Qur'an says, "If you can find no water, then have recourse to wholesome dust, and wipe your faces and your hands"), and spreading out his prayer‑rug, prostrated himself toward the east and prayed to the all‑seeing, all‑compassionate One to whom he had since childhood daily offered his surrender. The other passengers in the bus, whether or not it was an example to them, were witnesses to an act of faith and a rite of surrender and commitment.

A "Muslim" is "one who submits" or "one who commits himself to Islam." The word Islam is a noun formed from the infinitive of a verb meaning "to accept," "to submit," "to commit oneself," and means "submission" or "surrender." Of this word Charles J. Adams says: "By its very form [as a verbal noun] it conveys a feeling of action and on goingness, not of something that is static and finished, once and for all, but of an inward state which is always repeated and renewed.... One who thoughtfully declares 'I am a Muslim' has done much more than affirm his membership in a community.... [He is saying] 'I am one who commits himself to God.',

Although the challenge of Islam daunted its opponents, its force and clarity appealed to those who accepted it. Four hundred and fifty million people, by a conservative estimate, are now numbered among its willing adherents, and their number is increasing. They accept it as the absolute and final faith, and they are proud to be able to follow it. Over the years, Islam has kept to one basic scripture, preserved from the first in a state of textual purity such that comparatively few variant readings have arisen to confuse the commentators. What is in the Qur'an {or Koran, the traditional spelling, and therefore to be found in some of the quotations of this chapter, but Qur'an. In more accurately suggests the real pronunciation.} all true Muslims accept for absolute truth, for it is the word of God himself.

The Muslim's pride in his faith is not decreased by the convincing evidence that can be gathered to show that Muhammad's teaching was not completely new, for it is Islam's proud claim that the Qur'an, as the last and final revelation from heaven, completes and goes beyond the revelations that other religions before it have received.

But in the study of Islam we are met by an initial difficulty. Though its doctrinal and ethical character is finally ‑determined by an absolute standard or rule of faith, the Qur'an, it is not from the Qur'an that we get most of the information we possess concerning the life of Muhammad and the early spread of his religion. This information comes to us first through the Hadith, the body of tradition originating from the first generation of Muslims and handed down both orally and in writing, and secondly, through Muslim biographies of the Prophet that appeared during the first centuries of Muslim history. {One of the earliest of these, Masa ibn 'Uqbah's account, survives only in fragmentary form, but others appearing later are better preserved; for example, the connected narrative of Ibn Ishaq (b. 707), whose text was edited and abridged a generation later by Ibn Hish5m and has come down to us in this version, and the biography of Al‑Waqid! (ca. 797‑874), whose follower Ibn Sa'd also set down the life of the Prophet. These biographies were used by Al‑Tabarr (d. 923) when he wrote his notable history of the early days of Islam.} These sources contain unreliable material, but as early reports of what Muhammad said and did, or was believed to have said and done, they are extremely valuable.

I Arabian Beliefs and Practices Before Muhammad

Racial and Economic Factors

The Arabians, like any other people that might be mentioned, were not culturally homogeneous. Those who spoke Semitic languages outnumbered other groups; but in the south non‑Semitic Ethiopians crossed over the Red Sea to establish settlements along the coastal plain; in the northeast conquests dating as far back as the second millennium B.C. somewhat altered the groupings there by infusion of Sumerian, Babylonian, and Persian elements. From Egypt a Hamitic element entered the population.

Divisive modes of thought produced further variations. Cultural differences that often proved irreconcilable were introduced when Semites who left the desert returned again after the passage of centuries. During periods of international convulsion many refugees from lands to the north and west retreated into the desert wastes that their fathers had put behind them. In the time of Muhammad the western portions of Arabia contained considerable numbers of Jews who had fled from their enemies‑Assyrian, Babylonian, Greek, and Roman. They participated with the Arabs in the intensive cultivation of the oases in western Arabia. They were numerous in Medina (the ancient Yathrib) and its neighborhood as "clients" of the Arabian tribes; that is, they were welcomed into the area and adopted as accepted outsiders who would thenceforth enjoy tribal protection.

There were some rather marked differences between northern and southern Arabs. The huge Arabian peninsula (natively and aptly called Jazirat al‑'Arab, "the Island of the Arabs," because it is virtually isolated by its surrounding waters and its own sands) is geographically divided by a clam‑shell‑shaped tract of red sand, a third of a million square miles in extent, which even the bedouins avoid (it being known to them as Al‑Rub 'al‑Khal‑1, "the Vacant Quarter"). To the north of this bad land are stretches of more habitable desert steppe, containing oases and arable valley‑bottoms. This more hospitable territory is bounded by a band of desert resembling a crescent moon and reaching from Al‑Rub 'al‑Khal! for five hundred miles to another desert, the Great Nefud, lying in the northwest. The Nefud's shifting dunes of red and white sand stretch mid‑way between Medina and Damascus. On the steppeland the coarse soil supports a sparse, hardy verdure that springs up when the infrequent winter rains fall and provides grazing for the camels, sheep, goats, and horses of the bedouin tribes. Southwest of the "Vacant Quarter" is the rain‑bathed area of Yemen or South Arabia the classical Arabia Felix‑bounded on the southeast by the Gulf of Aden and on the southwest by the lower end of the Red Sea. This was the region so famed among the Greeks and Romans for its frankincense and spices. The geographical separation of north and south Arabia was paralled by ethnic differences among the people. The north Arabians of Muhammad's day were long‑headed, wiry nomads, who spoke a pure Arabic and were by nature liberty loving and imaginative. Thousands of years of hungry struggle had schooled them in both predatory and cooperative habits. They were quite different in speech and customs from their comfortable brethren below the "Vacant Quarter," the round‑headed, hook‑nosed southerners, who were farmers and horticulturists and spoke a Semitic dialect, with Ethiopic loan‑words, that sounded strange in northern ears. Before the time of Muhammad the north Arabians, although they had many outside contacts, never knew a conqueror, but the south Arabians, blessed with fertilizing rain and sun, grew prosperous through trade, built cities and towns surrounded by green fields and gardens, and brought down upon themselves in consequence raids from the desert, wars from abroad, the expense of fortifications, heavy taxes, economic rivalries, commercial anxieties, and recurrent depressions coming close on the heels of boom times. And when the Ptolemies (and the Romans after them) learned how to sail past them to India, they went into permanent decline.

A third section of Arabia happens to be more important to us. It consists of the mountain range running parallel with the Red Sea from the Gulf of 'Aqaba to Yemen. Rising at some points over ten thousand feet above sea level, this range falls swiftly to the Red Sea, but its eastern slope declines gradually through bare, volcanic lava‑tracts, scoured with deep wadis or water‑courses, toward the red sands of the central desert and the flat coastal plains bordering the far‑away Persian Gulf. Although at places like Ta'if or Medina subterranean waters rising to the suriace moisten an arable soil, this mountain range is for the most part dry and barren. Violent rainstorms sometimes visit it, but then the water rushes off in floods that wash out more deeply the gullies or wadis. Yet, it figures historically as the most vital part of the peninsula, for it once furnished a connecting link between the southern spice‑lands and the markets of the Mediterranean world. On the cool, hard surface of its uplands, caravans long before the time of Christ plodded their way through the trading‑posts of Ta’'if, Mecca, and Yathrib (Medina), and at Petra forked off west or north to Egypt or Syria. The pre‑Islamic prosperity of the communities of Al‑Hij5z, this mountain home of Islam, was primarily due to the passage through them of the spice‑laden caravans of the south.

Although the inter‑relations of the three sections of Arabia were at times strife‑riven, the existence of commerce and trade indicates that these inter‑relations were generally cooperative, if not warm.

Religious Conceptions

The religion of pre‑Islamic Arabia was a development out of the primitive Semitic desert faith already sketched in the chapter on Judaism. In some parts of Arabia that development had gone pretty far in one or another direction. In south Arabia, for example, a rather advanced astral cult prevailed, centered in the moon‑god and reflecting Babylonian and Zoroastrian influences. In other regions wherejews and Christians had secured a foothold (which was in most of the commercial centers of Arabia), the native converts to these faiths abandoned their primitive beliefs and espoused monotheism. But the great majority of Arabs, both in the towns and on the steppes, worshiped local gods and goddesses. Some of these deities were strictly tribal; others presided over certain geographical areas and obliged all who entered their domains to reverence them. There was also widespread veneration of certain astral deities. Some of these had Babylonian names and were readily identified by Greek and Roman visitors as local forms of Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, Uranus, and other deities. In Mecca three almost indistinguishable goddesses were adored: al‑Lat, a mother‑goddess (perhaps the sun), al‑Mandt, the goddess of fate, and al‑'Uzza, the morning star, a pale sort of Venus, their idols being the center of a worship much like that accorded across the frontiers in olden times to Ishtar and Isis. They were reckoned to be "the daughters of Allah'—Allah {Meaning God or "the deity," like the Hebrew El and the Babylonian Bel. Arabic accent falls on second syllable.} being vaguely conceived as the creator, a far‑off high‑god, venerated by Muhammad's tribe, the Quraysh.

In addition to these beings of the rank of high divinity, there were lesser spirits, scarcely less honored namely, angels and various sorts of jinn, some friendly (fairylike), some hostile and demonic. It is interesting to mark the differences in character that seem to have existed between these lesser spirits. The angels were, of course, morally irreproachable and of a uniformly beneficent nature. {It is likely that this concept was derived from Jewish and Zoroastrian sources, through the currency in Arabia of the stories of the Old Testament and the Avesta.} The jinn were, according to fable, created from fire two thousand years before Adam and could at will appear to human eyes or remain invisible. They could assume animal or human forms and have sexual relations and progeny. The friendly jinn were beautiful in form and kind in disposition. By way of contrast, the desert‑ranging jinn, a predominantly demonic group, struck terror to Arab hearts as active agents of evil. Yet some of them could be bent to good use, for anyone who could control their movements might convert them into helpful agents to the attainment of beneficial ends, like finding treasure, building palaces, or whirling young men away on the wings of the wind to far places and new fortunes. Among the demonic beings who were always evil were the ghouls, who lay in wait where men were destined to perish, that they might satisfy their appetite for corrupt human flesh, or who robbed graves of their bodies to furnish the main dish for their midnight orgies. The ever‑active imagination of the Arabs and their Persian co‑religionists, which came to such colorful expression in after‑times in the tales of The Thousand and One Nights, whiled away the hours weaving innumerable stories out of these concepts.

Particularly among the bedouin, but in every part of Arabia, animism existed. Pillarlike stones and noteworthy rocks, caves, springs, and wells were held in great respect. In some districts there were sacred palm trees on which offerings of weapons and cloth were hung. Totemism may or may not have been involved in the reverence paid to the gazelle, the eagle, the vulture, and the camel.

Mecca

Mecca offered the most conspicuous instance of veneration given to a stone‑that given to the meteorite built into the corner of the Ka'ba, {Literally, "the cube," for it was a cube like structure with no exterior ornament. To enhance its appearance, it was later covered with a tissue of black cloth.} one of the holiest shrines in Arabia. The Roman historian Diodorus Siculus (ca. 60 B.C.) already refers to it. In some far past the people of that part of Arabia had been startled by the rush of a meteor, which quenched its heaven‑fire in Mecca's sandy glen. Afterwards the awed inhabitants worshiped it, calling it "the black stone that fell from heaven in the days of Adam." From far and near across the desert the tribes of Arabia, year after year, came on a ha# (pilgrimage) to offer near if sacrifices of sheep and camels and to run the circuit of the stone seven times and kiss it, in the hope of heaven's blessing on them. In the course of years the cubeshaped Ka'ba was erected and the holy stone placed in the southeast corner at a height that permitted it to be kissed by those who made the seven‑fold circuit. Images of local and distant deities were placed in the dark interior. The Meccans declared that the great patriarch Abraham, while on a visit to his outcast son Ishmael, had built the Ka'ba and imbedded the Black Stone in it. {Tradition was not content with this legend, however; it asserted that the first Ka'ba was built by Adam from a celestial prototype, and was rebuilt by Abraham and Ishmael.}

Only a few steps away from the Ka'ba was the holy well Zamzam, whose water was sacred to the pilgrims who ran the circuit of the shrine. Meccan tradition endowed it with a curious history. In the third century A.D., when the men of the Bani‑jurhum tribe were driven from Mecca by the Bani‑Khuza'a, their sheikh, so it was said, before giving up the town, threw down into the well some suits of armor, several swords, and two gazelles of gold, and then covered all up with tamped‑down earth and sand, so that when the captors of the city entered it, the location of the well was not known to them. After the Quraysh came into control of Mecca, Muhammad's grandfather, 'Abd‑al‑Muttalib, the leading chief, found the well and restored it. The Meccans were grateful, for they had an old tradition that after Hagar was expelled from Abraham's tent, {The Arabs learned this story from the Hebrews. See Genesis 21:9‑21.} she came with her little son Ishmael to the future site of their city, at that time a barren valley, and because her child was dying of thirst, she left him lying on the hot earth while she searched despairingly for water; behind her the child, in a tantrum, kicked his heels into the ground, and the waters of Zamzam welled up into the depression. In recognition of this fabled event, it was considered meritorious for pilgrims to add to the circling of the Ka'ba an exercise called the Lesser Pilgrimage, which involved a rapid pacing back and forth seven times between two hills and the Ka'ba in imitation of Hagar's anguished search. And because Ishmael was declared to be the founder of the city, it was thought well to extend this exercise into something more arduous, called the Greater Pilgrimage. This was performed during the holy month Dhri‑al‑Hiija and required besides the exercises of the Lesser Pilgrimage, a tour of the hills east of Mecca taking several days and including in its scope visits to places celebrated for great events in Arabian history.

Within the Ka'ba itself a number of idols were ranged around Hubal, the chief male deity. Next in importance to him were the three goddesses, al‑Lat, al‑ManAt, and al‑'Uzza. Together with their associates, including the far‑off Allih, who was imageless, these deities constituted a sort of pantheon for Arabia, designed to draw to Mecca the people of every region. So holy did Mecca become, in fact, that the city and its immediate environs were declared sacred territory, and pilgrims were obliged to disarm when entering it.

By agreement throughout Arabia, four months were reserved out of each year for pilgrimage and trade. During them no violence or warfare was permitted, and Mecca, along with many other places, profited by the fairs and markets that then sprang up.

In spite, however, of her pre‑eminent station as the chief pilgrim‑center and one of the chief crossroads towns of Arabia, Mecca had to struggle to keep going. There were three reasons for this, all rooted in longstanding conditions, the first geographical, the second economic, the third civic. The trouble with Mecca physically was that it lay in a barren mountain pass. Not only the city but the sacred territory around it could not sustain gardens and date palms. Hence, the city's chief reliance was upon its commerce. This was extensive enough to keep the inhabitants fairly prosperous, for Mecca was the focus for caravan routes reaching all over Arabia. Its fortunes, however, declined considerably after the Arab monopoly in the spice trade was broken by the re‑opening of the old Egyptian maritime route through the Red Sea. This was a serious blow not only to the Al‑Hijdz transport towns but to south Arabia as well, for it forced down prices by bringing India and Somaliland into play as trade rivals. In the subsequent decline of Arab commerce, some hill towns had to fall back on agriculture for survival, but barren Mecca could have recourse to no such expedient. Fortunately, her position athwart the trade routes of Arabia remained secure, and her power to attract pilgrims to her Black Stone was undiminished. This saved her from the fate of Petra to the west, the marvelous rock‑hewn city that by Muhammad's time had lain uninhabited for five centuries. The, margin of security was none too large. Should the city be overrun, a crisis of real magnitude would threaten. Tradition had it that such a crisis actually developed in the very year in which Muhammad was born. This was the year known in A4ia as "the year of the elephant," because the Abyssinian (and Christian) governor of south Arabia marched upon Mecca in force, with a battle elephant, professing a vengeful desire to destroy the heathen shrine, but he had to retreat, just when Mecca lay defenseless before him, because of an outbreak of smallpox among his troops.

What endangered Mecca more was the civic tension between her rival factions. Civic peace was dependent on the precarious balance maintained by the law of vendetta. Exactly like the free‑roaming bedouin tribes, the rival clans that lived together within the city's limits subscribed to the ancient principle that the murder of any member of one's own clan called for the answering death of a member of the murderer's clan. If the murder was done within a clan, the murderer would be without defense; if he was caught he was put to death, and if he escaped he became an outlaw, a member of no clan, with every man's hand against him. But when a member of a clan was murdered by an outsider, his whole clan rose up to avenge him. A principal deterrent to violent crime in Arabia and also the guarantee of civic order was, it seems, the fear of blood vengeance.

Before the time of Muhammad the two chief tribes that contended for mastery in Mecca were the Quraysh and Khuza'a, the former having risen to, dominance about the middle of the fifth century and driven the latter out. But the Quraysh tribe was itself inwardly at tension among its twelve clans, the Hishimite clan to which Muhammad belonged being one of those less inclined to civic struggle.

Il The Prophet Muhanimad

Muhammad belongs to the charismatic company of the prophets who by a display of complex personal traits and qualities‑particularly vitality, intelligence, articulateness, and dedication‑effected momentous changes in the lives of other persons. These traits and qualities did not lie dormant or merely latent but were stirred to vigorous expression. Even with the supposition of divine inspiration, it is always something of a mystery how this comes about in the development of any great man. In Muhammad's case, his genius is not any more susceptible of easy explanation than in other instances of prophetic power.

The date of Muhammad's birth is uncertain; it was perhaps in 571 A.D. According to tradition, his father, Quraysh of the Hashimite clan, died before his birth and his mother when he was six years old. He then became a ward first of his grandfather, 'Abd‑al‑Muttalib, and then of his uncle, Aba Tilib. It would seem that the Hashimite clan, although sharing with the rest of the Quraysh the office of trustee of the Ka'ba, its idols, its Black Stone, and the nearby sacred well, was at that time in needy circumstances. The Qur'an attests that Muhammad grew up in poverty (Sara 93, v, 6 f.). He began by sharing the religious beliefs of his community‑their worship of Hubal and al‑'Uzzg, their belief in jinn, Satan, good and evil omens, and the like‑but as he came to maturity he more and more looked upon the Meccan religion with a critical appraisal born of questioning and distaste. He was disturbed by incessant quarreling in the avowed interests of religion and honor among the Quraysh chiefs. Stronger still was his dissatisfaction with the primitive survivals in Arabian religion, the idolatrous polytheism and animism, the immorality at religious convocations and fairs, the drinking, ‑gambling, and dancing that were fashionable, and the burial alive of unwanted infant daughters practiced not only in Mecca but throughout Arabia. He must have been puzzled by the senseless bloodshed and intertribal anarchy that accompanied the so‑called "sacrilegious wars" that occurred during his youth. There was little to commend these conflicts, called sacrilegious because they broke out during the sacred month Dha‑al‑Qa'da, at the time of the fair annually held at 'Ukdz, three days east of Mecca. The Quraysh were involved, and Muhammad is said to have attended his uncles during one of the skirmishes, but without enthusiasm.

Why were his views changing? And particularly' how did he become receptive to ideas of God, the last judgment, and the religious life paralleling those of the Jewish and Christian religions? Our information is so scanty that we are driven largely to conjecture. There is no evidence that he had direct knowledge of the Old and New Testaments, although he always expressed a high regard for written scriptures and the people who used them ("the peoples of the Book"). The venerable tradition that he learned about Judaism and Christianity during caravan trips to Syria, the first when he was twelve in the company of Abu Talib and the second when he was twenty‑five and in the employ of Khadi‑ja, whom he subsequently married, must be set aside as untrustworthy. Greater importance should be given to the possible influence of Christians and Jews in caravans passing through Mecca, foreign merchants trading in Mecca, and Jews and Christians at the commercial fairs, where representatives of these faiths used to address the crowds. As a matter of fact, the Qur'dn contains references that indicate that his curiosity was aroused by the exposition of these faiths which he so heard. Traditions that may be given some weight say that some of his acquaintances in Mecca were versed in the traditions of the Jews and Christians, in particular a cousin of Khadija, Waraqa by name, and the poet Umaiya (born Abi'l‑Salt). What he learned he acquired gradually and from a variety of sources. So far as Christianity is concerned, he was most influenced by Nestorian conceptions and popular traditions that reflected apocryphal as well as canonical Christian literature. {Two things need to be said here in deference to Muslim conviction. The first is that when listing the "influences" that possibly helped the future Prophet to form his opinions we should at the same time stress the interior force that led him ultimately to transcend both his environment and what he learned from persons in it. Muslims have good grounds for contending that he was not molded and set in motion by his environment but reacted to and upon it. The second observation is that Muslims reject any implication that Muhammad took the information he received from other persons and incorporated it later in the Qur'an. The Qur'an, they believe was not the work of Muharnmad; it was revealed to him in its entirety either directly or by an angelic messenger sent down from God, and therefore could not have been his work. The most that they can acknowledge is that in the days before the revelations, he received from others “foreknowledge”, ie, truths and moral laws made known through profits such as Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, and by its means was enabled was able to understand and interpret what was later revealed to him. As one Muslim writer put it "if Muhammad had not known historically (as distinguished from 'through revelation') the materials of the Prophets' stories, he would himself have been at a complete loss to understand what the Revelation was saying to him." Fazlur Rahman, Islam (Anchor Books, 1968, P. 7).}

His need to resolve his religious perplexities became more urgent during the leisure that his marriage to Khadija, a rich Qurayshite widow, brought him. Muslim traditions describe how Khadija, fifteen years his senior, mothered as well as loved him and encouraged his religious interests. The two sons, possibly three, she bore him died in infancy, to Muhammad's lasting grief‑, of their four daughters only Ffftima survived him. *{Their four daughters lived long enough to marry associates of Muhammad. Zainab married Abu‑al‑'As; Ruqayya, 'Uthmin, who became the third caliph; Fitima, 'Ali, the fourth caliph; Umm QuItham, Utayba.}

Religious Awakening

Muhammad now seems to have entered a period of spiritual stress. He had apparently been struck by the belief common to both Jews and Christians that there would be a last judgment and a punishment of idolaters by everlasting fire. The one true God, they said, could not be represented by any image but only by prophetic spokesmen. Such spokesmen had in times past appeared in Palestine and Persia. Would no one come to Arabia to give warning? Surely God would send a prophet there.

