|
|
 The Umayyad Dynasty (661-750)  The character of Islam under the Umayyads
 The Umayyads lose control of the heart of the Ummah The rise of the Abbasids .... and the end of the Umayyad Caliphate in Syria
 The Umayyads continue to rule in isolation in Spain |
|
|
Islam under Mu’awiyah (661-680)
Mu’awiyah took the title of caliph in Jerusalem (rather than Medina) and soon simply moved the center of Muslim politics to his own administrative center at Damascus in Syria, which in essence became the new capital of the Islamic Empire ... and would continue to serve in that capacity for the 90 years that the Umayyads dominated the Ummah. Like Uthman, Mu’awiyah was more about the business of running an empire than exemplifying the virtues of an Islamic holy man. Under Mu’awiyah the Empire or Ummah was brought certainly under a high degree of political order (with many Byzantine Christians serving as advisors to Mu’awiyah in the running of this huge empire). But Mu’awiyah himself exemplified none of the spiritual virtues that Muslims looked for in their leaders. Mu’awiyah showed both a high degree of tolerance toward Christians and at the same time a lack of interest in opening Islam to any but those of pure Arab ancestry. In a sense he was making Islam a matter of special privilege for pure Arabs – something of a religious-political aristocracy. Actually this move was motivated in part by the awareness that converts to Islam from among the Christian population would no longer be required to pay the jizya. To Mu’awiyah it seemed more advantageous to have Christians as tribute-payers than as converts! The Sunni-Shi’ite split is formalized within Islam
When Mu’awiyah died in 680 his place was taken by his son, Yazid. But the party supporting the line of succession of Ali urged Husayn, Ali’s younger son,1to step forward to claim the title of caliph. But Yazid’s troops intercepted Husayn on his journey from Mecca to Kufa – and he was seized, executed ... and his head sent to Yazid in Damascus. This treatment of the grandson of Muhammad was a shock to the Muslim community and weakened the stature of the Umayyads among most of the Arab community. But even more significantly, his death gave the discontented Shi’ites a martyr, a distinct cause to lead them to identify themselves as separate from the rest of Islam (and his death date becoming a major holiday ... still celebrated to this day as a time of great mourning by all Shi’ites). From this point on there would be no going back to a spirit of unity within the Islamic world. Shi’a Islam would permanently distance itself from the rest of Sunni or orthodox Islam. And there would be no love lost between the two groups, as each considered the other an illegitimate offshoot of the Mohammedan legacy. The Islamic Ummah under the later Umayyads
From their capital at Damascus in Syria, the Umayyad family would provide the world of Islam with 14 caliphs. This period of Umayyad domination would be a time of strong organization ... and further expansion and consolidation of the Ummah. Into Spain. Most importantly for the Umayyads, their armies pushed the boundaries of Islam westward across North Africa ... reaching the Atlantic and then turning north across the narrow Gibraltar straits2 in 711, quickly overrunning Catholic-Christian Visigothic Spain. Apparently (though the historical record is silent about how all this actually occurred) a Muslim army of Arabs and even more numerous Berbers (recently converted to Islam) was probing the possibilities of exploiting a feud going on in Spain within the ruling circles of Visigoths. In the process the Muslims ended up rolling easily over the entire Visigothic kingdom after defeating the Visigothic army at the Guadalete River in 712.3 Stopped by the Franks at the Battle of Tours (732). But then the Muslim expansion into Europe came to a permanent halt. In 732 Christian Franks and Burgundians (German tribes) halted a Muslim advance north of the Pyrenees Mountains (into modern-day France) that had reached all the way to Tours ... and drove the Muslims south back across the Pyrenees. Then problems developed within the Muslim ranks between the Arabs and their Berber allies over the Arabs’ poor treatment of the Berbers ... and a full Berber revolt developed (740-743). This took the heart out of the Muslim expansionist spirit. The Umayyads settle into Spain. Thus, there in al-Andalus (‘Spain’) the Umayyads would be forced to settle in. And eventually at Cordoba they would establish their own independent power center ... after they lost the Damascus caliphate to the Abbasid dynasty in 750. Against the Byzantine capital of Constantinople. The Arabs were even able in 717 to advance all the way up to the walls of Constantinople. They were trying to take advantage of an internal conflict going on within the Byzantine Empire (rather typical of the times) between the Byzantine Emperor Theodosius III and his general Leo III the Isaurian. The Umayyads sided with Leo with the