The Venture of Islam
The Venture
of Islam
ｾ
ｾ
Conscience and History in a
Warld Civilization
MARSHALL G. S. HODGSON
VOLUME TWO
THE EXPANSION OF ISLAM
IN THE MIDDLE PERIODS
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO AND LONDON
Some of the material in these volumes has been
issued in a different form in Introduction to
Islamic Civilization (volumes 1, 2, 3, Copyright ©
1958, 1959 by The University of Chicago), in A
History of Islamic Civilization (Copyright © 1958
by Marshall G. S. Hodgson), and in an earlier
version of The Venture of Islam (volumes 1, 2,
Copyright © 1961 by Marshall G. S. Hodgson).
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 1974 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 1974
Paperback edition 1977
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: Vol. 1: 0-226-34683-8 (paper);
Vol. 2: 0-226-34684-6 (paper);
Vol. 3: 0-226-34681-1 (cloth); 0-226-34685-4 (paper)
LCN: 73-87243
13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04
10 11 12 13 14
䡬
⬁ The paper used in this publication meets the
minimum requirements of the American National
Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
CONTENTS
VOLUME II
List of Charts
List of Maps
vi
vii
BOOK THREE: The Establishment of an International Civilization
I. Prologue to Book Three
I. The Formation of the International Political Order,
945-1118
II. The Social Order: Mercantile Interests, Military Power,
Liberty
III. Maturity and Dialogue among the Intellectual Traditions,
c. 945-1111
IV. The $ufism of the Tariqah Orders, c. 945-1273
V. The Victory of the New Sunni Internationalism, 1118-1258
VI. The Bloom of Persian Literary Culture and Its Times,
c. 1111-1274
VII. Cultural Patterning in Islamdom and the Occident
BOOK FOUR: Crisis and Renewal: The Age of Mongol Prestige
Prologue to Book Four
I. After the Mongol Irruption: Politics and Society, 1259-1405
II. Conservation and Courtliness in the Intellectual Traditions,
c. 1258-1503
III. The Visual Arts in an Islamic Setting, c. 1258-1503
IV. The Expansion of Islam, c. 1258- 1503
A Selective Bibliography for Further Reading
Glossary of Selected Terms and Names
Index to Volume II
v
I
3
12
62
152
201
255
293
329
369
371
386
437
501
532
575
581
587
CHARTS
VOLUME II
BOOK THREE
The Islamic Earlier Middle Period, 950-1250, with Reference to
Events in the Oikoumene
6-7
Comparative Chronology: The Transition into the Middle Periods,
14-17
945-1118
18-21
Chronology of the Individual States, 945-1118
Muslim Belles-Lettrists, Scientists, Philosophers, and Theo16 9
logians, 945-1111
Types of Muslim Esoteric Elitism
197
Filiation of the Tariqahs and Their Founders, 945--1273
215
Sufis of the Earlier Middle Period, 945-1273
223
The Age of Sunni Triumph, 1118-1258
257-59
The Classical Persian Belles-Lettrists to 1291, with a Few Arabic
Writers
29 8
Muslim Philosophers and Theologians in the Early Middle
Period, 1111-1274
31 6
BOOK FOUR
The Islamic Later Middle Period, 1250-1500, with Reference
to Events in the Oikoumene
The Ages of Mongol Prestige, 1258-14°5, and of the Timuris,
1405-1500
Early Growth of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1453
Later Learned Men, 13°0-15°6
Islamic Expansion in Africa and Southeast Asia
vi
392 -95
42 9
468- 69
553
MAPS
VOLUME II
The age of the Fatimid Dynasty
The western Mediterranean
Samanids, Buyids, and I):ara-khanids
The Ghaznavids and the Seljuk empire
Trade routes through the Afro-Eurasian Arid Zone and the
Southern Seas
The Crusading period in Syria and Anatolia
The Murabits and Muwa1)1).ids
The central Islamic lands in the early thirteenth century
Mongol expansiC?n, mid-thirteenth century
The spread of Islam to 1250
The Mongol Powers in Hiilegii's time, 1255-65
The central Mediterranean through India, fourteenth century
Growth of the Ottoman empire to 1503
The conquests of Timur, 1370 - 1405
The expansion of Islam, 1250-1500
Malaysia and Indochina
The Sudanic lands
The northern regions
vii
24
30
34
40
75
263
270
277
289
290
411
413
425
431
534
550
554
565
BOOK THREE
The Establishment of an
International Civilization
All truth is a shadow except the last, except the
utmost; yet every truth is true in its own kind.