His private thought during this period was quickened by persons brought close to him by marriage. Khadija's cousin, the blind Waraqa, a venerable old man who had some influence in her household, may have been a Christian; in any case, Muhammad found him a useful source of knowledge concerning matters of faith and conduct. Less information was perhaps provided by a Christian slave‑boy called Zaid, whom Muhammad liberated and adopted as a son, just as he had already adopted his cousin 'Ali, the child of his uncle Abd Tilib. The thought that the last day and the last judgment might be near at hand began to agitate him. He wandered off to the hills about Mecca to brood privately. He was now about forty years old.

Prophetic Call

According to Muslim tradition, he visited a cave near the base of Mt. Hird, a few miles north of Mecca, for days at a time. Suddenly one night ("the Night Of Power and Excellence," Muslims call it) there rose in vision before him an angel, the messenger of God, at about "two bows'‑length," crying "Recite!"

Recite: In the Name of thy Lord who created,

created Man of a blood‑clot.

Recite: And thy Lord is the Most Generous,

who taught by the Pen,

taught Man that [which] he knew not .... In

When the vision ended, Muhammad was able to reproduce the whole revelation (Sara 96 of the Qur'an, of which only the first lines are here given). He rushed home in great excitement, half doubting, half believing. The Qur'an defends the authenticity of his experience in these words (Sara 53):

By the Star when it plunges,

your comrade is not astray, neither errs,

nor speaks he out of caprice.

This is naught but a revelation revealed,

taught him by one terrible in power,

very strong; he stood poised,

being on the higher horizon,

then drew near and suspended hung,

two bows'‑length away, or nearer,

then revealed to his servant that he revealed.

His heart lies not of what he saw;

what, will you dispute with him what he sees?

Yet at first Muhammad's heart did nearly belive that which he saw. He had fears for his sanity. According to an early tradition (recorded by al‑Tabir! as having come first from 'A'isha, daughter of Aba Bakr and one of Muhammad's favorite wives), after meeting with Gabriel he hurried home to his wife Khadrja.

I said: "I am worried about myself." Then I told her the whole story. She said: "Rejoice, for by Allah, Allah will never put thee to shame. By Allah, thou art mindful of thy kinsfolk, speakest truthfully, tenderest what is given thee in trust, bearest burdens, art ever hospitable to the guest, and dost always uphold the right against any wrong." Then she took me to Waraqa (to whom) she said: "Give ear to [him]." So he questioned me, and I told him (the whole) story. He said. "This is the namus [the Greek word nomos, Law] which was sent down upon Moses."

But Muhammad was not at once comforted. Another early tradition has him say:

Now it so happened that no creature of Allah was more loathsome to me than a poet or a man possessed by jinn, {In popular belief poets and soothsayers were inspired by a familiar spirit among the jinn. Muhammad seems to have been in doubt as to whether the voice he heard really came from a heavenly messenger or from a mere jinn. In the latter case he would be "possessed," or even "mad."} the sight of neither of whom could I bear. So I said: "That one (meaning himself) has become either a poet or a man jinn‑possessed. The Quraish will never say this about me. I shall go to some high mountain cliff and cast myself down therefrom so that I may kill myself and be at rest." I went off with this in mind, but when I was in the midst of the mountains I heard a voice from heaven saying: "0 Muhammad, thou art (indeed) Allah's Apostle, and I am Gabriel." At that I raised my head to the skies, and there was Gabriel in clear human form, with his feet on the edges of the skies.... I began to turn my face to the whole expanse of the skies, but no matter in what direction I looked there I saw him.

Other traditions somewhat vary this account, but without attempting to straighten out the tangle of fact and tradition, we may conclude that Muhammad, after a period of self‑questioning lasting perhaps many months, finally came to look upon himself as being, miraculously enough, a true prophet (nabr) and apostle (rasal) of Allah, that is to say, a messenger of the one and only God already known to the Jews and Christians. When it began to appear that the strange experiences, in which rhapsodies in Arabic flowed across his lips, would continue to occur spontaneously, without his willing them, he came to believe that Allah was using him as a mouthpiece; the verses he uttered, half in trance, were real revelations. His first doubts about them disappeared. He now saw what his wife and friends asserted was true, that they made sense. At last Arabia was being provided with a scripture‑of later date and greater authority than the scriptures of the Jews and Christians.

The Meccan Ministry

After privately expounding his message to relatives and friends, he appeared in the streets and in the courtyard of the Ka'ba to recite "in the name of the Lord" the verses of the revelations. The listening Meccans gaped and then, hearing strange doctrine, broke into ridicule. The incredible substance of his preaching seemed to be a warning of a divine judgment day, together with predictions of the resurrection of the body and of a consuming fire. They gave him a poor reception, but in spite of that he kept coming back day after day to recite the rhythmically composed verses that had come to him.

When the sun shall be darkened,

when the stars shall be thrown down,

when the mountains shall be set moving,

when the pregnant camels shall be neglected,

when the savage beasts shall be mustered,

when the seas shall be set boiling,

when the souls shall be coupled [reunited?]

when the buried infant shall be asked for what sin she was slain,

when the scrolls shall be unrolled,

when heaven shall be stripped off,

when Hell shall be set blazing,

when Paradise shall be brought nigh,

then shall a soul know what it has produced.

Could much credence be accorded to such an utterance? his critics cried, or to what follows?

And when the Blast shall sound,

upon the day when a man shall flee from his brother,

his mother, his father, his consort,

his sons, every man that day shall have business to suffice him.

Some faces on that day shall shine laughing, joyous;

Some faces on that day shall be dusty,

O'erspread with darkness

those‑they are the unbelievers, the libertines.

The Qur'an identifies his critics as "criers of lies":

Woe that day unto those who cry it lies,

who cry lies to the Day of Doom;

and none cries lies to it but every guilty aggressor.

When our signs are recited to him, he says,

"Fairy‑tales of the ancients!"

No indeed; but that they were earning has rusted

upon their hearts.

No indeed; but upon that day they shall be veiled

from their Lord,

then they shall roast in Hell.

Then it shall be said to them, "This is that you cried lies to."

There was in the early revelations not so much said of the unity of God (which was taken for granted) but a great deal of the power and final judgment of God. The verses quoted God as speaking in the first person plural:

Behold, We shall cast upon thee a weighty word....

Surely We have sent unto you a Messenger

as a witness over you, even as We sent to

Pharaoh a Messenger.

Unimpressed though they were at first, his hearers, especially those of the Quraysh tribe, at last became seriously disturbed. They did not object so much to Muhammad's insistence that there is but one God, but they stiffened with opposition at his claim to be a prophet, for this seemed to them to be a claim to leadership, as if he intended to assert his dominance over the whole community. He could talk all he liked about his belief in the resurrection of the dead and a last judgment, but he was not entitled to authority over the city. Moreover, his prophecies emphasized social justice and duties to the poor; by their moral judgments they threatened the economic and social vested interests of Mecca.

It would not serve our purpose to go into the chronology of the ensuing trials and tribulations of Muhammad during a whole decade of disheartening community opposition. His following seemed doomed to be small. Khad‑ij a was perhaps the, first to accept his mission, believing in it even before he himself did. Her faith was quickly echoed by his adopted sons, Zaid, the liberated slave‑boy, and 'Aft, the son of Abii Talib. A very important convert, one of the first and destined to be Muhammad's first successor, was Aba Bakr, a kinsman from the Quraysh tribe, a merchant and therefore a person of some prestige. Aba Bakr's proselyting for the new faith secured five other early converts, among whom 'Uthman, an Unimayad and later the third caliph, was outstanding. But conversions came slowly. In the first four years they numbered only about forty, including wives of male believers and liberated slaves.

Muhammad's revelations were meanwhile continuing. When he appeared to recite them, the hostile members of the Quraysh did all they could to break up his gatherings. They scattered thorns about, threw filth and dirt on him and his hearers, and stirred up the rowdies to hurl insults and threats. They longed to be able to use violence, but from this they were deterred by the stout protection of his uncle, Aba Tilib. In an attempt to prevent his public appearances, the Ummayads and other hostile elements of the Quraysh issued a solemn ban against the Hashimites, the branch of the tribe to which Muhammad belonged, and forced them to retire to the quarter of the town where Aba Talib lived‑a narrow defile among the hills‑for over two years. But the rest of the community brought pressure to have the ban removed. For a time many of his followers took refuge in Abyssinia. Then greater blows were to fall on Muhammad. Kha&ja, his greatest support, died, and five weeks later his protector, faithful ABa Talib, still unconverted but nonetheless always loyal. This severe double bereavement weakened the position of Muhammad in the eyes of his enemies, and though the vendetta law still shielded him, it was apparent that some of the Hishimites were becoming disaffected and might be persuaded to consent to his imprisonment or execution.

He therefore began to look afield. An attempt to establish himself in Ta'if, some sixty miles to the southeast, proved abortive. His cause seemed almost hopeless. Then suddenly, hope revived. During the truce period of 620 A.D. he held a lengthy conference at the 'Ukaz fair with six men from Yathrib (Medina), who thought he might be their man. Their native city, three hundred miles to the north, had not recovered from the effects of open dissension caused by blood feuds between two Arab tribes, the Aws and the Khazraj, and stood to benefit if someone could be brought in to impose a firm check on them. They agreed to prepare their town for the Prophet's coming. By the next pilgrimage season they reported progress, and in the following year the preparations for Muhammad's emigration were complete.

The Hijra (622 AD.)

Secrecy had been well maintained, but at the last moment the Meccans got wind of the matter, and the hostile Quraysh (chiefly Ununayads under the leadership of Abu Sufyan) determined to strike and strike quickly. But Muhammad and Abi! Bakr escaped on mounted camels and successfully made the Hijra (the Migration) to Yathrib, ordinarily eleven days off, in the short time of eight days.

Establishment, of the Theocracy at Medina

After several years of establishing himself as an unquestioned prophet, Muhammad was given astonishingly unrestricted power over the town, whose name was changed in his honor to Medina (Madrnat an nabr, the City of the Prophet). {How Muhammad succeeded in so short a time, both in subduing the long‑standing feuds among the Arabs of Medina and in establishing a brotherly unity between his Meccan fellow immigrants and the native Medinese Arabs, has been a marvel to historians. Much of the secret of his success 4y in the visible proofs his followers had of the genuineness of his prophetic experience, especially when revelations came to him. Many were witnesses to the exhausting physical accompaniments of the "coming down" of the revelations. We are told that he would suddenly become silent in their midst, bowing his head and groaning as he experienced being "seized" and even "Squeezed." According to an early tradition, Wisha, his favorite wife after Khadija, recalled: "I saw revelation coming down on him in the severest cold, and when that condition was over, perspiration ran down his forehead." He himself, according to a tradition from Hirith, son of Hishim, said that revelation sometimes came upon him "like the ringing of a bell," and this was hardest on him; at other times, the angel came to him in the shape of a man and talked to him, although none around him heard or saw the heavenly visitant. (See Maulana Muhammad Ali, The Religion of Islam, Lahore, p. 23 f) It can hardly be doubted that witnesses of this revelatory process, if the reports are genuine, spread word of it through the community, and that doubters and those who resisted Muhammad's authority were struck with awe and were inclined to listen to the revelations, when they were recited, with acceptance, especially since these were in themselves "words of power" and formed a consistent whole.} He set about the erection of a house of worship, the first mosque. Rapidly and simply, he evolved a new cultus. Weekly services on Friday, prostration during prayer (at first in the direction or qibla ofJerusalem, but after the Jews in Medina conspired against him, toward Mecca), a call to prayer from the mosque's roof (at first only for the Friday services, and then every day at the times for private prayer), the taking up of alms for the poor and for the support of the cause‑these and other practices were soon established.

Perhaps to supply his followers with arms, and treasure, or perhaps to strike at Mecca's source of power, he led out a small force to waylay a Meccan caravan. War with Mecca was the result. In the first engagement Muhammad had the better of it, in the next the Meccans, and then the Meccans prepared for a grand assault. With ten thousand men they invested Medina, but Muhammad, probably on the advice of a Persian follower, had a trench dug at vulnerable points ‑around the town. The "Battle of the Ditch" that followed persuaded the Meccans that Muhammad was beyond their taking. In January 630 Muhammad in his turn marched forth with ten thousand men. Mecca, whose trade routes had been severed by Muhammad, surrendered. The Prophet of Allah, at a bound, reached the stature of the greatest chief in Arabia. As such he acted with great magnanimity toward his former fellow townsmen, excluding only a handful of them from the general amnesty he proclaimed.

One of his first acts was to go reverently to the Ka'ba; yet he showed no signs of yielding to the ancient Meccan polytheism. After honoring the Black Stone and riding seven times around the shrine, he ordered the destruction of the idols within it and the scraping of the paintings of Abraham and the angels from the walls. He sanctioned the use of the well Zamzam and restored the boundary pillars defining the sacred territory around Mecca. Thenceforth no Muslim would have cause to hesitate about going on a pilgrimage to the ancient holy city.

Muhammad now made sure of his political and prophetic ascendancy in Arabia. Active opponents near at hand were conquered by the sword, and tribes far away were invited sternly to send delegations offering their allegiance. Before his sudden death in 632 he knew he was well on the way to unifying the Arab tribes under a theocracy governed by the will of God. Because he was no longer so conscious of imminent divine judgment on the world, an immediate task absorbed him‑the moral elevation and unification of the Arab tribes. On his last visit to Mecca, just before his death, tradition pictures him as preaching a memorable sermon in which he proclaimed a central fact of the Muslim movement in these words: "0 ye menT harken unto my words and take ye them to heart! Know ye that every Muslim is a brother unto every other Muslim, and that ye are now one brotherhood.

Muhammad's death was unexpected, and the problem of choosing a new leader almost split up his followers, but in a desperate move to forestall such a disaster Aba Bakr, whom Muhammad had often designated to lead the prayers when he had to be absent, was chosen to be his successor (or caliph). Muhammad's death therefore only momentarily checked the rapid spread of Islam.

III The Faith and Practice of Islam

The teachings of Muhammad became after his death the basis of the faith (Tman) and practice or duty (dfn) of Islam. Many elements, not so much of the faith as of the practice, were, so far as their final formulation is concerned, the product of later times, for the process by which‑ Muhammad's utterances were put into permanent form and distilled into a creed and way of life did not take place overnight. But this matter was never allowed to have secondary importance. Divergent groups appealed to Muhammad's remembered talk and conduct; faithfulness to his instruction and example was from the first required. The differences in interpretation and action that gave rise to the sects, still to be described, were in no case marked by consciousness of departure from the example set by Muhammad.

Because the faith and practice of Muslims after Muhammad's time were so very closely related to his teaching and personal example, it seems well to consider them now, even before we follow the story of the spread of Islam, for in essence what the Qur'an said and what Muhammad did, although still not finally condensed into fixed articles of faith and prescribed practices, inspired, motivated, and guided that spread. Ultimately, Muslim authorities subsumed most of Islam under three heads: Iman, or articles of faith, ihsin, or right conduct, and 'ibadat, or religious duty. Because faith (iman) and good conduct (ihsan) were set forth in the Qur'an, and religious duty ('ibadat) was defined later, we shall consider the former two first.

A. Articles of Faith. In the famous Muslim creedal formula the first part reads: ld ildha illa Allah, "(There is) no god but God." This is the most important article in Muslim theology. No statement about God seemed to Muhammad more fundamental than the declaration that God is one, and no sin seemed to him so unpardonable as associating another being with God on terms of equality. {The Arabian idolaters who worshiped many gods and goddesses represented by stocks and stones were obviously guilty of this sin of sins, but so also were the Christians who said, "God is the third of three."} God stands alone and supreme. He existed before any other being or thing, is self‑subsistent, omniscient, omnipotent ("all‑seeing, all‑hearing, allwilling"). He is the creator, and in the awful day of judgment he is the sole arbiter who shall save the believer out of the dissolution of the world and place him in paradise.

In one respect, however, in its numerous references to God's "guidance," the Qur'an is varied and loose enough in statement (as is not unusual in the world's scriptures) to be open to differing interpretations. Does God "guide" men by challenging them to choose aright in freedom, or by determining their choices in advance (predestination)? Some passages imply free will, but more suggest predestination. (This variance should occasion no surprise. Muhammad was a prophet who over a period of twenty years or more spoke out of ecstatic states. He was inspired, not to produce a systematic theology, but rather to bring a message to the people that would tell them what they needed to hear.) Although Sunra Muslims have, as we shall see later (P. 5 34 f ), generally come to the conclusion that the Qur'ln comes down on the side of predestination, it is possible to reconcile the variant passages, if one keeps in mind the conditions of desert life, as Muhammad must have. {Typical of the apparently variant passages are the following. Freedom of choice is implied in: "Say: 'The truth is from your Lord; so let whosoever will believe, and let whosoever will disbelieve.'” A Meccan passage says: "If you do good, it is your own souls you do good to." This is matched by a Medinan passage: "Whatever evil visits thee is of thyself " Freedom of action is implied also in passages dealing with the forgiveness of God, as for instance in this: "Whoever does evil, or wrongs himself, and then prays God's forgiveness, he shall find God All‑forgiving, All‑compassionate"; or this: "God shall turn [in forgiveness] only towards those who do evil in ignorance, then shortly repent."B" But many other passages say God not only has perfect foreknowledge of men's actions but controls their choices as well. As to foreknowledge: "Very well he knows you, when He produced you from the earth, and when you were et unborn in your mothers' wombs." More to the point: Whomsoever God will, He leads astray, and whomsoever He will, He sets him on a straight path.""' God declares indeed: "We elected them, and We guided them to a straight path.""' Furthermore, God rules men's inner lives. "Whomsoever God desires to guide, He expands his breast to Islam; whomsoever He desires to lead astray, He makes his breast narrow, tight." An early stira is even more explicit: "But will you shall not, unless God wills." And yet there are still other passages that seem to fall between the two extremes. In Sura 6:78 we hear Abraham saying: "If my Lord does not guide me I shall surely be of the people gone astray.” Freedom and divine determinism seemingly appear side by side in a Medinan passage: "Whomsoever God leads astray, no guide he has; He leaves them in their insolence blindly wandering." This last suggests the view that reconciles the variant passages, as we are about to see.} To follow I. Goldziher's illuminating comments: "If, in many passages of the Koran it is said: 'Allah guides whom he will, and lets whom he will go astray,' such passages do not imply that God directly brings the latter class into the evil path. The decisive word adalla is not to be taken in such a connection as meaning to 'lead astray,' but to allow to go astray, not to trouble about a person, not to show him the way out. . . . Let us conjure up the picture of a lonely wanderer in the desert,‑it is from this idea that the language of the Koran concerning leading and wandering has sprung. The wanderer errs in the boundless expanse, gazing about for the right direction to his goal. So is man in his wanderings through life. He who, through faith and good works, has deserved the good will of God, him he rewards with his guidance. He lets the evil‑doer go astray. He leaves him to his fate, and takes his protection from him. He does not offer him the guiding hand, but he does not bring him directly to the evil path.... Guidance is the reward of the good. 'Allah does not guide the wicked.' (Sura 9, v. 110)."

Allah reveals his will and guides men in three distinct ways: through Muhammad, his messenger; through the Qur'an, his revelation; and through the angels. (Considered in another way, the three are part of one process: revelation came to Muhammad by the agency of an angel. Revelation is the thing.)

