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Q)Write an essay on any either the Ummayads or the Abbasaids. The first fitnah ended when Muawiyyah was recognised as Caliph in 661 after the death of Ali, and he moved the capital of the Caliphate to Damascus. Muslims had been horrified by the fitnah , and had realized how vulnerable they were in their garrison towns, isolated from their fellow Arabs and surrounded by potentially hostile subjects. They wanted strong government, and Muawiyyah, an able ruler, was able to give it to them. He revived Umar's system of segregating the Arab Muslims from the population, and even though some Muslims in Arabia were still agitating for the right to build estates in the occupied territories, Muawiyyah continued to forbid this. He also discouraged conversion, and built an efficient administration. Islam thus remained the religion of the conquering Arab elite. At first the Arabs, who had no experience of imperial government, relied on the expertise of dhimmis , who had served the previous Byzantine and Persian regimes, but gradually the Arabs began to oust the dhimmis^1 from the top posts. Over the next century, the Umayyad caliphs would gradually transform the disparate regions conquered by the Muslim armies into a unified empire, with a common ideology. This was a great achievement; but the court naturally began to develop a rich culture and luxurious lifestyle, and became indistinguishable in many respects from any other ruling class. Ruling the tribesmen was difficult and M decided to govern them indirectly but at the same time demand their services as soldiers according to Patricia Crone. He divided the empire into provinces and appointed kinsmen to govern each of them. These governors being few and kinsmen were above rivalry. Collection of tax and assessment of revenue was depended on indigenous scribes who helped run provincial and central bureaucracy. There the tribesmen were largely kept out of fiscal administration and law and administration depended on the province’s chief who were both law- makers and war commanders. Chiefs were penalised by the Caliph in case of misbehaviour. Only one house was given power, the Kalb, leading tribe of Qudaa, Syria, with which M had allied himself through marriage. Muawiyyah was a religious man and a devout Muslim, according to the prevailing notion of Islam. He was devoted to the sanctity of Jerusalem, the first Muslim qiblah^2. He worked hard to maintain the unity of the umma and believed that all Muslims were brothers and must not fight one another. He accorded the dhimmis religious freedom and personal rights based on Quranic teaching. But the experience of the fitnah had convinced some Muslims, such as the Kharajites, that Islam should mean more than this, in both the public and the private domain. The first Ummayad caliphs weren’t absolute monarchs but ruled like Arab chiefs. Though the Arabs always distrusted monarchy and believed in choosing the best man available by election, but, the fitnah made them realise the dangers of disputed succession. Thus, a conflict arose when M realized that he must depart from Arab traditions to secure the succession, arranged for the accession of his son, Yazid I (680-83). According to Patricia Crone, this highlights the poignancy of the post conquest development where the Muslims destroyed everything they religiously value in society by bringing in wealth and power and societal and political stratification and a state which allowed an imperial form to survive. The tribe had unwittingly allowed the right over their conquered land go away from the days of Umar and had to thus accept a hereditary caliphate. Thus, by 100 years they had alienated from the decision- making process as much as the people of the Byzantine and Sasnid empire, which they had so strongly despised. This led to the second fitnah. (^1) specific individuals living in Muslim lands, who were granted special status and safety in Islamic law in return for paying the capital tax (^2) the direction of the sacred shrine of the Kaʿbah in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, toward which Muslims turn five times each day when performing the salat (daily ritual prayer).