It is substance in its own place, though it be but
shadow in another place. . . .
-Isaac Pennington
PROLOGUE TO BOOK THREE
The Middle Periods of Islamicate history
After 945 eE, the most characteristic traits of the classical 'Abbasi world,
with its magnificent caliphal empire and its Arabic-language culture, were
gradually altered so greatly that we must set off a major new era. The world
of Ｌｲｵｾｮ｡ｍＭｬ
of Harun aI-Rashid, of al-Ma'mun, still readily discernible in
its outlines in the time of al-Muqtadir (908-932), was scarcely recognizable
five or six generations later. Baghdad gradually became a provincial town
and the very name of the caliphate eventually disappeared. During the five
centuries after 945, the former society of the caliphate was replaced by a
constantly expanding, linguistically and culturally international society
ruled by numerous independent governments. This society was not held
together by a single political order or a single language of culture. Yet it did
remain, consciously and effectively, a single historical whole. In its time, this
international Islamicate society was certainly the most widely spread and
influential society on the globe. (We shall refer to the period before about
1250 as the Earlier Middle Period; to the period from then to about 1500 as
the Later Middle Period.)
So far as there has been any common image of Islamicate culture, it has
tended to be that of the Middle Periods-the periods after the pre-Islamic
traditions in the Nile-to-Oxus region had died out (with the decline of the
dhimmi population to markedly minority status), but before the Oikoumenic
context (in terms of which the Islamicate culture was formed) began to be
disrupted by the basic social transformation of one of its regions, the Occident. Taken narrowly, this means the time between the mid-tenth century at
the collapse of the classical caliphate, under whose auspices the culture had
been taking form, and the end of the fifteenth century, when a new world
geographical balance gave its first intimations with the opening up of the
wider oceans by Occidentals. The period of the High Caliphate tends to be
seen through the image formed of it in the Middle Periods; those elements of
its culture are regarded as normative that were warranted sound by later
writers. More important, the problems that we have seen as distinctive of the
Islamicate culture as such-the problems of political legitimation, of aesthetic
creativity, of transcendence and immanence in religious understanding, of
the social role of natural science and philosophy-these become fully focused
only in the Middle Periods.
This way of seeing Islamicate culture is partly legitimate. To the end of
the High Caliphal Period, the Islamicate culture was still in process of formation; it was still winning the population to Islam and transforming the
Irano-Semitic traditions into the new form which only after 945 was ready to
be carried through large parts of the hemisphere. And by the sixteenth
century, quite apart from the first glimmerings of the Occidental trans3
4
ESTABLISHMENT OF AN INTERNATIONAL CIVILIZATION
formation yet to come, new tendencies within Islamdom had reached a point
where-at least in the ｴｾｲ･
main empires then formed-in many ways, the
problems we see at the start of the Middle Periods were at least transposed;
even before being superseded by the radically new situation in the Oikoumene
that supervened by the eighteenth century. The Middle Periods form a unity
which encompasses the bulk of the time of fully Islamicate life. But it must
be recognized that the Earlier Middle Period, up to the mid-thirteenth
century, differed in its historical conditions rather importantly from the
Later Middle Period, the period after the Mongol conquest had introduced
new political resources, and the rather sudden collapse of the previously
expanding Chinese economy produced-or reflected-a deterioration in the
mercantile prosperity of the mid-Arid Zone. What was to be so different in
the sixteenth century was well launched in the Later Middle Period.