hope of using him to gain dominion over this last holdout of the Byzantine Empire. But Leo used the Arab support instead to drive out Theodosius and then place himself at the head of the Byzantine Empire (which he ruled from 717 to 741). The Arabs fared poorly in the venture. The Byzantine navy was able to destroy the Arab navy, preventing the Arabs from isolating Constantinople ... key to bringing any well walled city to defeat. Then a very hard winter set in on the Arab army, crippling it badly with famine and disease. Then reinforcements sent by both land and sea to help the Muslims were likewise destroyed by the Byzantines. Finally the next summer the Muslims gave up the venture ... not only saving the Byzantine Empire, but leaving the Muslims with little desire to continue to pursue the venture (it would not be until seven centuries later that the Muslims would finally succeed in bringing Christian Constantinople under their grip). 1The older brother, Hasan, had succeeded his father Ali as caliph in 661, but held that position only a few months before abandoning the title to Mu’awiyah ... and then going into seclusion back in Medina. He was poisoned nine years later, perhaps by his wife under Mu’awiyah’s urging. 2"Gibraltar" is the Spanish rendering of the Arabic Jabal Tariq or ‘Mountain of Tariq,” named after the Arab general Tariq ibn Ziyad who led the advanced attack of the Umayyads into Spain. 3Also (apparently) the ease of this Islamic victory occurred at least in part because the Latin population seemed not to be particularly fond of their Visigothic (German) rulers. |
|
| In
general, locating the heart and nerve center to Syria's Damascus served
to give Islam a much more cosmopolitan character. The blend with
Christian Byzantine or Roman culture became very obvious.
Mu'awiya was not a particularly religious individual but instead seemed
to enjoy more the secular pleasures of being the powerful ruler of a
vast empire. He was a great organizer and succeeded in bringing
to an end the Islamic in-fighting that had brought him and his party to
power ... as well as making the office of caliph truly the powerful
political center of the Islamic Ummah. Nonetheless, there remained an Arabic overlay to this social-political structure ... as the language itself gradually replaced the Greek and Persian first used widely in the administration of this new, vast empire. Also direct Arabic descent became increasingly important as a matter of social status ... as muwali or converts from the ranks of the Greeks and Persians joined the Islamic faith – in part to be able to avoid the heavy taxes imposed on the non-Muslims within the empire. Indeed, under the Umayyads converts were even discouraged so as to keep the status of being Arab Muslim a highly protected privilege ... and to keep the imperial revenues flowing. But the muwali would find ways of taking on Arabic names in the intent of slipping into to the higher social status of the Arab Muslim. Also, under Mu'awiya the Arab political habit of decisions by a council of equals and an easy accessibility of counselors to their sheikh was maintained. Yet as subsequent generations of Umayyads took over the caliphate, that Arabic trait would give way to an increasingly autocratic character in which the caliph ruled according to his own personal will, and that alone. Furthermore the later caliphs’ autocratic rule would be maintained increasingly by simply the rigorous and even rough-handed policing of society by the caliph’s army ... causing Islam to lose a great deal of the support previously coming voluntarily from the Muslims themselves. |
|
| The
loss of this voluntary support would end up being the undoing of the
Umayyad dynasty’s control of the faith and its huge religious
empire. The muwali in the ranks of the Islamic military were
forbidden to join the officer ranks of the army ... and received much
lower pay than their Arab officers, causing a rising resentment among
these non-Arab footsoldiers (Arabs were given the added dignity of
being horsemen in the caliph’s fast moving army). Rebellions thus
began to break out within the ranks ... joined even by Arabs whose
lineage was inferior and thus were not entitled to the privileges
(including huge pensions and the avoidance of taxes) extended to the
more aristocratic Arabs. Ironically the effort to alleviate
somewhat the huge grievance of the people concerning the increasingly
heavy tax burden imposed on them only left the Umayyad authorities in
Damascus short of funds needed to continue their rule over the
Ummah. Damascus was losing its control over events developing within the empire. Feuds began to break out again among the tribes of the Arabian desert. The Kharijite party of bitter dissenters, instinctively aligned against the empire’s political authority, was joined by an equally unhappy group of Shi’ites still angry over the way Ali and his descendants (notably his two sons) were tragically removed from power by the Umayyads. And finally the growing group of dissenters in Persia found themselves coming under the tough leadership of an aggressive Muslim of Muhammad’s Hashemite clan, Abu al-Abbas al-Saffah ... forming itself into an "Abbasid" movement of increasingly greater power. Now the Umayyad dynasty was under direct and very serious challenge. |