The second half of the Muslim creedal formula declares: Muhammad rasal Allih, "Muhammad is the messenger (or prophet) of Allah." It seems self‑evident to Muslims that God must reveal himself through prophets, else men could not know him. God would not leave himself without witness, and so there has been a long line of such prophets, including Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. But Muhammad is the last and greatest of them all, the "seal" of those who appeared before him. None is his equal, either in knowledge or in authority; none has received or handed down so perfect a revelation. But though his authority is supreme, he was not a divine being appearing in the flesh. He was human like the rest of men. Nor did he pretend to supernatural powers; he performed no miracles, instituted no mystical, deifying sacraments, ordained no holy priesthood, set apart none to a sacred office by ordination or a mystical laying on of hands. He was simply man at his best, and God was still the wholly Other, with whom he was united in will but not in substance. The most celebrated suggestion in Muslim tradition that Muhammad had a special relationship with heaven is to be found in the traditions (hadiths) concerning the Mir'aj or Night journey of the Prophet to paradise. These traditions are based on a passage in Sura XVII.I, which says: "Glory be to Him Who carried His servant by night from the Holy Mosque [at Mecca] to the Further Mosque [at Jerusalem], the precincts of which We have blessed, that We might show him some of Our signs." The traditions vary with those who tell or attest to them, but they add up to something like this story: On a certain night while the Prophet still lived in Mecca (a night whose anniversary is celebrated each year throughout the 'Muslim world), Gabriel came, cleansed him within, and took him through the air (on the back of the winged steed Buraq) first to Jerusalem and then up through the seven heavens, where as he passed through he spoke successively with Adam, John the Baptist and Jesus, Joseph, Enoch, Aaron, Moses, and (in the seventh heaven) Abraham. Finally, without Gabriel, who could go no further perhaps, he was lifted on a flying carpet (a rafraf) into the great space‑ beyond to the very presence of Allah, who spoke with him about many unutterable matters and told him: "0 Muhammad, I take you as a friend just as I took Abraham as a friend. I am speaking to you just as I spoke face to face with Moses." Thus Muhammad is demonstrated to have a status in God's sight at least equal to that of any of his prophetic predecessors. But even with such a story to give it encouragement, no claim is made by Muslims that Muhammad was other than human, even though Allah viewed him with special favor.

The second way by which Allah guides men is through the Qur'an. The Qur'an, revealed to Muhammad, is the undistorted and final word of Allah to mankind. The traditional Muslim position is that the Qur'an is identical with words transmitted, without change, from "the well‑preserved tablet," "the mother of the Book," an eternal and uncreated archetype; they are the very words of God himself Previous authoritative revelations, such as the Jewish and Christian scriptures, are also genuine transmissions from the Ummal‑Kitab, the uncreated heavenly archetype, but they have been changed and corrupted by men and are therefore not absolutely true like the Qur'an. {This conviction concerning the infallibility of the Qur'ffn as the word of God is, of course, of highest importance to Muslims. Its corollary that the present text has not been corrupted by faulty transmission is of almost equal importance. Many, if not all of the revelations to Muhammad were either written down or memorized during his lifetime. There is some indication that he may even have assigned some of them to groups or collections that fitted together logically and that turned out later to be saras or chapters of the Qur'an. This is not a certainty. According to tradition, in the year that followed Muhammad's death AbQ Bakr, on the advice of 'Umar, who feared that the Companions, who were the "reciters" of the revelations that they had memorized, might die off or perish in battle, mdered Muhammad's secretary, Zaid ibn Thibit, to make a collection:)f the revelations. The collection was composed from "ribs of palm leaves and tablets of white stone and from the breasts of men," we read. There is strong evidence that other collections were made that ,raried in containing more or less materials and to a certain extent in wording. A second and variant tradition says that the final canoni cal text resulted from the work of a committee appointed by the 2aliph 'UthmAn and headed again by Muhammad's secretary. Four identical copies were made, and all previous texts were pronounced defective. The 'Uthminic text met some resistance, but finally prerailed.}

THE DOME OF THE ROCK, JERUSALEM. Based upon Mt. Moriah, wthin the southeastern end of the city wall, stands this fine example of early Muslim architecture. Known to many as the Mosque of Omar, it marks the site of the temple of Solomon and the rock where, reputedly, Abraham prepared to sacrifice Isaac. Muslim tradition says that from the rock Muhammad ascended to heaven on the steed Burjq.

PAGE FROM THE QUR'AN. The Arabic text appears here in the Kufic script, originating from the town of Kufa on the Euphrates River and using primitive Arabic characters, It comes from the thirteenth century but aims to be a worthy resemblance to the eternal Umm‑al‑Kitah, the uncreated heavenly archetype that is the source of the whole Qur'an, transmitted without error or change to Muhammad.

The third means by which Allah makes known his will is through the angels. Of these the chief is Gabriel, the agent of revelation, who is described in terms reminiscent of Zoroastrian angelology as "the faithful spirit" and "the spirit of holiness." Allah sits in the seventh heaven on a high throne, surrounded by angels who serve him as kings are served by their ministers and attendants.

The Devil (called either Iblis, a contraction of Diabolos, or Shaytin, in Hebrew Satan) is an angel who fell through pride and is now an accursed tempter. He and his assistants busy themselves on earth to obstruct the plans of Allah and tempt men to go astray. This sounds worse than things really are, for‑at least in the light of the later Medina saras‑the scope of the Devil's operations is in fact restricted to Allah's calculated permissions and non‑interferences.

As to the last judgment, Muhammad's revelations contain phrases resembling those of Zoroastrian, Jewish, and Christian apocalypticism. There will be "signs" of its imminence: portents, ominous rumblings, strange occurrences in nature; finally, the last trumpet, at whose sound the dead will rise and all souls will assemble before Allah's judgment throne. During the judgment itself the books in which each man's deeds have been recorded will be read, and eternal judgment will be passed accordingly.

Heaven and hell are concretely described.

God has cursed the unbelievers, and prepared for them a Blaze,

therein to dwell for ever; they shall find neither protector nor helper.

Upon the day when their faces are turned about in the

Fire they shall say, 'Ah, would we had obeyed God and the Messenger!

The Companions of the Left (0 Companions of the Left!)

mid burning winds and boiling waters

and the shadow of a smoking blaze

neither cool, neither goodly; ...

Then you erring ones, you that cried lies,

you shall eat of a tree called Zakkoum ....

It is a tree that comes forth

in the root of Hell;

its spathes are as the heads of Satans,

and they cat of it, and of it fill

their bellies,

then on top of it they have a brew

of boiling water . . . .

Lo, the Tree of Ez‑Zakkoum

is the food of the guilty,

like molten copper, bubbling in the belly

as boiling water bubbles.

"Take him, and thrust him into the midst of Hell,

then pour over his head the chastisement of

boiling water!"

"Taste! Surely thou art the mighty, the noble.

This is that concerning which you were doubting."

On the other hand, the Companions of the Right, especially those who "outstrip" their fellows in faithfulness, enter gardens of delight.

Surely the god fearing shall be in a station secure

among gardens and fountains,

robed in silk and brocade, set face to face.

Upon close‑wrought couches

reclining upon them, set face to face,

immortal youths going round about them

with goblets, and ewers, and a cup from a spring

(no brows throbbing, no intoxication)

and such fruits as they shall choose,

and such flesh of fowl as they desire,

and wide‑eyed houris

as the likeness for that they laboured ....

a recompense for that they laboured ....

and We made them spotless virgins,

chastely amorous, like of age

for the Companions of the Right.*

*{These promises of houris or hur'in in paradise date from Muhammad's Meccan days. Later on, to correct false conclusions, the Qur'an more than once suggests that the faithful take their Wives with them to paradise. E.g., Sara 13:23: "Gardens of Eden which they shall enter, and also those who were righteous of their fathers, and their wives, and their descendants. These predictions can be reconciled, as follows: "Although the Koran hardly provides a basis for such a view, the earliest tradition of Islam supports the definite conception that the virgins of Paradise were once earthly wives. The Prophet himself is supposed to have said 'They are devout wives, and those who with grey hair and watery eyes died in old age. After death Allah re‑makes them into virgins' (Tabari, Tasfir xxvii)."}

B. Right Conduct. The Qur'an has through the centuties supplied Muslims with such comprehensive guidance for everyday life that their schools of the law have been able to prescribe a wide range of acts for Muslims, of either sex, from birth to death. The following selections from the Qur'an show how comprehensive these regulations are and, incidentally, how reformatory. The laws prohibiting wine and gambling, as well as the regulations covering the relations of the sexes and granting a higher status to women, must have meant to Muhammad's early followers a considerable change for the better in their moral life.

It is not piety, that you turn your faces

to the East and to the West.

True piety is this:

to believe in God, and the Last Day,

the angels, the Book, and the Prophets,

to give of one's substance, however cherished,

to kinsmen, and orphans,

the needy, the traveller, beggars,

and to ransom the slave,

to perform the prayer, to pay the alms.

And they who fulfil their covenant

when they have engaged in a covenant,

and endure with fortitude misfortune,

hardship and peril,

these are they who are true in their faith,

these are the truly god fearing.

... and to be good to parents,

whether one or both of them

attains old age with thee;

say not to them "Fie"

neither chide them, but

speak unto them words respectful,

and lower to them the

wing of humbleness

out of mercy and say,

"My Lord,

have mercy upon them,

as they raised me up

when I was little."

And slay not your children for fear of poverty;

We will provide for you and them;

surely the slaying of them is a grievous sin.

And approach not fornication;

surely it is an indecency, and evil as a way.

Give the orphans their property, and do not

exchange the corrupt for the good; and devour

not their property with your property; surely

that is a great crime.

If you fear that you will not act justly

towards the orphans, marry such women

as seem good to you, two, three, four;

but if you fear you will not be equitable,

then only one, or what your right hands own;

so it is likelier you will not be partial.

And give the women their dowries as a gift

spontaneous; but if they are pleased

to offer you any of it, consume it

with wholesome appetite....

Test well the orphans, until they reach

the age of marrying; then, if you perceive

in them right judgment, deliver to them

their property; consume it not wastefully

and hastily ere they are grown....

Those who devour the property of orphans

unjustly, devour Fire in their bellies,

and shall assuredly roast in a Blaze.

Marry the spouseless among you, and your

slaves and handmaidens that are righteous;

if they are poor, God will enrich them

of His bounty; God is All‑embracing,

All‑knowing.

And let those who find not the means to

marry be abstinent till God enriches them

of His bounty.

When you divorce women, and they have reached

their term [three months], then retain them honourably

or set them free honourably; do not retain them

by force, to transgress.

And fight in the way of God with those

who fight with you, but aggress not: God loves

not the aggressors....

Fight them, till there is no persecution

and the religion is God's; then if they

give over, there shall be no enmity

save for the evildoers.

Permitted to you is the beast of the flocks

except that which is now recited to you. . .

Forbidden to you are

carrion, blood, the flesh of swine,

what has been hallowed to other than God,

the beast strangled, the beast beaten down,

the beast fallen to death, the beast gored,

and that devoured by beasts of prey---

excepting that you have sacrificed duly---

as also things sacrificed to idols.

0 believers, wine and arrow‑shuffling [gambling],

idols and divining‑arrows are an abomination,

some of Satan's work; so avoid it; haply

so you will prosper.

Satan only desires to precipitate enmity

and hatred between you in regard to wine

and arrow‑shuffling, and to bar you from

the remembrance of God, and from prayer.

Will you then desist? And obey God

and obey the Messenger, and beware.

C. Religious Duty. We come now to that part of Muslim religious practice that, except for the fast of the month of Ramadan, which is prescribed in the Qur'an, took some time to fix in tradition. It is summed up as the "Five Pillars” (al‑Arkan). For centuries now, all Muslims have felt obligated to engage in the following:

1. Repetition of the creed (Shahada). La ilaha illa Allah; Muhammad rasul Allah. "There is no god but Allah, and Mohammad is the prophet of Allah." Acceptance of this confession of faith and its faithful repetition constitute the first step in being a Muslim. These simple words are heard everywhere in the Muslim world and come down as if out of the sky from the minaret in the muezzin's calls to prayer.

2. Prayer Salat). The good Muslim reserves time each day for five acts of devotion and prayer. The first comes at dawn, the second at midday, the others at mid‑afternoon, sunset, and after the fall of darkness or at bedtime. In town or country or on the desert, the devotee typically goes through a ritual of ablution, rolls out his prayer‑rug, stands reverentially and offers certain prayers; bows down toward Mecca with hands on knees, to offer to Allah less a petition than ascriptions of praise and declarations of submission to his holy will; then straightens up again, still praising Allah; then falls prostrate, placing his forehead on the ground, glorifying God the while; then sits down reverentially and offers a petition; and finally prostrates himself once more. Throughout, the sacred sentence Allih akbar ("God is the greatest") is repeated again and again. It is common, at the beginning especially, simply to repeat the Fatiha, the Muslim Lord's Prayer (Sura I):

Praise belongs to God, the Lord of all Being,

the All‑merciful, the All‑compassionate,

the Master of the Day of Doom.

Thee only we serve; to Thee alone we pray for succour.

Guide us in the straight path,

the path of those whom Thou hast blessed,

not of those against whom Thou art wrathful,

nor of those who are astray.

In towns and villages it is possible to observe the five times of prayer in the mosque congregationally, and then it is common to make two prostrations (rak'as) at morning prayer, four at the noontime and late afternoon prayers, three at sundown, and four after dark.

Friday is the special day of public prayer for all Muslims, when the faithful assemble in the mosque, under the leadership of the iman, usually at noon, or perhaps at sunset. The service is in the mosque's paved courtyard, or where the worship area has been covered over, under the dome or vault. {If women attend, they ordinarily stay behind screens and are not seen.} The men have assembled at the call from the minaret, have left their shoes at the entrance, have gone to the pool or fountain to perform their ablutions (of hands, mouth, nostrils, face, forearms, neck, and feet), have sat for a few minutes to hear a "reader" (qari) recite from the Qur'In, and then on the appearance of the imam have taken their places, without any discrimination of race, nationality, or social status, {A pronounced feature of Muslim public worship is its effacement of all social differences. A Muslim writer, in commenting on the leveling of social differences brought about by means of congregational prayer, says: "Once within the doors of the mosque, every Muslim feels himself in an atmosphere of equality and love. Before their Maker they all stand shoulder to shoulder, the king along with his poorest subject, the rich arrayed in gorgeous robes with the beggar clad in rags, the white man with the black. Nay, the king or rich man standing in the back row will have to lay his head, prostrating himself before God, at the feet of a slave or a beggar standing in the front.... Differences of rank, wealth and colour vanish" (Maulana Muhammad Ali, The Religion of Islam, P. 361).} in long rows, facing Mecca and spaced so as to allow their throwing themselves forward in "prostration" on their prayer‑mats. Before the prayer service is held, the imam preaches a sermon having for its primary purpose the exposition of Muslim doctrine. During the ritual of prayer or (salat) that follows, the imam recites all the necessary words and the worshipers silently and as one follow him in his motions, standing erect when he does so, or inclining the head and body, or dropping on their knees to place their hands upon the ground a little in front of them and press their foreheads to the pavement, in prostration, at the exact moment they see him do so.

3. Almsgiving. This is called Zakit. Its general meaning is that of a free‑will offering, consisting of gifts to the poor, the needy, debtors, slaves, wayfarers, beggars, and charities of various kinds. In the early days of Islam it was a "loan to Allah," exacted from Muslims in money or in kind. It was gathered by religious officials into a common treasury and distributed in part as charity to the poor and in part to mosques and imams for repairs and administrative expenses. It was a fund quite apart from the tribute (the jizyat) exacted of non‑Muslims for political and military expenses. The zakat was once universally obligatory in Muslim lands. It is now common under Muslim governments for the zakat to be calculated at the ratee0f 2% per cent of the accumulated wealth of a man or his family at the end of each year and to be levied by the government. In non‑Muslim countries, the collection and distribution of the zakit must be undertaken by the Muslim community itself In this latter case, the zakat is neither alms nor a tax, but a little of both, with stress laid on the individual to respect Muslim social, moral, and spiritual values or face community disapproval.

4. Thefast during the sacred month of Ramadan. Except for the sick and ailing or those on a journey, this fast is laid upon all as an obligation and is carried out in this manner: as soon as it becomes possible at dawn to distinguish a white thread from a black one, no food or drink may be taken until sundown; then enough food or drink should be consumed to enable one to fast the next day without physical weakness.

5. Pilgrimage (Hajj),. Once in a lifetime every Muslim, man or woman, is expected, unless it is impossible, to make a pilgrimage (a hajj) to Mecca. The pilgrim should be there during the sacred month Dha‑al‑Hijja so as to enter with thousands of others into the annual mass observance of the circumambulati6n of the Ka'ba, the Lesser and Greater pilgrimages, and the Great Feast.

When war or other unto‑%yard conditions do not interfere, a great part of the pilgrims nowadays go by rail and ship or by air to the coast below Mecca or to Cairo or Jerusalem. In ancient times they joined far‑traveling over‑land caravans, which in the last stages of the journey crossed the desert from Basra in Iraq, or followed the trade routes from Yemen, Cairo, or Damascus. Each such caravan had as an indispensable part of its insignia (at least since the thirteenth century) a camel bearing on its back an unoccupied mahmal or richly ornamented litter, the resplendent symbol of the piety and sacrificial spirit of the pilgrims.

Since Muhammad's day all male pilgrims have been required, whether rich or poor, to enter the sacred precincts of Mecca wearing the same kind of seamless white garments and practicing the proper abstinences: no food or drink by day, continence, and no harm to living things, animal or vegetable. This is the first of a long series of leveling practices by which people of all countries and languages are made to mingle in one unifying mass observance without distinction of race or class.

The principal ceremonies in Mecca begin with circurnambulation of the Ka'ba. The pilgrims start at the Black Stone and run three times fast and four times slowly around the building, stopping each time at the southeast corner to kiss the Black Stone, or, if the crowd is too great, to touch it with hand or stick, or perhaps just look keenly at it. The next observance is the Lesser Pilgrimage, which consists of trotting, with shoulders shaking, seven times between Safha and Marwa, two low hills across the valley from each other‑this in imitation of frantic Hagar seeking in, despair for water for wailing little Ishmael.

On the eighth day of Dhii‑al‑Hijja the Greater Pilgrimage begins. The pilgrims in a dense mass move off toward 'Araf~at, nine miles to the east. They pass the night at Mini, half‑way, which they reach by noon. The next day, all arrived at the 'Arafat plain, the pilgrims engage in a prayer service conducted by an imam, listen to his sermon, and, of utmost importance, stand or move slowly about, absorbed in pious meditation. After sunset they begin running en masse, and with the greatest possible noise and commotion, to Muzdalifa, a fourth of the way back to Mecca, where they pass the night in the open. At sunrise they continue to Mind, where each pilgrim casts seven pebbles at three places down the slope below the mountain road, crying out at each throw: "In the name of God! Allgh is almighty!" Those who are able to do so then make the Great Feast possible by offering as a sacrifice a camel, sheep, or horned animal, keeping in mind the injunction in the pilgrimage sura of the Qur'an (Sura XX‑37):

Mention God's Name over them, standing in ranks;

then, when their flanks collapse, eat of them

and feed the beggar and the suppliant.

That is to say, the sacrificer eats part of the meat and gives the rest of it to the poorer pilgrims who stand by, whoever they may be.

The three days following are spent in eating, talking, and merry‑making, in the strictest continence, and then as a final act of the pilgrimage all return to Mecca and make the circuit of the Ka'ba once more.

IV The Spread of Islam

It may be doubted whether the spread of Islam, at least in its early stages, was the result of studied calculation. Neither the devout Muslim view that it was a purely religious movement engaged in a far‑sighted effort to save the world from error and corruption, nor the medieval Christian view that it was the outgrowth first of pure imposture and then of rapacity, will bear scrutiny. Both religion and rapacity may be granted to have played their part as motivating impulses, but it would be closer to the mark to say that Muhammad unified the bedouins for the first time in their history and thus made it possible for them, as a potentially powerful military group, to yoke together their economic need and their religious faith in an overwhelming drive out of the desert into lands where destiny beckoned and God's will could be fulfilled. Furthermore, the weakness of the Byzantine and Persian empires, exhausted by years of strife with each other, made a permanent conquest of the Near East easy. Only then did calculated efforts to extend the spread of Islam make their appearance. Historically viewed, the Muslim conquests represent one more of the long succession of Semitic migrations from the Arabian desert the last and the greatest.

THE KA'BA AT MECCA AT THE TIME OF HAjj. Pilgrims in white robes (including women with covered heads, some in black) gather around the holy shrine on marked lines establishing the distances for prayer. The Ka'ba is covered with a black silk cloth embroidered with inscriptions in ornamental Arabic characters. The pilgrims have come to circle the Ka'ba seven times and kiss or touch the Black Stone.