The Earlier Middle Period was relatively prosperous. By Sung times
(which began about the end of the High Caliphal Period), the Chinese
economy was moving from a primarily commercial expansiveness into the
early stage of a major industrial revolution, in which industrial investment
was increasing at a fast and accelerating rate in certain areas, especially in
the north, while in the south new methods were multiplying the agricultural
productivity. The Chinese gold supply multiplied enormously with new
mines opened up, and its trade to the Southern Seas (the Indian Ocean and
the adjoining seas eastward) naturally increased in quantity and quality as
well. Conceivably in part in response to the increased supply of gold, traceable
to China, the pace of commerce and of urban activity was speeded up elsewhere also, most notably in the Occident of Europe, itself newly intensifying
agricultural exploitation of its cold and boggy north by use of the mouldboard plough. In such circumstances, the Islamicate lands, still at the crossroads of hemispheric commerce, would find their commercial tendencies, over
against the agrarian, still further reinforced; the results were not necessarily
the most favourable, in the long run, even for commerce, yet they would
allow the Muslims to demonstrate the strength and expansiveness of their
social order.
The precariousness of agrarianate prosperity
Opportunities for cultural expression within a society are increased with the
diversity and differentiation of social institutions through which individuals
can find expression. Institutional differentiation, in turn, depends on a high
level of investment, not only in the ordinary economic sense but in the sense
of investment of human time-of specialized effort and concern-such as
makes possible, for instance, cumulative investigation in science. But high
investmedt presupposes prosperity, in the sense not merely of a well-fed
peasantry (though in the long run this may be crucial) but of a substantial
surplus available for other classes, allowing them both funds and leisure to
PROLOGUE TO BOOK THREE
5
meet specialized needs. Hence while prosperity cannot assure cultural
creativity, in the long run it is a presupposition for it.
The opportunities for Muslims to take full advantage of the potentialities
for prosperity and creativity offered by the Oikoumenic situation were
limited by a feature of any society of the agrarianate type: that is, the
precariousness of any prosperity, and of the complexity of institutions that
tends to come with sustained prosperity, if it rose above a minimum institutional level. Once an urban-rural symbiosis was achieved on a subsistence level, so that agriculture could hardly proceed normally without the
intervention of urban products and even urban management, almost no
historical vicissitude short of a general natural disaster was likely to reduce
the society to a less complex level than that. But many events might ruin
any further complexity, beyond this level, that might have arisen in a society,
any complexity of institutions either imaginative or especially material; and
might force the society (at least locally) down nearer to the basic economic
level of urban-rural symbiosis.
Massive assault from less developed areas, whose masters were not prepared to maintain the sophisticated pattern of expectations that complex
institutions depend on, could reduce the level of intellectual and economic
investment and with it the level of institutional complexity of a more
developed area, if that area was not so highly developed as to possess unquestionably stronger force than peoples less developed. Gibbon noted this
point in comparing the predicament of the agrarianate-Ievel Roman empire
with the Occident of his day, which could not be conquered except by people
who had themselves adopted its technical level. As Gibbon also noted, internal pressures also could reduce the level of complexity. Spiritual, social, or
political imbalances might cripple a ruling elite and its privileged culture in
several ways: they could evoke outright disaffection in less privileged classes
-a disaffection that might be expressed in a drive for social and spiritual
conformity to populistic standards, as well as in outright rebellion; or they
could result in paralysis within the ruling elites themselves, which could
hasten political collapse and military devastation. Then could emerge a
militarized polity, with despotism at the point of military power and anarchy
at the margins, neither of which served to support delicate balances among
institutions.