|
| Al-Saffah
put forward his own personal claim to dominion over the Islamic Ummah
on the basis of his direct descent from an uncle of Muhammad named
Abbas ... plus an ever widening power base founded among the Persians,
who resented the pretensions of the Arab aristocracy, considering
desert Arabs to be naturally inferior to the those born to what was
clearly the superior Persian civilization. Thus a bit of
nationalism (Persian versus Arab) was rising within the world of Islam
... a nationalism that al-Saffah was glad to exploit in order to bring
himself to power. In 747 the Abbasid military seized control from the Umayyad governor in Persia ... and under the command of the Persian general Abu Muslim moved their troops westward, driving back the Umayyad forces facing them. In 749 the Abbasids were so bold as to declare their leader al-Saffah as the new caliph (749-754) and the following year met and defeated a huge Umayyad army in northern Iraq. The Umayyad caliph was able to escape to Egypt, but was caught and beheaded ... thus bringing the Umayyad caliphate in Damscus fully to an end. Now began the eradication of Umayyad power everywhere ... in a highly brutal fashion – including the slaughter of 80 members of the Umayyad clan leadership at a banquet supposedly called to work out an Arab-like compromise. At this point the central seat of Islamic power was moved East from Damascus in Syria to Baghdad in Persia ... also bringing Islam under greater Persian cultural influence (art, music, literature) ... although Abbasid Islam would remain staunchly Sunni in nature. |
|
|
Abd al-Rahman I
Only one Umayyad, Abd al-Rahman, escaped the slaughter of his kinsmen ... and made his way to Al Andalus (Spain). Here he took control of the Islamic government at Cordoba and declared himself Emir or Governor, of a fully sovereign Emirate operating independently of the Abbasid Caliphate seated at Baghdad. But his rule was not secure ... either along the north with the border with the Christian principalities nor to the south across the straits of Gibraltar in Afriqiya (Africa). The emirs after him had an even harder time holding onto their power .... for by 900 the power of the Umayyad Emir did not extend much beyond the capital of Cordoba itselt. Abd al-Rahman III
Then in 912, Abd al-Rahman III was able to bring all of al-Andalus and parts of Northwestern Africa back under Umayyad power ... restoring the region to a peace that it had not enjoyed for generations ... and taking for himself the title of Caliph. This brought Umayyad to a level equalling even the Shi'ite Fatamid Caliphate based in Tunisia, the Umayyad's major competitor for control of North Africa. For the next century the region grew greatly prosperous, expanding its trade ... and strengthening the character of its intellectual and artistic culture ... to a level unsurpassed in the rest of Islam ... and to the great admiration of even Christian Europe. The breakdown of Umayyad power in Spain
However a civil war among the Umayyads greatly weakened their power ... and little by little, during the 970s al Mansur (known to the West as Almanzor) – the vizier or advisor to a very young Umayyad Caliph Hisham – took ever greater control over the affairs of state ... until by 980 he was in total control of the caliphate. With his incredible energy he took on the Christian states in Northern Spain ... winning a number of battles ... but thereby driving the Christians into a greater unity of effort against him. Then when al Mansur died in 1002, his first son ruled a short six years before dying and a very ambitious half-brother took over, even trying to take the title of caliph away from Hisham. This precipitated a huge civil war among the Muslims... which in turn by 1030 had broken the Muslim state into a number of now fiercely competing Muslim taifa or principalities – thus shattering Umayyad power and bringing the Umayyad caliphate to an end (1031). The Spanish reconquista
This in turn now gave the Christian kingdoms (Asturias, Leon, Castile, Navarre and Aragon) the opportunity to begin their advance (the reconquista or "reconquest") against the various Islamic states ... a process which would continue over the next 450 years until the last Muslim state of Granda was overthrown in 1492, virtually ending the Muslim presence in Catholic Spain permanently (also the year of the Spanish-sponsored discovery of America by Columbus!). |
Interior, Great Mosque of Codoba (late 900s)
The Court of the Lions, the
Alhambra, Granada (2nd half of the1300s)
|
Map of the Islamic world
showing the distribution of the Islamic schools of Shari'a law
Wikipedia -
"Maliki"
Miles
H. Hodges