Abu Bakr and the Unification of Arabia for Conquest

When Muhammad died so suddenly, he had designated no successor (caliph). His followers had to decide who should exercise that function. Should the principle of succession be that of heredity, or should the caliphs be elected by (and from) some properly qualified group? The answer to these questions was supplied differently at different times by the three major political parties of early Muslim history. The Companions (so‑called because they were composed of Muhammad's closest associates, the Muligiian, or Emigrants, and the Ansdr, or Supporters) assumed that the caliph should be elected from their number. A later group, the Legitimists, following the hereditary principle of succession, thought the caliphs should be Muhammad's descendants through Fitima and her husband, 'Ali, Muhammad's son‑in‑law and cousin. Later still, the Ummayads, as the leaders of Muhammad's tribe, sought to be the sole determinants of the question who should occupy the caliphate.

The: Companions were the first to act and gained the initial decision. Abil Bakr was their choice for caliph, the first of four thus chosen. His caliphate lasted only a year, for he soon followed the Prophet in death, but his administration was notable for two things: great firmness in bringing to heel not only those tribes which took the opportunity provided by Muhummad's death to break away from control but also those which had not yet "submitted" (which was accomplished by the so‑called‑ Riddah wars), and secondly, the fusing of these forces in the first organized assault on the outside world. Three armies, totaling ten thousand men, whose ranks were soon swollen to twice that number, took separate routes into Syria, in accordance, it was said, with Muhammad's own well‑laid plans. AbU Bakr did not live to see their startling triumphs.

'Umar and the Conquests

The second caliph, 'Umar (in office A.D. 634‑644) dispatched and from a distance directed the great general Khglid ibn al‑Walid in the stroke that altered beyond all calculation the destiny of the Near East, the capture of the ancient city of Damascus after a six months' siege (635). Christian forces were at once summoned to restore the situation, but Khalid sagaciously retreated to a more favorable location when the force of fifty thousand men sent by the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius came to drive him away, and on a day of smothering heat and dust, such as perhaps only bedouins could endure, he turned and won a decisive victory in which Theodorus, brother of Herachus and general of the Christian forces, fell. The whole of Syria, up to the Taurus Mountains, fell too, and the deeply agitated emperor, departing for good, is said to have exclaimed: "Farewell, 0 Syria, and what an excellent country this is for the enemy!"

But the Jewish and Christian inhabitants, even of Damascus, felt differently. They were not at all displeased. They had felt oppressed by Herachus in the aftermath of the wars of their liberation from the Persians. The Arabs were, moreover, comparatively magnanimous. They acted in the spirit of the Qur'anic injunction, "If they desist (from fighting), let there be no enmity," as the terms for the surrender of Damascus suggest:

In the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful. This is what Khalid would grant to the inhabitants of Damascus if he enters therein: he promises to give them security for their lives, property, and churches. Their city wall shall not be demolished, neither shall any Moslem be quartered in their houses. There unto we give to them the pact of Allah and the protection of His Prophet, the caliphs and the believers. So long as they pay the poll tax, nothing but good shall befall them.

It is historically sound to say, with Philip Hitti, that the "easy conquest" of Syria had its own special causes: "The Hellenistic culture imposed on the land since its conquest by Alexander the Great (332 B.C.) was only skin‑deep and was limited to the urban population. The rural people remained ever conscious of cultural and racial differences between themselves and their masters," that is, between themselves as the Semitic population of Syria and their Hellenistic rulers. The Muslim historian Baladhuri attributed to the people of the Syrian town of Hims; this confession to their Arab conquerors: "We like your rule and justice far better than the state of oppression and tyranny under which we have been living."

The Muslim victories in Syria were decisive elsewhere. Jerusalem fell in 638, and Caesarea, relieved by sea and invincible until a Jew within the walls gave the necessary secret information, in 640. The whole of Palestine then surrendered to the Arabs. Cut off from needed aid, Egypt was the next conquest (639‑641), and the Arabs pushed on rapidly through North Africa, to be in Spain within a century. Back in the Near East, the attack shifted to the Sassanids (Persians). First Iraq, with its fabulously rich cities (in 637), and then Persia (from 640 to 649) were subdued. Persia offered the stiffest opposition the Arabs had yet encountered. Its conquest took longer because the population was non‑Semitic, well unified, and firmly Zoroastrian. To the northwest a twelve‑year campaign (640‑652) reduced the greater part of Asia Minor to subjection.

It may be asked in astonishment how the comparatively ill‑equipped and. outnumbered Muslim warriors, armed initially with bows and arrows and bamboo shafted spears and riding on camels and horses, could overthrow one after another the disciplined hosts and even the navies of the Byzantine world. The answer is to be found partly in the war‑weariness and disaffection of the resident populations, partly in the expert use of cavalry and the high mobility of Arab horse and camel transport, but equally, or more perhaps, in the intense eagerness and religious dedication of the Muslim warriors, which was fed, on the one hand, by their acceptance of the Prophet's word that if they went into battle in Allah's cause and won the victory, they could keep four‑fifths of the booty, and if they died, they would go to paradise; and, on the other hand, by their sense of wonder and discovery: they were invading countries that seemed to their scarcity‑bred minds literally earthly paradises. No country lad ever felt more wonder‑struck by a metropolis than these warriors of the desert felt when they first beheld the richly appointed cities lying ready for their taking in the ancient lands that were the "cradle of civilization." And what also greatly animated the better minds among them was the exciting prospect of learning the Greek and Persian arts, philosophies, and sciences‑ripe and beckoning fields of learning as yet unharvested by their hungry minds and spirits.

Subsequent campaigns took the Muslim armies, now no longer predominantly Arab, northeastward and to the back of the Himalayas into Chinese Turkestan and Mongolia and southeastward into India. Far to the west the Spanish Muslims, but for Charles Martel, might well have overrun France; only the slender margin of the victory of the Franks in the Battle of Tours (732) turned them back into Spain. The resistance of the Byzantines in Asia Minor kept them also from crossing the Bosphorus for a long time.

But we must return to the caliphs and the internal history of the rapidly expanding Muslim empire.

'Umar, who himself lived very simply, was soon in receipt of a swelling stream of tribute money, pouring into the treasury at Medina from all sides. Muhammad could never have dreamed of so much wealth. 'Umar determined to distribute it in the form of yearly stipends, first to Muhammad's widows and dependents, {'A'isha, Muhammad's favorite wife, was assigned12,000 dirhems, or about $2,400.} next to others of the faithful, such as the Companions (the Emigrants and the Supporters), and finally, in lesser amounts, to all Arab warriors and tribesmen ($10‑$30). In consideration of this income and in order to keep the Arabian Muslims together as a military unit, with home addresses, so to speak, always in Arabia, he forbade any Arab to acquire lands outside that peninsula. Simultaneously, he dispossessed and drove from Arabia resistant members of other religions, especially Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians.

Appearance of the First Power Struggles

In addition to the moneys distributed to them and their families as an annuity, the Arab warriors were, as has been noted, entitled to four‑fifths of all the booty they gathered in the form of movable goods and captives. (All moneys seized during campaigns were kept in the common treasury.) The economic advantages of being an Arabian Muslim were obvious. It became a matter of first importance to the various Arab groups close to the seat of power to control the caliphate. 'Umar himself was incorruptible, but a Christian captive stabbed him one day with a poisoned dagger, and the road to political maneuvering at once lay open.

It was significant of the internal political situation beginning to develop that 'Uthman, another of Muhammad's close associates, a son‑in‑law in fact, was next chosen (in office 644‑656). An Ummayad, he yielded weakly to the pressures of his family and appointed so many Ummayads to high office that the ensuing scandals led to his assassination in Medina by dissatisfied Muslims gathered to force his abdication.

'Ali, another of Muhammad's sons‑in‑law, an early believer, and father of the two boys who were Muhammad's only male descendants, became caliph in 656 A.D. over much opposition, including that of 'A'isha, who, tradition says, never forgave him for thinking her unfaithful with a camel‑driver on the day she failed to keep up with Muhammad while returning from a desert raid. He had had to triumph over two other aspirants, and after his assumption of office a third appeared in the person of the governor of Syria, Mu'Awiya, an Ummayad, the son of Abri Stifyin. So formidable did the movement to depose him become that 'Ali, who had moved the administrative capital from Medina to the Muslim camp at Kafa in Iraq, raised an army, marched west, and was about to defeat his chief rival, Mu'5.wiya, when he consented to arbitrate the issue and was irmnediately immobilized. While Mu'awiya was busily establishing himself as the chief contender in Egypt, Arabia, and Yemen, 'Ali remained disappointingly passive. Disgusted followers, concluding that Allah had not chosen 'Ali after all and that both he and Mu'awiya should be eliminated, murdered him‑a never‑to‑be‑forgotten fact, as we shall see.

Summary of Political Events, 661‑1900

The Ummayads now seized the caliphate, Mu'awiya declaring himself 'Alf's successor (661). Thus began the Ummayad caliphate, ruling from Damascus and extending itself over an enormous territory, stretching from India to Spain. But in 750 the 'Abbissids overthrew them everywhere except in Spain and moved the capital to Baghdad, which they built up into a great city, on the "crossroads of the world," famous both in the Orient and in the Occident for its wealth, culture, and gaiety, qualities all exemplified in the person of their most celebrated representative, the Caliph Hiran al‑Rashid (736‑809). Then came slow political decadence; the Muslim empire fell apart into separate autonomous states. In two regions anti‑caliphates declared themselves. In Spain survivors of the Ummayad caliphate established an independent rule, and in Egypt and neighboring areas, including Palestine, a Shi'ite anti‑caliphate, the Fitimid, claiming for their iniffins (or caliphs) descent from Muhammad's daughter Fitima, ruled from 909 to 1171, with such success for a while that the 'Al‑id or Shi'ite cause (p. 540 ff.) seemed about to attain ascendancy in the Muslim world. But the Seljuk Turks, moving down from the steppes of central Asia, seized power in Persia, Iraq, and Syria in the eleventh century and reached the borders of Egypt and Byzantium.

It was at this point that the Crusaders came, their first expedition resulting in the capture of Jerusalem. Then followed the Muslim counter‑attacks and the emergence of the great leader Saladin, a Sunnite who put an end to the Fatimid caliphate in Egypt. Saladin prepared the way carefully for his successes against the Crusaders by slowly contracting the area they held; he finally recaptured Jerusalem (1187). He and his successors came to terms with the Crusaders left clinging to the coast for a time before being ousted. Suddenly, seventy years later, came the Mongols, burning and pillaging as they went, with incredible massacres, advancing and receding in two separate waves of conquest. Repelled by the Mamelukes of Egypt, who managed to hold on to Syria and Arabia, the Mongols fell back into Iraq and Persia, where they held on for a century longer and were converted to Islam, largely through Safism. (see p. 535 ff )

With the receding of the Mongol tide, four new Islamic empires arose: the Uzbek in the Oxus‑jaxartes basin, the Safawi in Persia (or western Iran), the Mughal in India, and the Ottoman in Asia Minor. The Ottoman Turks rose to power in Asia Minor in the thirteenth century, crossed the Bosphorus, took Byzantium (Constantinople) in 1453, and fought their way into the Balkans and along the Danube as far as Vienna before they were forced back into areas that they could hold (sixteenth century). The Ottoman empire also stretched southward through Palestine into Egypt. It endured to World War I.

But now we must return to earlier centuries.

V The First Five Centuries of Muslim Thought

That the relative homogeneity of the Arabs of the period of the first four caliphs did not long persist should afford no surprise. The Caliph 'Umar's laws, designed to keep the Arabs permanently in Arabia as a land‑owning and military unit, were soon and inevitably modified. Multitudes of Arabs thereafter migrated out of their barren homeland to enjoy the possession of richer holdings elsewhere‑and were changed in the process. But if they were won over culturally by the subject peoples (the Mawil‑i or "client peoples" {For some centuries the Arabs normally functioned within the conquered territories according to the tribal relations to which they were accustomed. They granted the status of "clients" to some of the conquered peoples; that is, they treated them as adopted members of the Arab tribes. in this case clientship was a way of assimilating some of the conquered peoples; but culturally the process worked both ways.} among whom they settled, they successfully won over most of the Mawalis to their religion, and this resulted in a new culture of a distinctive kind.

The Formation of the Hadith Canons

Lines of divergence appeared early in the Muslim "Traditions." We have already referred, in the opening paragraphs of this chapter, to the Hadith or Tradition. It consisted to a large extent of recollections of Muhammad's sayings and doings traced back through "attestors" or "authorities" to Muhammad himself or to a Companion in Medina. There were many of these, but they were not the only authenticated traditions. Many others dealt with the way things had been done in Medina during Muhammad's lifetime with his "silent approval" (taqrir)‑in short, they described the customs, usages, or precedents established in Muhammad's days. They soon swelled to formidable bulk, and some of them were contradictory. Some lines of tradition were suspiciously favorable either to the partisans of 'Ali (the Shi’ites), or to the Ummayads, or, later on, to the 'Abbassids. {As traditional Islamic scholarship itself points out, there was some invention or fabrication. One Ibn‑Abfial‑‑'Awja confessed before his execution 150 years after the Hijra that he had profited financially by fabricating four thousand hadiths. But this was undoubtedly, if true, an exceptional case. There can be no doubt that the drive to preserve the memory of Muhammad's daily habits, oral judgments, and even his off‑hand comments, was pursued with great earnestness, even though there were some indications at times of bias among those who bore all the marks of trustworthiness. 'A'isha's prejudice against 'Ali, for instance, appears in her 2,210 traditions. Some of Muhammad's Companions seemed almost too voluble. But although there seems to be a very ready remembrance indeed on the part of AbuHuraira, one of the Companions, with his 5,300 traditions, his integrity and general reliability are beyond question. As such things go, and quite naturally, there were those who had it from someone, who had it from someone else, that still another person had heard a Companion say, "Muhammad used to do so and so." It became a major concern of the Muslim scholars and theologians to sift and weigh this evidence.} But not until over two centuries had passed after Muhammad's death were critical attempts made to select the more trustworthy traditions and bring them into a collection, and then the criterion used was an "external" one: the trustworthiness of the contributors of each hadith was the measure of its authenticity. The traditions had to have, as it were, a good pedigree. The authenticity and value of a tradition were judged by its isnad or chain of attestors, each of whom had to stand up under examination for veracity. The traditions were then declared either "genuine" or "fair" or "weak." At last six separate (and overlapping) collections made their appearance and won general acceptance. Of these the most highly regarded is the book of al‑Bukhdr! (d. 870) a Persian Muslim who diligently visited all through Arabia, Syria, Egypt, and Iraq gathering a vast number of hadiths (reportedly numbering six hundred thousana, but undoubtedly containing many duplications and overlappings) and then sifted them down to the 7,275 that he found "genuine." In influence this collection ranks next to the Qur'an itself Another highly regarded collection, usually ranked second, is that of Muslim (d. 875).

But the six canonical books were not the only collections of hadiths in common use among Muslims. Such collections as the Muwattj of Malik ibn Anas or the Musnad of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, founders of two schools of the law, have been given as much authority as some of the six canonical books. Their authority derives from that of their compilers. (For Malik and ibn Hanbal, see p. 532 f)

The interpretation and reconciliation of the "genuine" traditions, being as they are the basis of the Sunna, or Custom, of traditionalist Islam, became a preoccupation of Muslim minds, and they allowed plenty of room for divergence of thought.

The First Controversies

Does a Muslim remain a Muslim after he sins? Can a conflict between his faith and his acts be permitted? Should expediency or political considerations have any weight in the choices of a Muslim? Must a Muslim, to be such, hew straight to the line of what he knows to be true Islamic principles without compromise or delay, or may he let events take their course and leave the ultimate decision or action to Allah? These are the issues underlying the first Muslim controversies. For there was then no fixed standard of orthodoxy for all Muslims, and never would be.

When 'Ali was chosen caliph, he was supported by fiercely anti‑Unimayad elements who watched him narrowly to see if he would be as firm and decisive as Muhammad had been. But midway in the struggle with Mu'awiya, he had, as we have seen, agreed to arbitrate the issues, whereupon twelve thousand disgusted warriors marched out of his camp, so disillusioned with him that some of them later assassinated him. They became the Kharijites, "separatists" or "secessionists." Viewing with hostile eyes the political developments occurring behind the scenes among the Muslim leaders, this group of Muslims concluded bitterly that the only sure way of getting the right caliph was to select the best qualified person, not necessarily a person from just the Prophet's family or just his tribe. The caliph need not come from either group, they said. Not enough of them were true Muslims! The Unimayads, for instance, had joined the Muslim movement at the last minute, just before it would be too late, obviously less from conviction than from expediency. No, the true caliph could be the choice only of true Muslims, men of proven good works acting solely on the religious principle of doing the will of Allah in complete self‑surrender. All those who had become Muslims for political or economic reasons, or who were "trimmers," or who went through the practices of Islam as a mere outward form, were not true Muslims at all and must be destroyed in a great purge. This was imperative to save the cause of Allah and Muhammad from their hands. It was natural that these fierce puritans should find the full force of the Ummayads arrayed against them. The more radical and uncompromising were wiped out in bloody slaughter as heretics. Yet, their beliefs spread in time to the utmost fringes of the Muslim empire and still persist in Zanzibar and Algeria.

Opposed to them were the Murjites, the advocates of "delayed judgment." Their position was that only God can judge who is a true Muslim and who is not. When one sees a believer sinning, he cannot call him forthwith an infidel or without faith. Therefore, believers should treat all practicing Muslims, tentatively at least, as real Muslims, leaving to the last judgment, that is, to Allah, the fixing of their final status. Hence, even the Ummayads were to be tolerated‑not to mention the converted Christians and Jews who appeared to be merely half‑hearted in their "submission."

When it appeared that the weight of Muslim opinion agreed more with the Murjites than the Kligrijites, the outlines of a coming traditionalist position began to emerge.

The Sunnis and the Shari’a (or Law)

The rapid expansion of Islam confronted Muslims with other crucial, and even more complex, decisions concerning Muslim behavior. Situations early appeared in areas outside of Arabia where the injunctions of the Qur'an proved either insufficient or inapplicable. The natural first step in these cases was to appeal to the sunna (the behavior or practice) of Muhammad in Medina or to the hadith that reported his spoken decisions or judgments. In the event that this proved inconclusive, the next step was to ask what the sunna and/or consensus of opinion (ijma) of the Medina community was, in or shortly after the time of Muhammad. If no light was yet obtainable, the only recourse was either to draw an analogy (qiyas) from the principles embodied in the Qur'an or in Medinan precedents and then apply it, or to follow the consensus of opinion of the local Muslim community as crystallized and expressed by its Qur'anic authorities. {This might involve ijtihad or the exercise of reason in the forming of a judgment, something that came to be regarded with great reserve in later times. A famous hadrth reports, however, that it was supported by Muhammad himself "On being appointed governor of Yaman, Mu'adh was asked by the Holy Prophet as to the rule by which he would abide. He replied, 'By the law of the Qur'an.' 'But if you do not find any direction therein,' asked the Prophet. 'Then I will act according to the Surma of the Prophet,' was the reply. 'But if you do not find any direction in the Sunna,' he was asked again. 'Then I will exercise my judgment (ajtahidu) and act on that,' came the reply. The Prophet raised his hands and said: 'Praise be to Allah Who guides the messenger of His Apostle as He pleases"' (Maulana Muhammad Ali, The Religion of Islam, p. 98). The author quoted adds: "This hadrth shows not only that the Holy Prophet approved of the exercise of judgment, but also that his Companions were well aware of the principle, and that Ijtihad by others than the Prophet was freely resorted to when necessary, even in the Prophet's lifetime." It should be added that this is the opinion of a Muslim liberal and that some Muslims would disagree with him and regard the hadith cited as questionable.}

The Muslims who took this way of solving their behavioral problems were, and are to this day, called Simms (or Sunnites).

In considering their general position, it is obvious that the Sunnis (and Muslims in general) do not distinguish sharply between law and religion, inasmuch as the former is based upon the ordinances of God revealed to Muhammad in the Qur'an. For this reason, the word finally chosen and now used for the law of Islam‑SharVa‑means the Way, that is, the true path of religion. The word in earlier use, fiqh, or "understanding," was at first applied equally to law and theology, although in common usage it has usually referred to the former. It is well said that "Muslims conceive of their religion as a community that says 'Yes' to God and His world, and the joyful performance of the Law, in most areas of the Islamic world, is looked on as a positive religious value."" Accordingly, the recognized scholars of religion (the Vamj,' "the learned") have ceaselessly watched over the observance of the law in human life, and the mufris, the jurists appointed to be consultants to the religious courts, especially in specific cases or points of law, have framed with care each legal opinion (fatwd) followed on the bench by the qadis (judges). {A distinction must be drawn between the religious courts and those established by civil governments. Sometimes the latter have Proceeded separately from the Shari’a, which is such a case serves as the ideal law according to Islam as opposed to the actual working law of the civil courts. A more practical difference exists in jurisdiction. The religious courts have usually passed judgment in private and family affairs of Muslims, such as a marriage, divorce, inheritance and individual moral and religious conduct, whereas the civil courts have administered the statures laws laid down for a particular country by sovereigns and officials to regulated the actions of the citizenry of whatever faith.} In cases where it has been difficult to arrive at a legal opinion clearly compatible with the Qur'an, ijtihad (reason and common. sense) has been Wed upon, but used with the greatest caution. For, especially in conservative circles, the resort to reason and common sense may smack too much of speculation, and this is likely to bring one into conflict with Revelation. The safest procedure is to examine Revelation and Tradition reverently and arrange them into order d system. When this is done, then some use of reasoning may be cautiously attempted to fill in gaps or meet new contingencies, provided it is reasoning that builds upon what has already been revealed in the Qur'an and Tradition (Hadith).