Complex institutions might survive many a conquest and much serious
internal tension, and more often than not the ravages of warfare or the
damages of political mismanagement could be repaired if they did not recur
too continuously for too long. But in the long run, such resiliency depended
on a high level of prosperity, which in turn depended on a balance of many
favourable circumstances which were not necessarily self-perpetuating. Too
much political failure could undermine the very resources with which
ordinary political failure could be counteracted. The disturbance of this
balance in any way could lower the level of social complexity or even
The Islamic Earlier Middle Period, 950-1250,
with Reference to Events in the Oikoumene
Nile-to-Oxus Region
European Region
9°0
After goo, towns begin to grow
in N.W. Europe; Baltic countries,
Hungary converted to Christianity
Far Eastern Region
Sh i' i I:Iamdanids in Aleppo;
Samanids virtually independent
in Transoxania
Shi'i Buyids in Baghdad, to 1055
945
9 60 /1
96o? Traditional date for conversion of Turks along Syr (]axartes)
river
Sung dynasty in China; steppe
peoples to N.W. and N. remain strong
Byzantines strong in Anatolia, push into Syria (to 1025)
Shi'i Fatimids in Egypt (to 1171); found
Cairo
9 69
Civil service examination system;
merit system built around knowledge
of literary classics
9 89
997-1030
After 1000
1017/18
Prince of Kiev converted to Christianity
Normans invade S. Italy
I:Iamdanids collapse
Italian cities rise to international importance, look to E. Mediterranean and
Black Sea trade
Caliphate of Cordova collapses
Sunni ｓ･ｬｪｵｾｳ
N. and W.
1055
1060
Ma1).mud of Ghaznah; expands into
India, Khurasan, and Transoxania
Samanids collapse and their
domains divided between Ma1)mud and
J5:ara-khanids; I):ara-Khitays press Turks
from E.
Almoravids found Marrakash
into Baghdad and lands
Sungs encourage sea trade; compass
in use; printing of classical texts using
movable type
Cities proliferate and flourish;
merchants more important
Paper money used as well as coins
Sungs lose control of territories in their
N.W. and N.E. to steppe peoples (?)
1066
Normans invade England (and
Sicily, 1060)
ｓ･ｬｪｵｾｳ
begin pushing into Anatolia
1085
Toledo falls to Reconquista Christian
forces
logo
Saint Mark's Cathedral built at Venice
Khitay people (related to 'Mongols') rule
N. China as Liao dynasty
Nizari assassins formed
Crusaders into Syria (to 1291);
take Jerusalem (to 1187)
1099
Juchen, from N.E. enter and rule N.China,
displace Khitays, who move toward W.,
set up Ｇｾ｡ｲ Ｍｋｨｩｴ｡ｹｊ
empire
1122
J5:ara-Khitays (to
Turkestan
1130
1154
1211)
begin rule in E.
Death of Roger II of Sicily, patron of
Islamic learning
118 7
Saladin takes Jerusalem from the
Crusaders and most of the rest of Syria
Ilgo?
Khwarazm shahs expand their power;
Ghuris take Delhi, 1190
1204
1211
Latin Crusaders take Constantinople
121 5
Magna Charta
Mongols devastate Transoxania and
Khurasan
Crusaders lose Jerusalem for last time
1220'S
12 44
12 49-5 0
12 58
1261
Mongol detachment appears N.E. of
Transoxania, ｾ｡ｲ Ｍｋｨｩｴ｡ｹｳ
go down
before Khwarazm shahs and steppe
nomads
-
Saint Louis in Egypt
Mongols sack Baghdad, kill caliph
Mamliik forces turn back Mongol forces
in Syria, Mamluks displace Ayyiibid
rulers; Hiilegii distracted from Syrian
venture by troubles with Berke
Chingiz Khan takes Yenching (capital)
from Juchen
8
ESTABLISHMENT OF AN INTERNATIONAL CIVILIZATION
occasionally reduce it, at least locally, to the minimum economic base-level
of society of the agrarianate order.