Yazid 1 died prematurely in 683, and civil war broke out. The main challenge came from the son of the first fitnah- Ibn al-Zubayr, who wished to rule the Muslim world from Mecca. Syria and Egypt fell to Marwan 1, who was an Ummayad elected by Qudaa. Zubayr established control over Iraq, Basra also fell to him. Basran Kharijities rampaged Arabia and western Iran under their own ‘caliphs’ while the fitnah was on. Ali’s son, al-Husayn in 680 was massacred at Kerbala, and the Kufans had failed to support him, and his death remains a symbol of the Shii Muslims. The Kufans then supported a rebel called al- Mukhtar, who claimed to be the emissary of the Messiah ( mahdi ). He broke convention by supplementing his army with non-Arab forces in Kufah. He was defeated by al-Zubayr’s brother in 687 and Iraq remained under Zubayrid rule until 691. In 691, Abd-al-Malik (685-705), Marwan 1’s son and successor reconquered Iraq in 692, killed al-Zubayr himself which led to the damage of the Meccan sanctuary. This further tarnished the Ummayad image. Abd al-Malik (685-705) was able to reassert Umayyad rule, and the last twelve years of his reign were peaceful and prosperous. He was not an absolute monarch, but after the second fitnah he was clearly tending that way. He upheld the solidarity of the ummah against the local Arab chiefiains, brought rebels to heel and pursued a determined policy of centralization. Arabic replaced Persian as the official language of the empire; for the first time, there was an Islamic coinage, decorated with Quranic phrases. In Jerusalem, the Dome of the Rock was completed in 691, the first major Islamic monument, which proudly asserted the supremacy of Islam in this holy city which had a large Christian majority. It announced that Islam had come to stay. The Dome also laid the foundations of the unique architectural and artistic style of Islam. There was no figurative art, to distract worshippers from the transcendence that cannot adequately be expressed in human imagery. Instead, the inside of the dome was decorated with Quranic verses, the Word of God. The dome itself, which would become so characteristic of Muslim architecture, is a towering symbol of the spiritual ascent to heaven to which all believers aspire, but it also reflects the perfect balance of tawhid. Its exterior, which reaches towards the infinity of the sky, is a perfect replica of its internal dimension. It illustrates the way in which the human and the divine, the inner and the outer worlds complement one another as two halves of a single whole. Muslims were becoming more confident, and were beginning to express their own unique spiritual vision. Despite disapproval, Abd al-Malik ensured that his son al-Walid I succeeded him and this was the first time that dynastic succession was accepted without much ruckus. By then the Ummayad dynasty had reached its zenith, and the Muslim armies had conquered North Africa and Spain. The Arabs felt no compulsion to attach and conquer western Christendom in the name of Islam. But trouble was again brewing by the end of the reign of Umar II (717-20)- the expanding state had outrun its resources. Umar had to pay for a disastrous attempt to conquer Constantinople, which had not only failed but led to heavy loss of manpower and equipment. Umar was the first caliph to encourage the dhimmis to convert to Islam, and they were eager to join this dynamic new faith, but since they no longer had to pay the poll tax (jizyah), the new policy resulted in a drastic loss of revenue. He tried to model his behaviour on that of the rashidun, stressed the ideal of Islamic unity, treated all the provinces on an equal basis (instead of favouring Syria) and was humane towards the dhimmis. He was very popular, but his Islamic policies, which endeared him to the pious, were not good for the economy of the ailing empire. The reigns of his successors were punctuated with revolts and rumbling discontent. It made little difference whether the caliphs were dissolute, like Yazid II (720-24), or devout, like Hisham I (724-43). Hisham was more sound a caliph, who stablisied the empire, albeit using more autocratic measures but he had become a conventional absolute monarch accorifng to Karen Armstrong and this was abhorrent to the Islamic traditions. Trouble thus brewed when the Shiis demanded that this wouldn’t have happened if the descendents of Ali had ruled, radical Shii saw Ali as an incarnation of the divine (like Jesus), believed that Shii leaders who had been killed in an insurrection were in temporary "occultation" and would return to inaugurate a utopian realm of justice and peace in the Last Days.
could see that opposition to this regime was pointless, but the upside was that people were able to live more normal, undisturbed lives. Harun al-Rashid was a patron of the arts and scholarship, and inspired a great cultural renaissance. Literary criticism, philosophy, poetry, medicine, mathematics and astronomy flourished not only in Baghdad but in Kufah, Basrah, Jundayvebar and Harran. Dhimmis participated in the florescence by translating the philosophical and medical texts of classical Hellenism from Greek and Syriac into Arabic. Building on the learning of the past, which had thus become available to them, Muslim scholars made more scientific discoveries during this time than in the whole of previously recorded history. Industry and commerce also flourished, and the elite lived in refinement and luxury. This was a major digression from what Islam originally stood for, but there wasn’t much resistant in the time of peace. The religious scholars who had emerged during the Ummayad period weren’t averse to collaborate and were appreciative of rulers who could keep the unity of the umma intact and prohibited revolt. But a problem arose where the scholars had exemplified the Prophet and the Rashidun Caliphs and their ideal govt. the ideal ruler was no autocrat and adult males participated