Roughly this is the path followed by the four “schools of the law" which arose during the first two centuries of Islam and are still recognized as authoritative.

The Four Schools of the Law

Of the four schools the first in time, the Hanifite, ; the most liberal in its use of speculation, by which, of course, is meant juridical, not theological, speculation. It was founded in Iraq by Abri Hanifa (d. 767 ), a Persian whose followers put down his teachings krabic. His general practice was to begin with the Qur’an (taking little notice of the Hadi‑th) and ask himself how its precepts could be applied by analogy (qiyas) to the somewhat different situation in Iraq. If a particular situation for which Muhammad legislated closely analogous to a situation existing in Iraq, applied the Qur'an as it stood. If, however, the two situations differed widely, he developed by deduction analogy applicable to Iraq, and if the analogy thus obtained was not acceptable because it ran counter to public good or the general principles of justice, he consulted ray, "considered opinion" or "recognized justice," derived from istihsan or judgment of what is for the public good; and made a ruling. The ruling might in this last case even supersede the Qur'an. (For example, the Qur'an prescribes cutting off the hand for theft, but that was meant for a situation not analogous to the one obtaining in more diversified Iraq; so it was not meant for Iraq. By analogical deduction from other parts of the Qur'an we derive for Iraq other, more effective punishment, namely, imprisonment.) It was natural for the 'Abbassids and the Ottoman Turks after them to follow the Hanifite rulings on laws and religious rites. They are still followed in Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and by Muslims in India and central Asia.

The second school, the Milikite, founded in Medina I Malik ibn Anas (ca. 715‑795 A.D.), interpreted laws and rites in the light of the Qur'an and the Hadith together, and when in difficulty leaned heavily on the “consensus of opinion" (ijima') that prevailed in Medina. It was he who put together the hadiths of the Medina‑centered Muwatti, which has been mentioned earlier. For especially perplexing situations he used analogy, and when analogy conflicted with opinion, he fell back on "public advantage." This school is still generally followed in North Africa, upper Egypt, and eastern Arabia.

The Shafi'ite, the third school in time, is important because it can be said to have scrutinized the other two schools and arrived at a science of the law based on what had been previously determined. It was founded by al‑Shiafi'i, an Arab born in Persia but descended from the Quraysh tribe. He clearly distinguished four roots or sources of the law: the words of God (the Qur’an), the words and deeds of the Prophet (his sunna or practice discerned in the Hadith), the consensus of the Muslim. community (ijma), especially as voiced by the jurists, and analogy (qiyas) elicited by reasoning. This formulation has been accepted by all schools of the law as the classical theory of the sources of the law, but each school reserves the right to stress these sources differently. The Shaffi'ite school gives equal weight to the Qur'an and the hadi‑ths that authentically reflect the words and deeds of the Prophet, but sometimes, where one of these hadrths may be more specific and clear prefers it even to the Qur'an. At times the traditions, it is held, represent the Muslim world in expansion and therefore the more developed situation, but although liberal in this respect, the Shafi'ites reject “opinion” in any form as using speculation in an unwarranted manner. The Shafi'ite school still prevails in the East Indies, and influences lower Egypt (Cairo), eastern Africa, southern Arabia, and southern India.

The most conservative of the four schools is the Hanbalite. It was founded at Baghdad in the loose and merry days of Haran al Rashid by the shocked IbnHanbal, a student of al‑Shafi'i, who was even more uncompromising than his master toward "opinion." He seems to have been in special opposition to the Mu'tazilites (see next topic) and adhered primarily to the letter of the Qur'an, with secondary reliance on the Hadith. For refusal to deny the eternity of the Qur'an he was put in chains by the 'Abbassid Caliph al‑Ma'mun, and by a succeeding caliph scourged and imprisoned. The Hanbalite laws and ritual are followed today in the Hijaz and in Sa'udi Arabia as a whole.

While these conclusions were being reached in the area of law, controversy was being aroused in the area of philosophy of religion.

The Mu'tazifites

The vigorous defenders of the faith called Mu'tazilites appeared first in Syria and Iraq during the Urnmayad caliphate among the converts to Islam who were familiar with Greek, Jewish, Christian, and Zoroastrian thought. Initially, they may have been politically motivated, but in large part they were moved by a desire to convince the unpersuaded non‑Muslims of the soundness of the Muslim position. They thus provide a Muslim analogue to the Christian apologists (P. 448). In any case, they were among the first Muslims to engage in what came to be called kalim or reasoned argument in defense of the faith.

In an attempt to find firm ground between the Kharijites and the Murjites, they laid emphasis upon the free response of men to the moral demands of Allah in the Qur'an, particularly when confronted by the "promise and threat" of Allah contained there. But they were also sure, and believed that they were acting in the spirit of Muhammad in affirming, that not only does Allah challenge the consciences of men, he also seeks their rational assent. Hence, the Mu'tazilites took it for granted that the theological doctrines that might be erected on the foundation supplied by the Qur'an, whose truth they never questioned, were subject to rational testing. Their reading of translations of works of Greek philosophy, which may not have been extensive, made it seem to them a foregone conclusion that no doctrine could be true that did not survive such a test. How could a true doctrine be contrary to reason?

Reason, for example, the Mu'tazilites argued, insists on both the justice and unity of God. Doctrines that throw doubt on either cannot be accepted. In defense of the justice of God, the Mu'tazilites made an all‑out attack on the doctrine that all men's doings are decreed by the inscrutable will of Allah, and that therefore man is not the author of any of his acts. Because the inconclusiveness of the Qur'an on this point allowed some room for further clarification, the Mu'tazilites insisted that no final position ought to be taken that would put to the question the justice of Allah: Allah must bejust; it would be monstrous to think him moved by arbitrariness alone or by mere good pleasure. How could it be just for God to predestine a man to commit mortal sin or to maintain an attitude of heresy or unbelief, and then punish him for being guilty of either? It would not be fair or right. Hence, Allah must allow men enough freedom to choose between right and wrong, truth and falsehood. Only then could men be held responsible for their acts.

That Allah had to do anything whatever, as of necessity, was a doctrine that many Muslims viewed with distaste and horror. But the Mu'tazilites nevertheless insisted further that because Allah most certainly was the Merciful, the Compassionate, and desired the good of all creatures, he had to send down revelations to the Prophet to indicate the way of salvation‑an act that showed both graciousness and an inner necessity to be just and merciful. Hence, a "necessary grace" is to be seen in the delivery to men of the Qur'an.

And this brought the Mu'tazilites to the declaration that stirred up the greatest dissension. They denied that the revelation‑that is, the Qur'an‑is eternal and uncreated. Allah created it when the need arose and sent it down. To suppose that it was uncreated and eternal would destroy the unity of God by setting up beside him something else co‑eternal with him, and this would be polytheism, which the Qur'an itself condemned.

So persuasive did this point seem, perhaps more on political than intellectual grounds, to one of the 'Abbassid caliphs (al‑Ma'mun), that in 827 A.D. he proclaimed it a heresy to assert the eternity of the Qur'an and went so far as to set up an inquisition to purge all government departments of those who held such a view. But twenty years later another caliph thought the reverse view the true one, called the Mu'tazilites heretical, and began a purge of them in turn.

Before their final overthrow in the tenth century, the Mu'tazilites turned their rationalistic method upon the anthropomorphism inherent in the literal interpretation of the Qur'an. They refused to take literally the descriptions of Allah as sitting on a throne in heaven among the angels and as having hands and feet, eyes and ears. {Some literalists belonging to minor sects said God is a being made of flesh and blood.} Allah is infinite and eternal and nowhere particularly in space. It endangered the unity of God, they said, to be too literal about his agents or about his attributes or qualities, as though these last could be his "members," as some of the orthodox maintained. It would be consistent with the unity of God only to speak of his attributes as being of his essence or as being his modes or states, not as being additions or accretions of an external kind. God is one as to his essence, without division or qualifications. This reasoning was applied as well to the language of the Qur'an about heaven and hell. The imagery was to be taken figuratively, or at any rate modified by the consideration that those who are intellectual or spiritual will not, in paradise for example, go in for sensual delights, because they are above that.

But though the Mu'tazilites did manage to teach the Muslim thinkers who came after them the value of using a rational method of exposition, the weight of opinion turned against them, and the tenth century saw their school as such come to an end. But their ideas survived among the ShVites (see p. 541), and many modernists have revived them. {The Mu'tazilites used the rationalistic methods and tools of philosophy to argue from within Islam about its meaning and message; there were others who, without giving up their Muslim faith, moved amid the concepts and issues of Greek philosophy. They were known as the falisifah (philosophers). It appeared to these thinkers that the Muslim faith, as the final truth in religion, should be stated in philosophical terms to gain the full assent of reason. In doing this they were ready to reject whatever reason rejected. But their tradition‑nurtured fellow Muslims were distrustful, and after seeing where their reasoning led them, agreed with al‑Ghazal!, whom we shall meet on a later page, when he condemned the falasifah for self‑contradiction in espousing such Greek doctrines as the eternity of the world, the impossibility of resurrection from the dead, and God's having no knowledge of particulars. Nevertheless, during the first five centuries of Muslim thought, powerful intellects, displaying an encyclopedic learning, appeared among the philosophers. Perhaps the greatest was ibnSind (Avicenna), who lived in Persia, 980‑1037. His predecessors, the Arab al‑Kindi of Basra and Baghdad (d. 873) and the Turk al‑Farabi (870‑950), were scarcely less able. In Spain ibn‑Rushd (Averrods, 1126‑1198) was to follow in Avicenna's steps, seeking like him to forge a syncretism of Islam, Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus. These men all gained the respect of Jewish and Christian thinkers of their times, because their grounding in Greek philosophy was sounder than was then possible in the West, with its large loss of classical learning. But Muslims came to think they had stepped outside Islam onto alien ground.}

The downfall of the Mu'tazilites came about when the more conservative defenders of the Sunna adopted the methods of rationalism (the construction of logical systems) in order to confute them. It was a man trained in a Mu'tazilite school, named al‑Ash'ari, who thus turned the tables on them.

The Thought of al‑Ashliri

Abu'l al‑Hasan al‑Ash'ar! was born about 250 years after the Hijra, made his home in Baghdad, where he was for a while a Shafl'ite, and died there in his early sixties (935 A.D.). He became one of the two great thinkers most honored by conservative Muslims, the other being al‑Ghazali. After studying and publicly advocating the Mu'tazilites' teachings, he found himself at the age of forty suddenly and violently disagreeing and went on to develop a differing exposition of the Islamic revelation. {He now swung all the way over to connection with the ultraconservative Hanbalite school of law.} He accomplished this by making God not only one but all in all. All life, all knowledge, power, will, hearing, sight, and speech‑the seven divine attributes‑no matter where or when experienced, are Allah in action, for Allah has created men and all their acts. Men cannot see, hear, know, or will anything of themselves; it is Allah who causes what happens in and through them. This position enabled al‑Ash'dci to supply logical grounds for traditionalist doctrines, whether drawn from the Qur'an or the Hadith. For example, because it is Allah who immediately causes all events, internal and external, it is he who determines men to think of him as he is described in the Qur'an. Allah, then, can be spoken of as sitting on a throne and as having hands and feet, eyes and ears; the Qur'an says so; but the Qur'an also says that he is "not like anything" in the universe; therefore the nature of God's sitting and seeing is not known to men, and they must believe what they are told bi‑Ij kayf, "without conceiving how" it may be so. Similarly, the concrete imagery of heaven and hell supplied by the Qur'an is to be taken as descriptive of reality; the believers in paradise will really have a vision of Allah sitting on his throne; but it must not be supposed that their seeing or sitting is to be compared with this world's seeing or sitting. As for the Qur'an, al‑Ash'ari said its words are, as ideas in the mind of Allah, eternal, but the letters on sheets of paper forming the words read and recited on earth are produced by men and are of temporal origin‑a solution of the old puzzle as to the uncreated nature of the Qur'an that was immediately satisfactory to most Muslims. Finally, that the conception of Allah as being the immediate cause of every act made him responsible for evil as well as good did not daunt al‑Ash'ari it was just a fact that Allah, in accordance with his inscrutable good pleasure, decreed the unbelief of the infidel and damned him for it. Allah has his own reasons, which are not like human reasons and which men cannot know and should not have the temerity to seek to know. But al‑Ash'ari modified this hard teaching by saying that even though man's actions are predestined, he "acquires" guilt or righteousness by acting as if he were free, under the consciousness of making his own decisions, thus involving himself in his predestined acts, good or bad.

Al‑Maturidi

Al‑Ash'ari's influence spread far and wide. He was read and studied in places as far away as Samarqand, in central Asia, north of the Hindu Kush mountains. There al‑Matur‑idi, a contemporary but a Hanifite, both agreed and disagreed with him. Standing on the same basically Sunnite position as al‑Ash'ari's in affirming that all acts are willed by God, al‑Maturidi made the qualification, generally accepted in the Muslim world, that the sins of men occur by God's will but not with his good pleasure; God created disbelief and willed it "in a general way" but "did not order men to it; rather he ordered the infidel to believe, but did not will it for him"" (i.e., he left it to the individual to believe or disbelieve). The act of the unbeliever is willful and not pleasing to God, since he finds it hateful and punishes him for it.

The Mystics

But what concerned the majority of Muslims more than the kalam of al‑Ash'ari and al‑Maturidi‑ were such immediate and present things as (1) the practice of the Five Pillars and the ceremonies of the ritual year, (2) the vaguely mystical experience of the presence of God in worship and daily life, with both its "promise and threat," and (3) assurance of the vitality and reality of Islam in the lives and persons of true men of God. Millions of Muslims had within themselves the natural human need to feel their religion as a personal and emotional experience. Islam had no priests, then or now, ordained and set apart for a life dedicated to the worship of God and the pursuit of holiness, {The imims who lead the prayers in the mosques have always been laymen who serve full or part‑time to the glory of God.} and yet everyone knew that Muhammad had been a true man of God, wholly dedicated to his mission, who in the period before the revelations came had retired at times from the world to meditate in a cave. It was thus that he had become an instrument of God's truth.

It was the popular yearning for the presence among them of unworldly men dedicated to God, asceticism, and holiness that encouraged the eventual emergence of Islamic mysticism.

The forerunners of the mystics appeared almost as soon as Islam reached Syria. Early in the Unimayad caliphate, Syrian Muslims, yearning to know Allah in this strange context and influenced by, among other things, passages from the New Testament, wandered about, neither begging nor yet working for a living, but endlessly reciting a litany of the "beautiful names" and titles of Allah and resigning themselves to his care, in trustful dependence on such a promise as that contained in the saying of Jesus: "Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself." Ascetics rather than mystics, they practiced an utter indifference toward hunger and illness or the abuse they received from men, saying that they must be under the hand of Allah "as passive as a corpse under the hand of him who washes it."" In Iraq there was al‑Hasan of Basra (d. 728), an ascetic who was at the same time a religious scholar. His holy life caused him to be revered as a saint in his own lifetime. He rejected this world (dung) as a "lower" place full of wretchedness and grief and called upon his hearers to seek heavenly "mansions which long ages will not decay nor alter."

The first Suffis to bear the name (meaning "woolwearers," i.e., wearers of the ascetics' coarse, undyed woolen robe) appeared in the eighth century, but they soon went beyond their forerunners in the development of intellectual and mystical interests that took them into directed contemplation. Eventually, although they based themselves on the Qur'an, they sought philosophical aid from Neo‑Platonism and Gnosticism, while Christian monasticism supplied them with hints toward organization. They adopted a monkish rule of life, practiced long vigils and stated periods of meditation, and finally gathered into fraternities (this by the twelfth century) with communal religious services, marked by Muslim rituals and music much like that of the Christian churches. {The Safis claimed Muhammad as their example (witness his use of caves on Mt. Flirl), but they had to overlook the hadith quoting Muhammad as being critical of "monkery" (e.g., in the saying att4uted to him: "Either you propose to be a Christian monk; in that case, join them openly! Or you belong to our people; then you must follow our custom [sunnal. Our custom is married life.")" The Qur'an itself says of the followers of Jesus: "And monasticism they invented‑We did not prescribe it for them‑only seeking the good pleasure of God; but they observed it not as it should be observed" (LVII:27).} Their consuming interest was union with God now rather than after death. Because there were no distinctively Muslim lines of thought to guide them, they strained at the leash of Muslim orthodoxy toward mysticism and pantheism.

When the Sufis were establishing themselves, they were influenced by what they heard of the mystical speculations of an Egyptian Muslim, Dhu’l‑Nun al Misri (d. 859 A.D.), who perhaps received the name "the Man of the Fish from Egypt," i.e., the Jonah of Egypt, because he said that individuality is a deadly sin and the soul must be "swallowed up" in God by complete mystic union. But neither he nor the Sufis in general thought that the swallowing up of the soul could be achieved at once without the soul being prepared for it. There were stages to pass through. To follow the figure of Harith al‑Muhisibil of Basra (d. 857), the Sufi was a pilgrim on the road that leads to "the truth," and there were way‑stations he must pass, under the guidance of a Muslim director, such as repentance, abstinence, renunciation, poverty, patience, trust in God, and satisfaction (the "seven stages" most commonly prescribed). Final entrance into the transcendental realm of knowledge and truth would crown the various "states" of longing, fear, hope, love, intimacy, and trust that Allah had bestowed. The climactic state would be experienced as an intoxicating and ineffable flash of divine illumination, bringing with it the certainty of divine love‑the goal of the mystical theist in all lands.

But a few mystics were not theists. They defined Allah as the realm of true being, and when certain Buddhist influences penetrated Iraq, the Sufts there moved perilously close to atheism (as did some zindiq or free‑thinking Muslims of Zoroastrian background) and emphasized self‑annihilation, conceived as complete absorption into True Being, as the entire goal.

These and others among the more extreme Suflis (the "ecstatics") were recognized by conservative Muslims as heretics. There was more than one martyrdom. A Persian Suft called al‑Hallffj was in 922 scourged, mutilated, nailed to a gibbet, and then beheaded for crying out publicly, "I am the True (al‑Haqq)," by which his hearers, accustomed to hearing Ailah named "the True," judged he was committing the ultimate in blasphemy. They were right in understanding that he felt he and his creator were one, but he meant no blasphemy. He felt much as did the Persian mystic Abri Yazid al‑Bistami (d. 875) to whom the saying was attributed: "Thirty years the transcendent God was my mirror, now I am my own mirror‑i.e., that which I was I am no more, for 'I' and 'God' is a denial of the Unity of God. Since I am no more, the transcendent God is His own mirror. I say that I am my own mirror, for 'tis God that speaks with my tongue, and I have vanished."

To al‑Hallffj the hope of mystic union with God is that of the lover who suffers with separation from his beloved, and in his famous verses he bewails any absence of perfect harmony with the Great Beloved. When he can, he celebrates its presence with intimacy and tenderness:

Betwixt me and Thee there lingers an "it is I” that torments me.

Ali, of Thy grace, take away this "I" from between us!

I am He whom I love, and He whom I love is I,

We are two spirits dwelling in one body.

if thou seest me, thou seest Him,

And if thou seest Him, thou seest us both.

Alarmed by the execution of al‑Hallai, and quite aware of the extravagance of language that had provoked it, more moderate Suftis appeared who made an earnest effort during the next two centuries to show their Sunni critics that they were not in contradiction to the Qur'an and the Hadith. They sought to prove, in chastened language, that Safism could be and was truly Muslim. In volume after volume Abo Nast alSarraj, Abo Talib al‑Makk‑i, Abo Bakr al‑Kalibadhi, and especially AbiI'l‑Q5,sim al‑Qushayri, together with others, attempted to rehabilitate Suft mysticism in Sunni eyes, claiming that it sought a revival of Islam from within. In the next section we shall see how al‑Ghazal‑i produced the great synthesis of the themes of both Sunni and Sufi Muslims, a feat that prevented the former from driving the latter from the Muslim fold and convinced the latter that their future lay with Islam.