To some degree, in some periods and areas in Islamdom in the Middle
Periods, this precariousness of agrarianate-level prosperity did make itself
felt. On the whole, the prosperity of much of Islamdom evidently declined
especially in the later part of the Middle Periods, and a limit was presumably
put to further development of institutional complexity. In some cases, there
was a retrogression; though the impression that has been prevalent among
historians, that there was a general retrogression proceeding through the
Middle Periods, is probably incorrect. We have far too little evidence, as yet,
to define precisely what happened. In any case, there was clearly no economic
expansion within most Muslim lands comparable to what took place in
western Europe or in China during the first part of the Middle Periods. This
fact forces the student of the society to confront two questions. First, the
great political question, in many cases, must be: how was the inherent threat
of political disintegration to be met? Second, if any general consequences of
hemispheric economic activity are to be looked for, we must often inquire
what sorts of social orientation were encouraged as a result in the mid-Arid
Zone, rather than expecting an overall higher level of investment and of
institutional differentiation.
But though such questions must repeatedly be posed, economic precariousness is not yet the same as general economic decadence. Documentable
decline in prosperity often turns out to have been local rather than general.
Moreover, the effect of any economic decline on cultural activity and institutional complexity may be temporary; if a new (lower) level of resources
is stabilized, prosperity on that base can again be a very effective foundation
for cultural activity. It must be recognized that, at least in some fields,
effectively high levels of prosperity were often reached in Islamdom. An
agrarianate economic base-level was almost never fully reverted to, and even
in the most unprosperous periods and regions a certain amount even of
economic development was taking place. Meanwhile, in many parts of Islamdom some portions of the Middle Periods were very prosperous indeed, even
if sometimes on a quantitatively narrower base than once. Such prosperity
led to high creativity; probably at least as high as in most periods and most
areas of the Oikoumene before the Modern Technical Age.
On cultural unity
Between 950 and 1100 the new society of the Middle Periods was taking form.
A time of disintegration for the classical "AbbaSI patterns was thus a time of
institutional creativity from the perspective of the Middle Periods themselves. By the beginning of the twelfth century, the main foundations of the
new order had been laid; between 1100 and 1250 it flowered, coming to its
best in those fields of action most distinctive of it.
PROLOGUE TO BOOK THREE
9
This society was at the same time one and many. After the decline of the
caliphal power, and with the subsequent rapid enlargement of the Dar
aI-Islam, not only Baghdad but no other one city could maintain a central
cultural role. It was in this period that Islam began to expand over the
hemisphere: into India and Europe, along the coasts of the Southern Seas
and around the northern steppes. There came to be considerable differentiation from one Muslim region to another, each area having its own local
schools of Islamicate thought, art, and so forth. In the far west, Spain and
the Maghrib were often more or less united under dynasties sprung from the
Berber tribes of the Maghrib hinterland; these countries had a common
history, developing the art which is known from the Alhambra palace at
Granada, and the philosophical school of Ibn-Tufayl and Ibn-Rushd (Averroes). Egypt and Syria, with other east Arab lands, were commonly united
under splendid courts at Cairo; they eventually became the centre of specifically Arabic letters after the decline of the Iraq with the Mongol conquests
(mid-thirteenth century). The Iranian countries developed Persian as the
prime medium of culture, breaking away seriously from the standards of the
High Caliphal Period, for instance in their magnificent poetry. Muslims in
India, opened up to Islamicate culture soon after 1000, also used Persian,
but rapidly developed their own traditions of government and of religious
and social stratification, and their own centres of pilgrimage and of letters.
Far northern Muslims, ranged around the Eurasian steppes, likewise formed
almost a world of their own, as did the vigorous mercantile states of the
southern Muslims ranged around the Indian Ocean.
Yet it cannot be said that the civilization broke up into so many separate
cultures. It was held together in virtue of a common Islamicate social
pattern which, by enabling members of any part of the society to be accepted
as members of it anywhere else, assured the circulation of ideas and manners
throughout its area. Muslims always felt themselves to be citizens of the
whole Dar aI-Islam. Representatives of the various arts and sciences moved
freely, as a munificent ruler or an unkind one beckoned or pressed, from one
Muslim land to another; and any man of great stature in one area was likely
to be soon recognized everywhere else. Hence local cultural tendencies were
continually limited and stimulated by events and ideas of an all-Muslim
scope. There continued to exist a single body of interrelated traditions,
developed in mutual interaction throughout Islamdom. Not only the cultural dialogue that was Islam as such, but most of the dialogues that had
been refocused under its auspices in the Arabic language, continued effective
even when more than one language came to be used and Arabic was restricted,
in the greater part of Islamdom, to specialized scholarly purposes.