in military and political decisions and there was no political hierarchy or hereditary aristocracy. But this was dramatically opposite to what the Abbasaid organisation was. Thus, the scholars couldn’t give the Abbasaid empire Islamic legitimation and regarded them as rulers doing menial and the dirty job of transgressing Islamic norms. They believed that the Abbasaids couldn’t represent Muslims. The scholars however preferred the Abbasaids over the Ummayads but they were to be deemed as kings, not caliphs. Thus, there came a situation whereby it was believed that the Caliphs couldn’t provide guidance and the scholars thus replaced them as a separate religious authority, the Shariah, as the body of Islamic law was called. Under the Ummayads, each town had developed its own fiqh^3 , but the Abbasids pressed the jurists to evolve a more unified system of law. Since conversion to Islam had been encouraged, the dhimmis were becoming a minority. Muslims were now a majority, not a small elite group, isolated from the non-Muslim majority in the garrison towns. Some of the Muslims had come to the faith recently, and were still imbued with their old beliefs and practices. A more streamlined system and recognized religious institution was required to regulate Islamic life for the masses. A distinct class of ulama^4 (religious scholars; singular: alim) began to emerge. Judges (qadis) received a more rigorous training, and al-Mahdi and al-Rashid encouraged the study of law by becoming patrons of fiqh. But like all Islamic piety, the Shariah was also political. The Shariah totally rejected the aristocratic, sophisticated ethos of the court. It restricted the power of the caliph, stressed that he did not have the same role as the Prophet or the Rashidun, but that he was only permitted to administer the sacred law. Courtly culture was thus tacitly condemned as un-Islamic. The ethos of the Shariah, like that of the Quran, was egalitarian. There were special provisions to protect the weak, and no institution, such as the caliphate or the court, had any power to interfere with the personal decisions and beliefs of the individual. Each Muslim had a unique responsibility to obey God's commands, and no religious authority, no institution (such as "the Church") and no specialized group of clergies could come between God and the individual Muslim. All Muslims were on the same footing; there was to be no clerical elite or priesthood acting as an intermediary. The Shariah was thus an attempt to rebuild society on criteria that were entirely different from those of the court. It aimed to build a counter- culture and a protest movement that would, before long, bring it into conflict with the caliphate. By the end of the reign of Harun al-Rashid, it was clear that the caliphate had passed its peak. The economy was in decline. Harun al-Rashid had tried to solve the problem by dividing the empire between his two sons, but this only resulted in a civil war (809-1 3) between the brothers after his (^3) the theory or philosophy of Islamic law, based on the teachings of the Koran and the traditions of the Prophet. (^4) scholar
death. It was a mark of the secular spirit of the court at this date that unlike the fitnah wars of the past, there was no ideological or religious motivation in this struggle, which was simply a clash of personal ambition. When al-Mamun emerged as the victor and began his reign (813-33), it was clear that there were two main power blocs in the empire. One was the aristocratic circle of the court; the other, egalitarian and "constitutionalist," bloc was based on the Shariah. Al-Mamun was aware of the fragility of his rule. In 816, he signalled his inauguration of a new order by designating the 8th^ Imam of the Shiites, Ali al- Rida his heir and changing the black colour of the Abbasaid flag to green. The Iraqis rebelled and denounced al-Rida’s designation as a Zoroastrian ploy and raised another Abbasaid to the throne. Other provinces were also chaotic and in 818 Mamun gave in, eliminated his heir and returned to Iraq. But, he continued to favour Shiism and eventually tried to claim the religious authority vested in the Shiite Imam for himself. In 833, he inaugurated an inquisition (mihna) which was signed by the ulama and proclaimed that the caliph and court theologians knew better than Islam. The inquisition continued to the reign of al-Mutawakkil but wasn’t succeeded. Later caliphs also tried to woo the Shiis and oscillated between one religious faction and another, to no avail. Caliph al-Mutasim (833-42) tried to include the Turkish slaves to his personal corps but failed amd this got him alienated from his ppl. He moved his capital to Samarra, which isolated him further. Increasingly, during the late ninth and early tenth centuries, there were armed revolts by those militant Shiis who were still committed to political activism and had not retreated into mystical quietism, and the economic crisis went from bad to worse. But these years of political disintegration also saw the consolidation of what would become known as Sunni Islam. Gradually, the various legists, the Mutazilites and the ahl alhadith pooled their differences and drew closer together. An important figure in this process was Abu al-Hasan al-Ashari (d. 935), who attempted to reconcile the theology of the Mutazilites and Hadiths and it was during this time that we see the development of many factions like the Sunnis and Shuubiays. However, not all peoples and provinces of the empire would submit to the imperial order. Mountain peoples, semi-sedentary villagers, peasants, nomads, and segments of the town populations, including strata of the upper as well as the lower classes, refused to accept the system. They denied its legitimacy, and rebelled against it, though they could not overthrow it. Nor could they be altogether repressed. The Abbasid regime was thus locked into constant struggle with its opponents.