After al‑Ghazili's time, the Suffis, because in a sense he gave them license to exist, did not give up their essential quest, which was to realize in personal experience Allah's living presence. They conceded the legitimacy of Shafi'a and Kalarn insofar as they rested on the revelation to Muhammad, but they claimed for their mysticism the validity of intuitive insight that cannot be expressed in rational, historical, or practical terms but has to be clothed in the language of poetry and symbolism. It was as if they said: "Yes, you scholars of the Law and you intellectuals of the philosophy of religion are truly the guardians of the revealed truth that has come down to us, and we subscribe to it, too, but we are also expressing the intuitions of immediate personal experience of Allah's presence in our souls and in the great world he has made." Moreover, they found that this resort to poetic and intuitional language made it difficult for the logicians of the Surim to attack them successfully, and this further freed them in their literary self‑expression.

When the later Sufi poets let themselves go, they approximated the language of al‑Hallij, it being now safe, short of claiming divinity, to do so. Consider the words of the poet Jalal al‑131‑n Romi, written nearly three hundred years after al‑HallaJJ's execution. (He is the author of the famous Mathnati, "the Qur'dn of the Persian language," and on the foundations he laid the Maulaw~i order of dervishes was based.)

When God appears to His ardent lover the lover is absorbed in Him, and not so much as a hair of the lover remains. True lovers are as shadows, and when the sun shines in glory the shadows vanish away. He is a true lover of God to whom God says, "I am thine, and thou art mine!"

Let me then become non‑existent, for non‑existence

Sings to me in organ tones, "To him shall we return."

Behold water in a pitcher; pour it out;

Will that water run away from the stream?

When that water joins the water of the stream

It is lost therein, and becomes itself the stream.

Its individuality is lost, but its essence remains,

And thereby it becomes not less nor inferior.

In the world of Divine Unity is no room for Number,

But Number necessarily exists in the world of Five and Four.

You may count a hundred thousand sweet apples in your hand:

If you wish to make One, crush them all together.

In the house of water and clay this heart is desolate without thee;

0 Beloved, enter the house, or I will leave it.

For his disciples Runif wrote the famous "Song of the Reed Flute," celebrating the love of God that the flute symbolized. It begins:

Hearken to the reed‑flute, how it discourses

When complaining of the pains of separation

"Ever since they tore me from my osier bed,

My plaintive notes have moved men and women to tears.

I burst my breast, striving to give vent to sighs,

And to express the pangs of my yearning for my home. . . . "

A central passage cries out in celebration of the ecstasy of the love of God:

Hail to thee, then, 0 LOVE, sweet madness!

Thou who healest all our infirmities!

Who art the physician of our pride and self‑conceit!

Who art our Plato and our Galen!

Love exalts our earthly bodies to heaven,

And makes the very hills to dance with joy!

0 lover, 'twas love that gave life to Mount Sinai,

When "it quaked, and Moses fell down in a swoon."

Did my Beloved only touch me with his lips,

I too, like the flute, would burst out in melody.

The references here to the Greeks point to the fact that the SiOls, especially in their manifestation as dervishes, were hospitable to any point of view that lent aid to their quest. They felt the essential oneness of all seekers of union with God, no matter what their name or sign. Said Ram‑r

If the picture of our Beloved is found in a heathen temple, it is an error to encircle the Ka'bah: if the Ka'bah is deprived of its sweet smell, it is a synagogue: and if in the synagogue we feel the sweet smell of union with him, it is our Ka'bah

A hundred years earlier the Spanish philosopher‑poet, Ibn al‑'Arabi, had said:

There was a time, when I blamed my companion if his religion did not resemble mine;

Now, however, my heart accepts every form: it is a pasture ground for gazelles, a cloister for monks,

A temple for idols and a Ka'bah for the pilgrim, the tables of the Torah and the sacred books of the Koran.

Love alone is my religion."

The conviction of the Sufis that the essential thing in religion‑any religion‑is religious experience ("the inward spirit and the state of feeling"), rather than its fixed forms, shines clear in this famous passage from Rumis Mathnavi

Moses saw a shepherd on the way, who was saying, "0 God who choosest whom Thou wilt, where art Thou, that I may become Thy servant and sew Thy shoes and comb Thy head? That I may wash Thy clothes and kill Thy lice and bring milk to Thee, 0 worshipful One; that I may kiss Thy little hand and rub Thy little foot, and when bedtime comes I may sweep Thy little room, 0 Thou to whom all my goats be a sacrifice, 0 Thou in remembrance of whom are my cries of ay and ah!"

The shepherd was speaking foolish words in this wise. Moses said, "Man, to whom is this addressed?"

He answered, "To that One who created us; by whom, this earth and sky were brought to sight."

"Hark!" said Moses, "you have become very back‑sliding; indeed you have not become a Moslem, you have become an infidel. What babble is this? What blasphemy and raving? Stuff some cotton into your mouth! The stench of your blaspemy has made the whole world stinking: your blasphemy has turned the silk robe of religion into rags. Shoes and socks are fitting for you, but how are such things right for One who is a Sun?"

The shepherd said, "0 Moses, thou hast closed my mouth and thou hast burned my soul with repentance." He rent his garment and heaved a sigh, and hastily turned his head towards the desert and went his way.

A revelation came to Moses from God‑"Thou hast parted My servant from Me. Didst thou come as a prophet to unite, or didst thou come to sever? So far as thou canst, do not set foot in separation: of all things the most hateful to Me is divorce. I have bestowed on every one a special way of acting.... In the Hindoos the idiom of India is praiseworthy; in the Sindians the idiom of Sind is praiseworthy. I am not sanctified by their glorification of Me; 'tis they that become sanctified.... I look not at the tongue and the speech; I look at the inward spirit and the state of feeling. I gaze into the heart to see whether it be lowly, though the words uttered be not lowly, because the heart is the substance.... In substance is the real object. How much more of these phrases and conceptions and metaphors? I want burning, burning: become friendly with that burning! Light up a fire of love in thy soul, burn thought and expression entirely away! 0 Moses, they that know the conventions are of one sort, they whose souls and spirits burn are of another sort."

But the accent by the mystics on the immanence and omnipresence of God was so at odds with the Sunn7i emphasis on the transcendence and omnipotence of God that there was great need of a reconciliation of these themes, and this need was met by al‑Ghazali, the great synthesizer of Muslim thought.

The Synthesis of al‑Ghazili

After the tension between the traditionalists and the Kharijites and Mu'talizites, and the straining in different directions of the jurists and the mystics, the kalffm of al‑GhazAli, when it was understood, "came like a deliverance."' In recognition of the fact that he rescued the schools from the barren scholasticism into which they had fallen after al‑Ash'arii, Muslims have called him Muby! al‑Din, "the Restorer (or Renewer) of Religion."

And yet his value was not immediately recognized. It was only after his synthesis had been before them awhile that the Muslim schoolmen began to appreciate its balance and wisdom.

Born in a Persian village in 1058 A.D., he attained his fame elsewhere but returned home before he died in i i i i. After an education in jurisprudence in a Shafi'ite school and in theology under a famous Ash'arite imam, he was invited to Baghdad as a lecturer in the Nizamiyah, a newly founded university where the Ash'arite doctrine predominated. During his four years of teaching he reached a spiritual crisis. Not satisfied with scholasticism, he veered to scepticism, then to Sfifism. His intellectual curiosity was great, but his desire to find himself left him physically and morally exhausted. Later in life, when he was past fifty (and near his end), he wrote:

Ever since I was under twenty (now I am over fifty) ... I have not ceased to investigate every dogma and belief. No Batinite. did I come across without desiring to investigate his esotericism; no Zaharite, without wishing to acquire the gist of his literalism; no philosopher (Neo‑Platonist), without wanting to learn the essence of his philosophy; no dialectical theologian, without striving to ascertain the object of his dialectics and theology; no Sufi, without coveting to probe the secret of his Sufism; no ascetic, without trying to delve into the origin of his asceticism; no atheistic zindiq, without groping for the causes of his bold atheism and zindiqism. Such was the unquenchable thirst of my soul for research and investigation from the early days of my youth, an instinct and a temperament implanted in me by God through no choice of mine.

The swing to Sdfism proved decisive. He left the university, went to Syria to find out for himself, under the Siiftis there, whether their way was the right path to religious certainty, and after two years of meditation and prayer made a holy pilgrimage to Mecca before returning to his wife and children. He had renewed his faith in the Sunni‑ ideal, but he felt that Siaft mysticism, moderately practiced, could help him to reach it. He began writing. Though at the command of the sultan he returned to teaching for a short time, he soon resumed his meditation and writing in his native village until his death at fifty‑three.

His greatest book was The Revivification of the Religious Sciences. As a fundamentally religious person, he was not satisfied with the legalism and intellectualism of the Sunn7is. He had the same need that the German Pietists were to have after Lutheran scholasticism had reduced the German Reformation to a tough shell of theology and ritual. His quietism, like theirs, was motivated by his sense of the unreality of religion without religious experience. In fact, all human thinking and life itself were flat and unprofitable without God. He took the time to analyze in detail the philosophies of certain Muslim followers of Aristotle, only to condemn them as self‑contradictory and essentially irreligious rational systems. To him the universe was not eternal but was created out of nothing by the creative will of Allah. The relation between men and the great being who has produced them and the world about them should be fundamentally moral and experiential. It is not enough to observe the laws and rites of Islam or to have a kalam that one is ready to defend against all comers. A humble soul may be profoundly religious even though he be ignorant of the details of Qur'anic interpretation or theology. The core of religion‑which may be practiced even by a nonMuslim‑is to repent of one's sins, purge the heart of all but God, and by the exercises of religion attain a virtuous character. And here, he said, the Srift methods of self‑discipline and meditation, if practiced with common sense and wisdom, are of great value. Of priceless value, too, are the Five Pillars of the faith, accepted as obligatory for all Muslims; yet they do not yield their full profit unless they are performed from the heart and with the right attitude of mind. Only thus can the Muslim hope to escape punishment on the last day.

The vigor with which al‑Ghazali censured the teachers of law, theology, and philosophy for their lack of religious fire and for encouraging sectarian tendencies caused his works to be bitterly assailed when they were first published. But on second thought, all but the more extreme sects in areas dominated by formalistic jurisprudence, like far‑off Spain, acknowledged the sanity and general truth of his position. Ultimately, he was given the rank of the greatest of Muslim thinkers and was at last revered as a saint. And just as Catholic schoolmen have not gone far from the positions of

Aquinas, so Muslim thinkers have remained in the main content with al‑Ghazili's formulations, his word being taken as all but final.

VI The Shi’ah Schism

It must be obvious by now that Islam is not and never has been a monolithic faith. Divergences in doctrine, divisions of a political nature, and variations in law and the development of the spiritual life have frequently occurred. Even the conservative position was long in emerging and then proved unable to achieve a fixed and final form. But we have not seen so far any major deviation. There was one, however, of a political nature, with its own selections of had’iths, and it falls to us now to examine it. It occurred before there existed any Islamic standard or norm to block it effectively, and it could not have been blocked anyway perhaps, for it was motivated by a very powerful desire: to have Islam directed by Muhammad's own descendants through his daughter Fatima, the wife of 'Ali.

The Shi’ites

The tragedy that befell the House of 'All, beginning with the murder of 'Afti himself and including the deaths of his two sons, grandsons of Muhammad, has haunted the lives of "the party (Shsa) of 'All." They have brooded upon these dark happenings down the years as Christians do upon the death of Jesus. A major heretical group, they have drawn the censure and yet also have had the sympathy of the Suntirs and Sufts. They were among the sects whose radical elements al‑GhazMi attacked as guilty of resting their claims on false grounds and sinfully dividing Islam. And yet, although agreeing with this indictment, the Muslim world at large has suppressed its annoyance at them, because their movement goes back to the very beginnings of Islam and has a kind of perverse justification, even in orthodox eyes. Their critics‑agree that there is little sense in it, yet it has an appeal of its own.

The partisans of 'Ahi only gradually worked out the final claims made by the various Shi’ite sects. In the beginning there was simply the assertion‑which as events unfolded became more and more heated‑that only Muhammad's direct descendants, no others, could be legitimate caliphs; only they should have been given first place in the leadership of Islam. This "legitimism" could be called their political and dynastic claim, and at first this seems to have been all that they were interested in claiming. But this was not enough for adherents of their cause in Iraq, who over the years developed the religious theory, perhaps as an effect of Christian theories about God being in Christ, that every legitimate leader of the Wilds, beginning with 'Ali‑, was an imam mdhdi, a divinely appointed and supernaturally guided spiritual leader, endowed by Allah with special knowledge and insight‑an assertion that the main body of Muslims, significantly enough, called ghuluw, "exaggeration," rather than heresy. The political claim of the earlier days was, then, gradually supplemented by such sincere convictions as these: that Allah was determinedly behind 'Ali and his descendants, that he would not be frustrated by death, and that he would surely conduct the Shi’ite cause to a final triumph, even if this might mean bringing a descendant of 'Ali back from death or "withdrawal" to be a Messianic figure capable of accomplishing the aims that Muhammad and 'Ali had espoused when they were leaders of the Muslim world. Such expectations were at first scarcely more than hopes born of frustration and faith, but gradually the hope and faith became a firm conviction.

In the eyes of the Shi'ites, Muhammad was the divinely chosen Prophet of Islam, and 'Ali, his cousin and son‑in‑law, the Imam, the divinely designated "leader" and commander‑in‑chief of the faithful, and also their "pattern," for they came to believe that before his death Muhammad, the revealer of the truth in Arabia, under the guidance of Allah, chose 'Ali as the successor (caliph) who should establish this truth throughout the earth. Muhammad's designation of 'Ali as his successor therefore conferred on 'Ali the same kind of supernatural status as Catholics claim Jesus bestowed on Peter at Caesarea Philippi. Hence, the appointment of Aba Bakr, 'Umar, and 'Uthmgn as caliphs was a usurpation‑a usurpation with disastrous consequences, for when 'Ali at last was elected caliph, the opposition had developed so much power that it was able to bring his caliphate to a tragic conclusion. So bitter are all but one of the ShVite sects about this great "betrayal" that to this day they curse Aba Bakr, 'Umar, and 'Uthman as usurpers in their Friday prayers.

The ShVites found the same kind of tragedy overwhelming 'Alis sons, who by heritage were endowed with his unique spiritual quality. Al‑Hasan, the older of the two sons 'Ali had by Fatima, was led by the opposition to resign his imffmship for a mere pension and shortly thereafter died. The younger son, al1jusayn, the third imam according to this reading of history, fell a martyr (680 A.D.), together with his little son, in a night battle at Karbala' during a futile attempt to establish himself as the rightful caliph over the Ummayad incumbent, Yazid.

While this interpretation of history was still in its formative stage, the Shi’ites struggled against the Ummayads and gave their support to the rebellions that led to the triumph of the 'Abbassids. (The 'Abbissids, who derived their name from Muhammad's uncle, al‑'Abbas, were thus blood relations of the descendants of 'Ali.) But the Shi’ites were no better treated by the 'Abbassids than by the Unimayads, and in seeking attainment of their aims broke up into different sects (which we shall examine shortly). Nevertheless, they continued to regard the descendants of al‑Hasan and al‑Husayn as "nobles" and "lords" and among their number distinguished, according to their various sectarian principles, certain individuals as divinely ordained imams, who had inherited from 'Ali and the intermediate imams two extraordinary qualities: infallibility in interpreting the law and sinlessness. Historically, it was not until about the time of the sixth imam after 'Ali (Ja'far al‑Sidiq) that these claims assumed a clear‑cut form. Back of them were two principles: that of the nass (designation of the next imam by the preceding one), a principle that was read back into history all the way to Muhammad, as we have seen; and that of the 'ilm (special knowledge, such as would give an imam the warrant to exercise authority, impose discipline, and make decisions of a binding character in cases at issue).

Eventually another belief was to be added. It came later and concerned the expected return of some one of the imams as a "divinely guided" Messianic personage, the Mahd‑t. Where their line of imams ended, various sects were to believe that the last of these divine leaders had just "withdrawn" from sight and would return again as the Mahd7l before the last day, to gather his own about him once more.

Shi'ite loyalty to these imams has been stubborn. When persecution or compulsion, proved too strong, they allowed themselves the leeway provided in their principle of dissimulation (taqrtyah), which permitted them to conform outwardly to the requirements laid upon them by the persecuting authorities while making a secret mental reservation. By this means they were able to survive as an underground movement in the areas where their views were proscribed. But though their fanaticism was sharpened by persecution in respect to their distinctive views, in other respects the very fact of their being in opposition to the Sunni Muslims made them sympathetic with the more liberal theological positions. Like the Mu'tazilites, they did not believe the Qur'an to be eternal, nor men to be without any freedom of the will. They believed, too, that Allah must be just and holds men responsible only for their own acts.

The Shi'ite Sects

The repressions suffered by the Shi'ites have had a result that might well have been expected. Underground sects and terrorist groups, often outlawed by the main body of the Shi'ites themselves, have kept forming. Some of them have preyed upon whole communities or built states within states; some have seized large areas and ruled them as outlaw kingdoms; others have conspired secretly to annihilate their enemies by poison and dagger. These have, of course, been the violent minority.

Let us begin with the less extreme sects. In order to do so without too much confusion, the reader is invited to consider the chart or tree {Adapted from Hitti, History of the Arabs.} on the next page showing the family relationship of the successors of 'Aft who figure so largely in the thoughts of the Shi 'ite world.

Following down the extreme left side of this chart, we find the three general groups that form the Shy'ite sects. A discussion of each follows below.

	1. ALI (d 661)
2. AL‑HASAN (d. 669)
	3. AL‑HUSAYN (d. 680)
	4. 'ALI AIN‑AL‑'ABIDIN (d. ca. 712)
ZAID ZAIDITES branch off here	5. MUHAMMAD AL‑BAQIR (d.731)
ISMA'IL (d.760) ISMA'ILITES stop here	6. JA’FAR AL‑SADIQ (d.765)
	7. MUSA AL‑KAZIM (d.797)
	8. ALI AL‑RIDA (d.818)
	9. MUHAMMAD AL‑JAWAD (d.835)
	10. 'ALI AL.‑HADI (d.868)
	11. AL‑HASAN AL-'ASKARI (d.874)
TWELVERS stop here	12. MUHAMMAD AL‑MUNTAZAR (d.878)

A. The Zaidites. The Zaidites are the Shi'ites who approximate most closely the traditionalist (Sunnite) position. They differ with the other sects in considering Zaid (see chart) as the fifth imam instead of Muhammad al‑Baqir, the fifth imam of the other sects. The Zaidites did not realize that they were a separate sect until the time of Ja'far al‑Sadiq and have quite generally shied away from the principle of the nass, especially if it is interpreted as having a supernatural significance. It is typical for them to assert that 'Ali‑, not having been designated as the first caliph by Muhammad, freely gave Abu Bakr and 'Umar his allegiance when they were chosen, and therefore these two caliphs are not cursed in the Friday prayers. Some of them execrate 'Uthmdn for being an Ummayad who displaced 'Ali as the third caliph, but not all the Zaidites feel the same resentment, though all agree that the Ummayads who succeeded 'Ali were usurpers of the lowest kind: they were and are accursed. As a force in history the Zaidites have maintained a dynasty (now on the point of extinction) since the ninth century in Yemen (south Arabia) and in the past have had dynasties for periods varying from sixty to two hundred years in Tabaristan, Dailan, Gilan, and Morocco.

B. The Twelvers. The sect of the Twelvers claims the great majority of the Shi’ites as members. They get their name from reckoning from the twelfth imam, Muhammad al‑Muntazar. This imam is of great importance to them. They say that in 878 A.D. he "disappeared" or "withdrew" into the cave of the great mosque at Samarra, up the river from Baghdad. Being only five years of age, he left no issue, but the Twelvers refused to believe that Allah could have let the divinely instituted line of imams come to an end. The twelfth imam therefore had simply gone into concealment; he had withdrawn from human sight until the fullness of the time when he will return as the Mahdi, "the divinely guided one" who will usher in a period of righteousness and peace before the end of the world and the last judgment. {A widely accepted hadrth declares that Muhammad prophesied there would come in the last days a man of his own family who would do this. He would be known as the Mahdi. The ShVites seized upon the phrase "of his own family" and made the prophecy apply to the 'Alrds, which meant the ImArns. But another hadith contradicts all this with the saying: "There is no Mahdi‑ but Jesus the Son of Mary!} The "concealed imam," while remaining in his hidden state where death cannot touch him, never leaves his waiting followers without guidance, it was said; he selected representatives on earth to lead them for him. In Persia (now Iran), where almost the whole population of about twenty million is Shi’ite (and Twelver) and where Islam has been since the beginning of the sixteenth century the religion of the state, the shah was once regarded as such a representative. During the last two centuries this claim has not been made officially.