But the unity of the expanded Islamdom of the Middle Periods did not hold
in so many dimensions of culture as it had, in the greater part of Islamdom,
under the High Caliphate. The Islamicate society as a whole had initially
been a phase of the Irano-Semitic society between Nile and Oxus, building
10
ESTABLISHMENT OF AN INTERN ATION AL CIVILIZATION
on the everyday cultural patterns of its underlying village and town life.
In the Islamicate lettered and other high-cultural traditions we find a greater
break with the past than in most traditions of everyday life in the region;
yet the Irano-Semitic high-cultural traditions, of which the Islamicate
formed a continuation, had always been nurtured by the humbler regional
traditions of everyday life. But as Islamdom expanded extensively beyond
the Nile-to-Oxus region, the cultural break became more total. The everyday
culture of the newer Muslim areas had less and less in common with that in
the original Irano-Semitic lands. Not only language differed, and many
patterns of home life. such as cuisine or house building, but also formative
features like agricultural technique, and even much of administrative and
legal practice.
What was carried throughout Islamdom, then, was not the whole IranoSemitic social complex but the Islamicized Irano-Semitic high cultural
traditions; what may be called the 'Perso-Arabic' traditions, after the two
chief languages in which they were carried, at least one of which every man
of serious Islamicate culture was expected to use freely. The cosmopolitan
unity into which peoples entered in so many regions was maintained independently of the everyday. culture, and on the level of the Perso-Arabic
high culture; its standards affected and even increasingly modified the culture
of everyday life, but that culture remained essentially Indic or European or
southern or northern, according to the region.
Indeed, even between Nile and Oxus local cultural patterns had varied
greatly and the Islamicate unity prevailed only limitedly on the local,
everyday level. Customary law could be as distant in Arabia itself from the
Shari'ah law of the books as in the remotest corner of the hemisphere. Yet
the Irano-Semitic core region continued to be distinguishable within the
wider Islamdom. There the Islamicate society and its specifically high culture,
because of its original relation to local conditions and patterns, had deep
local roots as compared to the areas in which the Perso-Arabic tradition
meant a sharp break especially with the high culture of the past and had
little genetic connection with the everyday levels of culture. We may call this
central region the 'lands of Old Islam', though the point is not the priority
of Islam there but its continuity with earlier traditions; Islam in the Maghrib
was almost as old as between Nile and Oxus, yet the Islamicate culture was
not much founded in the Latin culture which had preceded it there and the
Maghrib cannot be regarded as part of its core area. Throughout the Middle
Periods, the lands from Nile to Oxus maintained a cultural primacy in
Islamdom which was generally recognized. Muslims from more outlying areas
were proud to have studied there and, above all, emigrants from those lands,
men whose mother tongue was at least a dialect of Persian or Arabic, had
high prestige elsewhere. The social patterns and cultural initiatives of the
core area were accorded a certain eminence even when not followed.
The Middle Periods, then, \vhich pre-eminently represent Islamicate culture
PROLOGUE TO BOOK THREE
II
to US, suffered two pervasive cultural limitations: despite considerable
prosperity, their high culture was repeatedly threatened with a reduction of
economic and social investment toward minimal agrarianate levels; and in
the increasingly wider areas of Islamdom outside the region from Nile to
Oxus, the Islamicate high culture was always tinged with alienness. These
facts pose underlying problems, which may not be the most important
historical problems for the student of the Middle Periods, but which are never
quite to be escaped. Why should such weaknesses have appeared in the
civilization at all? But then why, despite them, the tremendous cultural
vigour, power, and expansiveness of Islam and the Islamicate civilization
throughout these periods, when in the name of Islam a richly creative culture
spread across the whole Eastern Hemisphere?