C. The Isma'ites or Seveners and Their Offshoots. Although now moderate as a group, the Isma'ilites have in the past produced offshoots that have sometimes shocked and stirred the whole Muslim world. The Isma'ilites are so called because they have remained loyal to Ism!'il, the first son of the sixth imam. After being designated by his father as the next imam (by the nass) Isma'il was set aside for his younger brother when his father was told of his drunkenness. But the Isma'ilites have refused to believe the accusation against their favorite. They have considered that the father must have yielded to a slanderous attack that was false, for Isma'il, as imam‑designate, and therefore already infallible and sinless, simply could not have been guilty of the charge against him. The fact that Isma'il was reported to have died (760 A.D.) five years before his father excited the Ismd'ilites all the more. They concluded that he was not dead but hidden: he would come

again as the Mahdi. {Some admitted that he did die, but left a son, Muhammad ibn-Ismail, who "disappeared" in India and would return as the Mahdi.} In their fervid belief, Isma'il was the very incarnation of God himself and would soon return. In order to find support for these views in the Qur'an, they began to interpret it allegorically (as many Christian eschatologists today interpret the Bible) and arrived at an esoteric, hidden doctrine, which was so heretical that they spread it to others only through secret missionary activity; and when apprehended and questioned they resorted to concealment of their faith by taqfya or momentary denial of their actual convictions.

This aspect of Ismailite activity attracted men disposed to rebellion, especially refractory Mawali with Persian, Christian, and Jewish backgrounds, disinclined to accept the prevailing Sunni line or to respect the authority of the caliphate. Some startling political effects resulted. Sporadic sectional revolts broke the general calm. The forces of the central government had to be called upon to suppress these insurrections, and were occasionally held at bay.

A few examples of movements having long‑term effects may be cited. A secret Isma'ilite society organized along communistic lines, whose members were called Qarmatians, was formed near the head of the Persian Gulf and spread into Arabia. (Some of them settled in Syria independently.) They were founded toward the close of the ninth century presumably by a certain Hamdan Qarmat, from whom they took their name. After fighting off the government forces, they set up a rebel state encompassing all of eastern Arabia from the borders of Iraq to the Yemen, where they maintained themselves successfully against the caliphs at Baghdad, and in one remarkable and hair‑raising sortie dared to capture and loot Mecca during the pilgrimage season! In this astonishing assault on the holy city they carried off the Black Stone and returned it after twenty years only because the Fatimid (fellow Ismsa'ilite) caliph, the powerful al‑Mansfir of Egypt, requested it. The Qarmatians cut the roads from Iraq to Mecca, and pilgrims over these routes either paid heavily for the privilege or were turned back. Before they finally fell, the Qarmatians set a record of a century of revolutionary violence and bloodshed‑all at bottom a kind of vengeance of the Persians upon the Arabs who had conquered them, a vengeance disguised, indeed, perhaps even to themselves, as religious obedience to the will of a divine imam descended from Muhammad.

The Royal BADSHADI MOSQUE in LAHORE, PAKISTAN. This handsome mosque was built for the Mughal ruler Aurangzeb in the seventeenth century. To save the pavement from soiling, pilgrims proceed to the mosque on marked walk‑ways.

Actually less dangerous but even more dreaded were the mysterious Assassins, who as exponents of what they called "the new propaganda" developed to a high point the terrorist art of worming one's way in disguise into the presence of Muslim rulers and officials and striking them down with a poisoned dagger. It did not matter how public the occasion was‑the Friday prayers at the mosque, the holding of court by a prince or king‑the more people present the better, The assassin aimed and struck and was himself struck down, or else seized and put to death after torture, but he endured all in the confident expectation of going directly to paradise, the promised reward he was seeking.

The founder and first grand‑master of this order was Hasan Sabbih (d.1124 A.D.), probably a Persian, though he claimed descent from a line of kings in south Arabia. It was he who had the inspiration to seize the mountain stronghold of Alamat, in Persia, perched on a high narrow ledge of rock three‑quarters of a mile long and several hundred feet wide, which he and his men fortified so expertly that it remained impregnable for two centuries. Here they supported themselves by their own farming and gardening of the land beneath the heights of their fortress. By sorties in force from their mountain fortress the Assassins captured other strongholds in northern Persia, and by sending missionaries into northern Syria, they were also able to start a vigorous movement there, which eventually led to the establishment of a powerful mountain kingdom with ten or more fortresses in the order's hands. It was here that the Crusaders came to know and to fear them and to be in awe of their leader, Rashid al‑Sinan, whose title "shaykh al‑jabal" was translated for them into "the Old Man of the Mountain." It is said that twenty thousand of them still survive as a now peaceful sect in the Lebanon Mountains.

Another aberrant Ismaili movement, that of the Druzes of the Lebanon Mountains, was the result of the missionary efforts of al‑Darazi (from whom the Druzes take their name) in the eleventh century. He persuaded these mountain‑dwellers that the Fatimid Caliph al‑Hikim, who mysteriously disappeared, was the last and most perfect of ten successive incarnations of God and would return as Mahdl‑. It is said that the Druzes, who have formed a closed society for centuries, number today some one hundred thousand in several separate locations.

Still another Isma'ili group, an offshoot of the Assassins, the Nizarites of Pakistan, India, Persia, and Syria, numbering some 250,000, have as their present head Agha Khan IV. He is a descendant of the chief of the Assassins and a Harvard graduate.

The greatest achievement of the Isma'ilis was their establishment of dominance over a major country for two centuries. We have previously mentioned the Fatimid caliphate of Egypt. This regime, claiming for its caliphs descent from the Prophet's daughter Fatima, came to power in North Africa, conquered Egypt, founded and built Cairo, including its great mosque, al‑Azhar, and at its peak controlled, from its power base in Egypt, North Africa, Sicily, Palestine, Syria, and both shores of the Red Sea, including Mecca and Medina. The Fitimids claimed that they were by descent and by the nass infallible imams and the only legitimate caliphs in Islam; therefore, the Sunriai 'Abassids were usurpers who should be driven from power. Hence, their interest in and long‑attempted control of Syria. But it was in Syria that they met their most serious reverses and were never able to get to Baghdad. When the tide had irreversibly turned against them, the last of the Fitimids was unseated by Saladin, himself a Khurd and a Sunnite, who as nominal wazir of Egypt commanded the army of Egypt that encircled the Crusaders by sealing off Syria and retaking Jerusalem. (Egypt is prevailingly Sunnite to this day.)

VII Further Developments

The Dervishes As we have seen, the Sufti movement, after observing in Syria the advantage of certain types of Christian organization, gave rise to the nearest approach in Islam to church worship and ecclesiastical organization. Under masters or guides the devotees of Suft mystical experiences drew apart into retreats or monastic houses, to live fraternally in something like communistic societies and to enjoy social fellowship along with their mystical raptures. Those of them who began a wandering life, dependent on charity, came to be called dervishes (from the Persian daruirsh, meaning "one who comes to the door," i.e., to beg). Because of their distinctive dress, their begging baskets, {Not all the dervishes beg, however. Most dervish orders raise their own food.} and their known addiction to ecstatic experiences, they excited great interest.

The poets celebrated them, some in fun, others in order to pay them grave respect. The "nightingale of Shiraz," the poet Sa'di, believed in the dervishes, and himself practiced meditation with them, but he warned them that a dervish is not made such by his clothes.

The dervish's course of life is spent in commemorating, and thanking, and serving, and obeying God; and in beneficence and contentment; and in the acknowledgement of one God and reliance on Him; and in resignation and patience. Everyone who is endued with these qualities is, in fact, a dervish, though dressed in a tunic. But a babbler, who neglects prayer, and is given to sensuality, and the gratification of his appetite; who spends his days till nightfall in the pursuit of licentiousness, and passes his night till day returns in careless slumber; eats whatever is set before him, and says whatever comes uppermost; is a profligate, though he wear the habit of a dervish.

Since the twelfth century a large and far‑flung number of dervish orders or brotherhoods have been founded, each with its own monastic retreats or houses, special rites, and methods of inducing ecstasy. The Qadariya is the first of these orders. Founded in Baghdad by 'Abd‑al‑Qadir al‑Jilani (1077‑1166), it has spread, thinly to be sure, to Java in the East and Algeria in the West. The so‑called Howling Dervishes (the Rifff'iya) came next, being founded in the second half of the twelfth century by Ahmad al‑Rifai. The widely known Whirling Dervishes (the Maulawiya) are members of an order founded by disciples of the Persian poet Jalil al‑Din Riarm, whom we have quoted on a previous page (p. 537 f.), and who bequeathed to his followers not his verses only but also, to accompany them, a method of using music as an important and stimulating element in their rites, whereby they were made to whirl about in ecstasy.

The more extreme of the dervishes have turned out to be little more than shamans. They astonish the pious, in the manner of their Hindu prototypes, by swallowing live coals and snakes and by passing needles, hooks, and knives through their flesh. Many wear special badges, use rosaries, and venerate the founders of their orders as saints.

The dervish orders parallel the Franciscans of Europe in admitting lay members, who live and work in the world but have stated times, usually in the evening, when they come to the monasteries to take part in religious exercises directed by a leader.

It should be added that though the sort of dervishes who have whirled, or howled, or lashed themselves into frenzy by using whips or knives have given dervishes as a group much notoriety, the majority are content to practice their quiet devotional life in the fellowship of their houses and do not show themselves often in public. Their popular following has been often quite large, for in medieval times, for most people, the SafI orders were religion in its most sincere form.

Veneration of Saints

The mention above of the practice by dervish orders of the veneration of their founders as saints brings before us another variation on the standard Muslim themes, the veneration of saints. In early Muslim literature the name wali (pl. waliyj) is given to persons who are "near or close in feeling." In a religious context the term comes to mean "friend of God" or "one who is near to God," as in Qur'an X.64. But the Sufts made wali mean saint, that is, a person possessea by God. R. A. Nicholson in The Mystics of Islam shows how human and natural this was: the wali conversing with a small circle of friends became, first a teacher and spiritual guide gathering disciples around him during his lifetime, and finally the sainted head of a religious order bearing his name. But saints are not exclusively Sufi. The Muslim world has produced them everywhere, as the long list of saints in Baghdad ("the city of saints"), Turkey (where each province had a saint), Arabia, Egypt, North Africa, and India attests. These saints have usually been placed in a hierarchical order differing slightly with the area. Those who are on earth are not always apparent or known even to themselves (hundreds live "hidden" in the world), whereas those who know one another and act together are arranged in an ascending order of merit, with decreasing numbers on the higher levels, until at the top or pole of the hierarchy stands the figure of the greatest saint of his age or time. Saints are sometimes distinguished from prophets, the holy proclaimers of the word of God; their special merit is to experience the ecstasy of union with God and afterwards to exhibit God in their own persons. In doing so, particularly those associated with the Sufis and the dervish orders are often credited with performing miracles (karimat, "favors" that God bestows), such as flying through the air, walking on water, being in several places at once, resurrecting the dead, turning earth into gold or jewels, and the like.

Although the practice is not Qur'anic, the Suftis and the common people, fairly generally through out the Muslim world, visit the tombs of Muslim saints to leave votive offerings, pray for the intercession of the saints, and ask their blessing (barakah) upon them personally. Many of these tombs are found in the vicinity of mosques and may quite often be surrounded by the graves of those whose last wish it was to be buried nearby. Of course, to worship the sainted dead is in direct conflict with the spirit, if not the letter, of the Qur'an, but most of the ulama have tolerated and even joined in it, because the consensus of the community (ijma) has almost everywhere overridden the objections of the critics.

The Feasts and Festivals of the Muslim Year

Although the Suruffs, Sufis, and Shi’ites have tended at certain points to differ to the extent of irreconcilability, it must be said that powerful unitive forces have always been at work. Chief is the Qur'an itself, and running a close second are the Five Pillars, especially the observance of the five daily times of prayer and the pilgrimage to Mecca. Not far behind in bringing a sense of over‑all unity to the Muslim world are the recurring feasts and festivals of the Muslim year. They were gradually developed through the centuries to the number of five. (Five plays a role in Islam comparable to three in Christianity.) These feasts and festivals are observed differently in the various Muslim lands, but they have a common intention.

The feasts are two:

1. The so‑called "little feast" at the end of the fast of Rama&n, called 'Id al‑Fitr. It is the occasion of great merriment and occurs on ihe first day of the month Shawwal.

2. The Feast of Sacrifice (Id al‑Adhi) or the "great feast." It falls on the day (the tenth day of the month Dhu‑al‑Hiija) when the pilgrims outside Mecca have returned half‑way from the Great Pilgrimage and are making a feast of sacrifice by ritually offering up the allowed animals and joining in a joyous sharing of their flesh (p. 5 24 f ) ‑

The festivals are three:

1. The New Year Festival (Muharram), observed during the first days of the first month. The Siff 'ites take this occasion to commemorate the death of al-Ijusayn and his little son in the night battle of Karbala'; they do so by dedicating the first ten days to lamentation, at the end of which a passion play is performed with much attention to the suffering and death of the son and grandson of 'Ali. {It could be said that whereas the celebration of the New Year throughout the Muslim world is unitive, this particular observance is divisive, for the "passion play" of the Shrites magnifies the tragedy of Karball' and perpetuates its memory. The story of the assault which caused the death of Husayn's son by a flying arrow, the slaying of a nephew by mutilation by the sword, and Husayn's own death and mutilation under the hooves of horses is dramatically re‑enacted, its effects heightened by amplifications bringing in angels, prophets, and kings. Also stressed are such peculiarly ShVite assertions as the preexistence of Muhammad (who is said to have designated 'Ali as his rightful successor some days before he "went back to heaven"), the divine powers and attributes of 'Alr, and the savior roles of Hasan and Husayn, the latter portrayed, like Christ, as vicariously atoning by his death for the sins of mankind. Little wonder that ShVites have at times been so aroused that they have rioted in vengeful fury, not without the sympathy of non‑ShVite witnesses of the dramatic episodes.}

2. The Festival of the Prophet's Birthday (Mawfid an‑Nabr), held traditionally on the twelfth day of the month Rab! 'al‑awwal. (In point of time this is the last of the festivals to be evolved.)

3. The Festival of the Prophet's Night journey (Lailat al‑Mir'jj), observed as a rule on the night preceding the twenty‑seventh day of the month Rajah. Mosques and minarets are lighted in honor of the famous "night journey," and the ha&ths concerning the event are reverentially read.

VIII Islam and Culture

Of necessity, all the world religions emerged, whether they were formative or reformative, from a pre‑existent culture, and depending on their relative success in winning assent, have partially or totally affected the cultural milieu from which they emerged or to which they spread. They have had stimulating effects not only on religious thought and literature but also on secular prose and poetry, architecture, music, painting, sculpture, social patterns, and politics. In the case of Islam, these developments need to be pointed out to the Western reader, because the cultural effects that Islam has had on the many lands to which it has spread have, in Western minds, been overshadowed by the literary ascendancy of the Qur'an; consequently the former have not been given their rightful place in histories of universal culture. We shall look briefly at both aspects of Islam's cultural impact.

But first it is interesting to mark the suddenness with which Islam's cultural history began. A rapidly expanding religion, it did not remain in its own land, as Hinduism, Taoism, and Confucianism remained for centuries in theirs; nor did it spread beyond the place of its origin by a long process of converting others to its faith, as did Buddhism, or by its adherents being dispersed, as were the Jews. Like European Christianity, it made its way both by conversion and by the military and political successes of its adherents; but unlike its European rival, which took centuries to reach its high water mark, it came with a rush out of Arabia and in a very short time overspread a vast domain, where in radically affected a variety of cultures.

A PAGE FROM THE QUR'TkN IN NORTH AFRICAN SCRIPT. This page is from a manuscript dated about A.D. 1300 and written in decorative script on parchment. It is more typical of Arabic characters in general than the Kufic script seen on an earlier page.

The Literary Effects of the Quran and its Language

The Qur'an has not only been the religious and moral standard by which Muslims have lived; its language, Arabic, has had the place in Islam that Latin has had in Roman Catholicism. As a result, Arabic is the liturgical language of Islam; and to the degree that it is used in mosques all over the world, it aids in the arabization that unites Muslims of many different tongues.

In the early days of Islam, naturally enough the hadiths, commentaries on the Qur'an, biographies of the Prophet, and other religious works were written in Arabic. Secular poetry and prose, when they were allowed a public role, followed suit. Furthermore, Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates, and Galen, and other non‑Muslim writers, were translated into Arabic (and were incidentally thus preserved for re‑translation).

It thus became the general rule in the western half of Islam, from Baghdad to Cordoba, for all serious writings to appear in Arabic, the international language of Muslim scholars. It was the accepted language for the "religious sciences" that set out to explain and interpret the basic Arabic works; and it was as well the language for the "instrumental sciences": jalsafia (philosophy), astronomy, medicine, mathematics, chemistry, and so on.

The Christian West came to be grateful for these Arabic writings. When the Muslim conquests had ended and the Mediterranean basin ceased to be in turmoil (from "barbarian" or northern as well as from Muslim or eastern invasions and raids), the Christian West found itself far less informed than were the Muslim lands about Plato, Aristotle, medicine, mathematics, astronomy, and science generally. The West was alerted to the riches of Muslim science, philosophy, and culture during the Crusades and by contact with Muslims in southern Italy and Sicily; but from the eleventh to thirteenth centuries the chief sources of knowledge of "the wisdom of the I ancients and the East" (knowledge of which initiated the Italian Renaissance) were the schools and scholars of Muslim Spain. Jews were to a great degree the intermediaries when the old Greek philosophic and scientific texts were re‑translated from Arabic into Latin and thus "recovered." But beyond this the considerable contributions of Muslim science and philosophy were also discovered. By rendering this service, the Muslim world greatly stimulated the development of Western thought.

Arabic, in its classical, or written, as over against its dialect forms, has continued to the present to be the preferred language of Muslim scholarship. Although, as we shall see, Persian, Turkish, and other literatures developed within the overall Arabic framework, they never became independent and autonomous as did works in the Romance languages that evolved out of Latin into independence, because Arabic has retained its character as a sacred language, the language by which God revealed himself to Muhammad.

Architecture, Painting, and Other Art Forms

Any visitor to Islamic lands is immediately aware of an outstanding architectural feature clearly indicative of the presence of Islam‑the mosque. In general plan it still resembles Muhammad's mosque in Medina, long since gone. After his time, highly trained builders and craftsmen of the conquered territories provided the structural and decorative skills that have added domes, minarets, columns, arcades, porticoes, wall tiles, mosaics, and other adaptations from Byzantine, Persian, Coptic, and central Asian structures. Two surviving mosques from the earlier centuries are world famous, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and the al‑Azhar in Cairo. Magnificent palaces, forts, and mausoleums are other representative achievements of Muslim architecture, the best known palace being the Alhambra in Granada, Spain, and the supreme example of a mausoleum, being the Taj Mahal at Agra, India, commonly regarded as fully comparable with the Parthenon at Athens and St. Peter's at Rome.

One form of Muslim art has provided the English language with the term arabesque; it refers to an architectural detail carved in wood or stone, usually an ornament or design of leaves, fruits, or flowers intertwined. Typical of Muslim interior decoration, it vies for favor with flat designs inlaid with colored stones or with metals such as silver, copper, and gold; painted lustreware and colorful enamelled masterpieces of the potter's art; wall tiles; and carpets woven in exquisite designs (the famous "Persian rugs"). All of these were produced in abundance from central Asia to Spain and are prized possessions of many Western museums.

Muslim calligraphy and painting have attained a similar classic rank. Manuscripts with illuminated lettering and paintings in red, yellow, and blue provide brilliant examples of this art form. In Persia the art of painting reached a peak in the fifteenth century when Bihzid, the most imitated painter in Islamic art, pursued his career in Herat and Tabriz, Persia. He and his followers set a high example for the Mughal and Rajput (Hindu) artists of India in later centuries. Subjects in Islamic painting range from luxuriant landscapes with human and animal figures to battle scenes with horses and elephants.

THE TAJ MAHAL, AGRA, INDIA. Erected by Shah Jahan in memory of his wife, this marble mausoleum is considered by many the most perfect building in the world. Only the Greek Parthenon is compared with it. Although the other buildings around it quite obviously belong to a particular century, it has a timeless character, as though in its perfection it is dateless and eternal.

DETAIL OF THE TAJ MAHAL, showing pieta dura (hard stone, in this case marble) arabesques with inlaid semiprecious stones of various colors forming geometrical and floral designs.

Perso‑Muslim Literature

In due time poetry and prose of a secular and often highly romantic and erotic character appeared in Persian (in the Arabic script). The reasons for their appearance were complex. It was natural, for one thing, to use the vernacular in conveying ideas to Persians not in a mawali (client) relationship with Arab tribes but belonging to the shu'ubiyya ("confederates" of the Arabs as a whole). They were in a sense still foreigners, even though they had embraced Islam, and they constantly used and were proud of their own language {Persian, however, was purged of words with Zoroastrian connotations, and to fill the gap, Arabic terms were brought in.} and of their past. They could communicate freely in Persian and were even a little defiant in doing so. Some Muslim writers refer here to the "quarrel (or revolt) of the Shu'abiyya." But "quarrel" does not account for all of the facts. In addition to the prompting of propriety that led to the use of Persian rather than Arabic for the earthy love lyrics that were composed, sheer creativity had a part to play. A talented line of court poets appeared from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries to delight and entertain the Persian‑speaking princes who had asserted their autonomy when the Abassid caliphate weakened and self‑governing states appeared (see p. 528). The blind poet Rudaki, "the father of Persian poetry," came at the turn of the tenth century. It was natural for Firdawsi after him to compose in Persian his powerful national epic, the Shahnama, glorifying the exploits of Rustam, the doughty warrior‑hero who unknowingly killed his heroic son Suhrab, a tragic tale known to every school child in Iran. Nizami followed in his steps when he wrote the long epic about the star‑crossed lovers Layla and Majnun and four other long poems.

Sufism had an Arabic origin, and many of its great writers preferred Arabic, but when the Suf'ite masses were addressed with poems, hymns, and dramas dealing with the martyrdoms of 'Ali and Husayn, the language was almost necessarily Persian.

As to the Sufis, from the tenth century onward they expressed their mysticism and their earthly and heavenly love in the kind of poetry to which the Persian language has been so suited. They poured their Persian into Arabic moulds, although they altered the borrowed verse forms in composing their poems: odes (qaTdas), lyrics (ghazals), and quatrains (rubj'is), the last being employed in the RubTiyat by Umar Khayyam. The master poets Sadi, Hafiz, and Rumi, whose mystic lyrics and "Qur'an of Persia" we have quoted elsewhere, and jinu after them, made Persian poetry famous from the Euphrates to the Ganges. (In India it became a mark of culture to be able to read and write in Persian.)

As for Persian prose, although it was used for scholarly writing, it also took the form of a brilliant fictional and anecdotal literature, which culminated in Sadis Gulistan, generally considered the masterpiece of Persian prose, witty, humorous, full of anecdotes and moral maxims extolling the religious life.

Had we the space, we could consider the rich Turko‑Muslim culture, and look into the less considerable literatures in Albanian, Berber, Swahili, Somali, Urdu, Panjabi, Bengali, Tamil, Malay, Javanese, and other languages‑a literary field prolific in insights into the diversity of the Muslim world and its cultures.

IX Recent Developments

That Islam has continued in the more recent past to give rise to powerful new movements within itself‑movements even of a disruptive kind‑is plain in the history of the last two centuries. These movements may generally be said, on analysis, to emphasize in various degrees purification, secularism, conservatism, reformulation, nationalism, and, in at least one heretical development, syncretism.

Before we survey these more recent movements, a general observation needs to be made. It might be thought that the reformulations that have occurred within modern Islam must be the inevitable effect of the influx of new ideas and practices from western Europe and America. There can be no doubt that this effect is mounting in significance, but it constitutes only part of the total situation. Muslims themselves find that the recent diversifications within their faith are principally due to two forms of Islamic self‑searching: (1) revival and reform due strictly to internal causes reaching back to the fourteenth century, and (2) a defensive restatement of the essential and central elements in Muslim belief and practice, attempted in the face of the encroachment of the modern West and in order to render Muslim minds immune to foreign subversion. Western science and technology have begun to penetrate the Muslim defenses, but Western thought has not done so to the same extent. Alien modes of looking at life and the world, whether in the form of the universalism of missionaries seeking to convert the Muslims to a world Christianity or of Western philosophy from Thomas Aquinas to Marxian dialectical materialism, have had an extraordinarily widespread negative effect in alerting the whole Muslim community to the threat of disintegrative change.

Conservatism and Purification

The prime instance of the first form of Islamic self searching is the purification begun in inner Arabia in the eighteenth century ‑ the Wahliffbi ‑ movement, a stern puritan reform that grew to great strength through the support of the emirs of the house of Sa'ud. It represented a return to earlier Hanbalite theories of conduct and was greatly influenced by the anti‑Safism of the fourteenth‑century writer Ibn Taymiya. The movement took its name from its originator Muhammad ibn 'Abd al‑Wahliab, whose aim was to lead Muslims in a return to Muhammad and the Qur'an. To this end he rejected all modifications of Muslim belief and practice traced to "the consensus of community opinion" (ijma'), except for those that went back authentically to the Medina community immediately after the death of Muhammad. liafti innovations" were especially frowned upon. Accordingly, the Wahhdbi‑s condemned all blood feuds and tribal distinctions and urged the utmost purity and simplicity of life, without wine or tobacco. Through the years they have firmly emphasized Muslim unitarianism, and so fierce has been their rejection of Sufi ‑inspired intercessory prayers at the tombs and shrines of holy men and women (which they denounce as saint‑worship, and therefore polytheism) that when they temporarily captured Mecca in 1806, they destroyed the tombs before which pilgrims did reverence. Again, in 1924‑1925, when the deposed sultan ceded Mecca and Medina to Sa'udi Arabia, they turned the birthplace of Muhammad himself into a camel's resting‑plaice and demolished the markers on the graves of Muhammad's family and of his Companions. To accept as true any belief not confirmed by the Qur'an, the authentic hadiths, or strict reasoning is an act of infidelity. Houses and clothes must be plain; joking, music, and gold ornaments are forbidden. Such games as chess should be given up because they may make the players forget the hours of prayer.

The extremism of the Wahliabis has been generally rejected by the Muslim world, but their devotion to historic Islam pure and undefiled has had pronounced reformative effects in North Africa, India, and the East Indies.

Ironically enough, the faithful in Sa'udi Arabia now find the outside world intruding mightily into their way of life. Their civil leaders have concluded agreements and treaties with the great powers with respect to the oil reserves under their sands, and Wadi Arabia has experienced not only a quick inflow of vast wealth but also the introduction in increasing measure of Western inventions and conveniences, such as automobiles, trailer‑trucks, airplanes, air‑conditioned housing, radios, movies, hospitals, sanitary devices, artesian wells, and much else of a like kind. It is a question whether the orthodox in Sa'udi Arabia can preserve their puritan simplicity and conservatism much longer.

The Sufis, meanwhile, have had too great a measure of support among the common people to worry overmuch because the Wahhabis assailed them. In the name of long‑corroborated religious experience they have continued to uphold the validity of personal religious response, intuition, the practices of their religious orders, and reverence for sainted leaders. This is true especially in the non‑Arab areas and particularly among the Berbers, Iranians, and Turks. But the Sufis have been chastened by Wahliab! puritanism and orthodoxy; in fact, they have abandoned many a practice to which they were once devoted.

When most of Africa and much of Asia came under the rule of the European powers, it was inevitable that Western books and periodicals, Western‑sponsored schools and academies, and still more the colonial administrations themselves, with all the political and econoniic changes that accompanied them, should introduce into the occupied areas new concepts of law and political organization, new forms of commercial tnd industrial enterprise, new modes of transport by and, sea, and air, improvements in agriculture, scienific medicine, and never‑before‑dreamed‑of wealth through the exploitation of newly discovered natural resources, particularly oil.

Conservatives who cling to the old Muslim way of ife naturally view these developments with more than a little alarm. But Muslims, conservative as well as iberal, have learned how to use the printed page. From bout the middle of the nineteenth century there began o appear Muslim books and periodicals that have enjoyed wide circulation from West to East, their general aim being to save Islam by uniting the Muslim 6rorld to meet the challenge of the contemporary scene, although the final effect has been to increase the diversity of opinion as to how this may be done. Perhaps the most important fact here is this: Muslims began to reason again as they had not actively done so in centuries.

Indeed, the Varna' or conservative scholars have had )me difficulty controlling the effects of this recovery f the use of reason, especially in the bold expression f private judgment. On the other hand, the conservatism of the 'ulama' has had wide support in every part of the Islamic world where the fear prevails that revelation may be corrupted by reason, if restraints are not imposed.

What seems to the religious classes the most shocking demonstration of the misuse of reason is the rise of secularist movements.

Secularism

The most startling political and cultural changes have occurred in Turkey. There secularism has reached an open form. The Young Turks, led by Mustapha Kemal, overthrew the Ottoman caliphate in 1924 and went on to revolutionary changes that were openly resigned to Westernize and secularize Turkey. The separation of "church" and state was inaugurated by ;he abolition of the shari'a ‑ oriented religious courts and the establishment of civil courts to preside over :he application of new laws affecting marriage, divorce, ;he rights of women, education, and public conduct n general. The wearing of thefez by men and the veil )y women was prohibited, and European dress was encouraged. Laws were passed to replace Arabic with Furkish in religious ceremonies and the Arabic script with the Latin alphabet in the public prints. The effect vas to remove Turkey from close interrelationships with the rest of the Muslim world and turn it toward he West.

But since World War II a "revaluation of Islam" has been taking place in Turkey. The state has introduced state‑regulated religious instruction into the educational system (with no intention of re‑uniting church and state); and villagers and their imams are allowed to persist in rejecting translations of the Qur'an into Turkish and continuing the use of Arabic in recitations of the Qur'an and in ritual prayers, both in the mosque and in private homes.

The open secularism of the government of Turkey as not been matched in any other Muslim state, although there is a secularist trend in leftist developments in Algeria, Albania, Libya, Syria, and Iraq, not to mention Egypt.

Modernism and Reformulation

During the last hundred years Egypt has been the :ene of religious and political developments that have had great importance in Muslim eyes. The revival of Egyptian influence began with the untiring efforts of Jamal al‑Di‑n al‑Afgham (1839‑1897), the founder of the pan‑Islamic movement, to unite the Muslims against European domination and to incite them to rid themselves of religious and social departures from a pure Islam based on Qur'Nnic orthodoxy, and thus enable them to meet the challenge of the European world. But a certain ambiguity attended his total stance. On the one hand, he called upon Muslims to oppose the West politically and go back to early Islam religiously; on the other hand, he urged them to democratize the Muslim states and prove a match for the West by cultivating modern science and philosophy. Concentrating upon the latter objective, his disciple, Muhammad 'Abduh (1849‑1905), a teacher and later a member of the administrative committee of the old University of Cairo (al‑Azhar), urged not only the necessity of renewed study of the classical Arabic theological works but also the introduction into the university curriculum of courses in modern science, geography, and European history and religion. He was resolved to take seriously the orthodox position that reason cannot contradict revelation but can only confirm it. Reason is, moreover, of decisive importance not only in moral conduct and the quest of happiness, to which all men are entitled, but also in the understanding of the principles of the Qur'an.

One of the consequences of his teaching has been the strengthening of tendencies toward a "modernism" that advocates a reformulation of Muslim doctrines and laws using modern as opposed to traditional language. But, on the other hand, his return, in the spirit of Walihabism, to Muhammad and the traditions of the early Medina community resulted in formation of a back‑to‑the‑Qur'an religious group called the Salafrya, led by his Syrian disciple Rashid Ridg, the editor of a periodical that was read from one end of the Muslim world to the other. The Salaft movement spread to North Africa, India, and the East Indies.

Turning now to India before its partition, we find a type of reformulation by a number of the Muslim liberal leaders that recalls that of the Hindu founders of the Brahmo Samaj. The readiness of intellectuals in India through the centuries to consider open‑mindedly every variety of thought is reflected in the broad mindedness of Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817‑1898). He was aided rather than hindered, curiously enough, by the spread of the Wahhabi‑ movement among Indian Muslims, for, as we have seen, its rejection of Suft emotionalism and its insistence on a return to Muhammad and the early Medina community gave new importance to reason as a guide in religion. He took his stand upon the supreme authority of Muhammad, the Qur'an, and the early traditions, asserting that both nature and reason confirm any open‑minded man in such a stand. Because Allah has created and supports nature as well as revelation, reason can find no real contradiction between them. Hence, science or the study of nature, when properly pursued, cannot conflict with the Qur'fLn but only confirm it. Accordingly, Sir Sayyid founded a Muslim university at 'Aligarh in 1875 with a curriculum that accompanied the study of the Muslim religion with courses in Western social and natural sciences (an advanced position from which the university, now in Pakistan, has since retreated).

Among the Indian intellectual leaders who were encouraged to take liberal positions influenced by Western thought was Sayyid Arn‑ir Ali, a ShVite, whose book The Spirit of Islam (first published in 1891 with the title The Life and Teachings of Mohammad) defends Islam as a progressive religion based on the perfect moral personality of Muhammad and the liberalizing teaching of the Qur'an. He felt that the medieval interpreters of Islam lost this vision of the true character of their faith and hardened its beliefs into too great rigidity. Even so, Islam has been more humane and fundamentally more liberal than Christianity has been. Islam, he said, was "founded on divine love" and has proceeded on the basis of the equality of men in God's sight. Islam strikes a modern note. This book is a classic among Muslim liberals and is widely used also by conservatives who wish to know what a modernist might believe. Even more liberal are the lectures delivered in English in 1928 by Sir Muhammad Iqbal and published under the title The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam. A poet at once cautious of and yet inspired by Sufi mysticism, Iqbal proposed a reconstruction of Muslim thought in quite non‑traditional terms; he stressed the validity of personal religious experience, the immanence of God, human creativity, and the emergence of the superman. He implied that the Western thinkers he cited, such as Bergson, Nietzsche, and Whitehead, were indebted to, if not descendants of, the giants of Muslim philosophy and science, and were therefore fulfilling a promise inherent in Islam itself He further hoped that. the dynamism that marked the spirit of Islam would break through the rigid patterns to which Muslims traditionally clung. Iqbal also published poetry in Urdu and Persian to express his lyrical views of the freedom of the self and its duty of selflessness toward society.

We should not exaggerate the influence of such intellectuals as these, for we need to be reminded of the words of H. A. R. Gibb, that "the illiterate Muslim, the villager, is in no danger yet of losing his faith, and, even if he were, the educated town‑bred modernist would have no word to meet his needs. His spiritual life is cared for by the Sufi brotherhoods, regular or irregular, by the imam of the local mosque, or by the itinerant revivalist preacher.

Regional Nationalism and Pan‑Islamic Unity

Jamil al‑Din al‑Afghani, to whom we have already referred as having, whether intentionally or not, encouraged the rise of Muslim modernism, was more directly interested in two political aims that often seemed contradictory: (1) Muslim unity (or Pan Islamism) and (2) regional reform of governments so as to insure the carrying out of the popular will to have autonomy in Muslim dominated areas. The former aim was universalistic, the latter nationalistic, both being held in an uneasy tension, a tension, however, that corresponded to political realities.

The Muslim historian Fazlur Rahman has put the political realities thus:‑

A Turkish, an Egyptian or a Pakistani peasant is a "nationalist" [in the sense of having "a sentiment for a certain community of mores, including language," that gives a sense of regional cohesiveness) and has always been so. But a Turkish, an Egyptian and a Pakistani peasant are also bound by a strong Islamic sentiment. [Their "nationalism"] is not averse to a wider loyalty and, in face of a non‑Muslim aggressor (as we have often witnessed during this and the preceding century) the two sentiments make an extraordinarily powerful liaison.

In India, Muhammad Iqbal, while decrying regionalism as divisive, nevertheless concluded that, in view of the impracticability of a caliphate that could draw the Muslim world into one, the best chance of preserving unity lay in establishing national states that would subcribe to the principle of multinational unity. Hence he proposed a regional Muslim state for northwest India, provided that this would not mean "a displacement of the Islamic principle of solidarity," for that would be "unthinkable." This opinion had a great deal to do with the founding of Pakistan as an independent state. In 1947 a Muslim state, composed of West and East Pakistan, was born. In India fifty million Muslims became a religious minority, with the political right to be represented in the Indian Parliament. As to Pakistan, Wilfred Cantwell Smith has said: "Before August 14, 1947, the Muslims of India had their art, their theology, their mysticism; but they had no state. When Jinnah proposed to them that they should work to get themselves one, they responded with a surging enthusiasm. Their attainment, on that date, of a state of their own was greeted with an elation that was religious as well as personal. It was considered a triumph not only for Muslims but for Islam." But what is an Islamic state? The framers of the constitution decided against making Pakistan a theocracy, for they did not wish the final decisions to be the prerogative of the 'ulama'; it was decided to make the whole people the final political authority. But the people have yet to become used to the practice of democracy, and so the intention to create a truly Islamic state is still just that: for Pakistan, after twenty‑five years of experience and trial, is still in the formative stage and has had the misfortune to have East Pakistan split off from it as Bangladesh.

In Egypt in 1952 a revolution overthrew King Farouk and established a military regime. Two years laterjamal 'Abd al‑N5sir ("Nasser") assumed power as president. In nationalizing the Suez Canal in 1956 and subsequently establishing the United Arab Republic, with Egypt and Syria as partners, Nasser attempted to achieve two aims: to rid Egypt of the last vestiges of colonial rule and to seek pan‑Arabic unity. He succeeded in his first aim but not his second, for Syria withdrew from the U.A.R. in 1961. But the dream of pan‑Arabic unity has survived his death, for his successor, Anwar al‑Sadat, has, at present writing, entered into an agreement with Libya and Syria that is designed to issue someday in a supranational. entity that will have one president, one flag, and one military command. Whether this agreement will hold up and whether it will succeed in incorporating into one structure other Muslim states, remains for the future to disclose. At all events, the ideal of a pan‑Arabic superstate has not died.

Prophetic Movements Leading Toward Syncretism

Beneath the surface of every religion one discovers a consuming desire on the part of many earnest souls to recover its vitality or the dynamism inherent in its beginnings. This often leads them to a revivalist return to earlier periods and sometimes in the opposite direction to radical thrusts toward the future.

The history of Islam is full of examples. The modernism we have reviewed is one. Prophetic movements proclaiming new light on the religious situation are another.

The Ahmadiya. One such developed in India‑ into an organized religious movement that has distinctly heretical aspects in the eyes of the orthodox. Its leader, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadiyan (d.1908) accepted homage as a Mahdi in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. A reading of the Bible convinced him he was also the Messiah (Jesus in a second coming), and in 1904 he proclaimed himself an avatar of Krishna. But he remained a Muslim in the sense that he said he was not a prophet in himself but only in and through Muhammad. In his teaching he made it clear that holy war is not to be carried on by the use of force but only through preaching. His followers, the Ahmadiya, are therefore at once pacifists and ardent missionaries. The Ahmadiya have split into several branches. The original or Qadiyani branch is consciously syncretist and all but outside the Muslim community. The Lahore branch is devotedly Muslim in character and has rejected the extreme claims that Ahmad made for himself, although they consider him to be a genuine "renewer of religion." Ahmadiya missionaries of both these branches are active in England, America, Africa, and the East Indies, where they make considerable use of the printed page and regard Christian leaders as their chief adversaries. They often maintain, as for example on the outskirts of London, their oun mosques, to which they cordially welcome all comers, including conservative Muslims.

HAIFA, ISRAEL. The Bahai Shrine on the slopes of Mt. Carmel is sacred to the members of this unique faith. The faith originated in Persia and has spread throughout the world.

Baha'i. Persia (or Iran) has unwillingly given rise to another syncretistic movement, one that has, like Sikhism, become a separate and distinct faith. This is Bahd'i. Its background is Shi'ite. Influenced by the teachings of a heretical Shi’ite to the effect that the imams of the Twelver sect were "gates" by which the believers gained access to the true faith, and that the hidden imam seeks further "gates" to conduct men to himself, a certain Mimi Ali Muhammad in 1844 added his name to the list and called himself Bab‑ud‑Di‑n ("Gate of the Faith"). His followers were called after him Babis. He proclaimed that his mission was to prepare the way for a greater than himself who should come after him and complete the work of reform and righteousness that he had begun. When he said his writings were scripture equaling, if not superseding, the Qur'gn, and on their basis advocated sweeping religious and social reforms, he was executed in 1850 as a heretic and disturber of the peace. Among his followers was a well‑born youth who, following Babi custom, took the name of Baha'u'llah ("Glory of God"). He was accused of complicity in an attempt by a fanatical Babi to assassinate the shah in 1852 and was exiled to Baghdad. After some ten years there, when he and his followers were on the point of departure, he announced that he was the one‑who‑should-come of whom the Bab had spoken. Moving with his followers, who now called themselves after him Bahd'is, he sought asylum in the Muslim areas to the west and was finally imprisoned by the Turks in Acre, Palestine, for the balance of his life. His writings reached the outside world. They advocated a broad religious view upholding the unity of God and the essential harmony of all prophecy when rightly understood. He called upon all religions to unite, for every religion contains some truth, because all prophets are witnesses to the one Truth that Bahaism supremely represents. The human race is one under God and will be united through his spirit when the Bahai cause is known and joined. Outlawed in Iran, Bahai, with its headquarters in Haifa in Palestine, is active in many countries, and especially in the United States.

Finally, what is Islam? We have come far enough to see that it cannot be treated simply as a set of more or less narrowly defined "religious" beliefs, for it is also a way of life, and more‑an entire cultural complex, including art and philosophical and literary works. It also includes many vital activities, each interacting with the others and with non‑Islamic religions and cultures. In this study we have become aware of these various aspects of Islam as we have pondered what constitutes the Islamic tradition, a tradition no more immune to inner movements of change, growth, and diversification than the other religious traditions of the world.