The Formation of the International
Political Order, 945"-1118
The Earlier Middle Period faced problems of totally reconstructing political
life in Islamdom. The time saw great political inventiveness, making use, in
state "building, of a variety of elements of Muslim idealism. The results
proved sound in some cases, but provided no common political pattern for
the IsIamicate society as a whole; but that society nonetheless retained its
unity. This was provided rather by the working out of political patterns on
relatively local levels, both military and social, which tied the world of
Islamdom together regardless of particular states. The lamali-Sunni caliphate
assumed a new role as a symbolic rallying point for all the local units. The
resulting political order turned out to have remarkable toughness and
resiliency and expansive power.
Development of political and cultural multiplicity
From the point of view of what had preceded, the political developments of
the tenth century can be looked at as the disintegration of the caliphal
empire. Where opposition Shi'i movements did not gain a province outright,
the provincial governors became autonomous and founded hereditary
dynasties, or local herdsmen-soldiers seized power and gave the caliph only a
nominal allegiance. In any case, this one generally acknowledged authority
was rendered impotent "and, after 945, the government he headed, already
internally disrupted by its mercenary soldiers, lost control even of its home
provinces. The caliph became a mere cipher in an empire parcelled out
among usurpers.
What broke down, of course, was the political idea that had supported the
caliphal power. It is what may be called a Ipolitical idea' which gives individuals and groups a historical basis for expecting that the state will
endure as a power to be reckoned with despite any given current crisis. This
implies not merely the subjective prestige of legitimacy (important though
that is) but also concrete geographical, economic, military, and sociocultural components which gather together standing group interests effectively enough to give most groups concerned a practical reason for hoping
the state will survive, or at least for expecting others will so hope. On this
basis they will, willingly or by way of precaution, forgo short-term interests
if they conflict with the long-term interests of the state power.
12
FORMATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ORDER
13
It was a conception of the advantages of the unity of the Muslims that had
held the caliphal state together through a series of major crises-the first
fitnah at the time of 'All, the second at that of 'Abd-al-Malik, then the revolution which overthrew Marwanl power, and finally the division of the
empire between al-Ma'mun and al-Amin. All parts of the arid region from
Nile to Oxus had relatively close ties with the rest; men in any part of the
region were likely to travel to other parts or at least have connections there,
and were concerned to see a common political stability. Sustained by the
concentrated resources of the Sawad, the central bureaucracy was able, on
the whole, to command peace within the region as a whole and to suppress
local inequities, and to assure the free flow of trade and the existence of large
concentrated markets. Throughout the empire, the idea prevailed among the
politically active that not only the greatest moral prestige but also the
greatest material advantage was to be had through unity-in practice, that
is, through accepting whichever claimant to central power could command
strongest support. In the last resort, if secondary interests proved inconsistent with unity there were usually enough who chose to bet on the side of
unity to ensure its victory. Consequently in any crisis, when some section of
the body politic defected, the central power was able to command the
support of other sections in sufficient strength to break up the points of
resistance.
But by the time of al-Mutawakkil, the central civil authority was becoming
discredited. However much ideally the notion of Muslim unity was still
cherished, in practice the idea had ceased to work. The court was financially
mismanaged and unable to give effective leadership; under these circumstances, the soldiery, which as a body of mercenaries did not identify itself
with the Muslim community at large so much as with their individual commanders, ceased to respect the court; their commanders were therefore in a
position to override the civil authority; and-the crucial point-there was
no other section of the population which identified its interests with the
central caliphal power and possessed enough solidarity to counterbalance the
soldiery if the soldiers ever united on anything. With the central power thus
paralyzed at home, respect for it failed in the provinces; those who counted
there politically found it profitable and feasible in the immediate circumstances to support a governor who retained the revenues at home rather than
send them to Baghdad. As the court's revenues diminished, its power of
attraction dwindled and defection snowballed.
In the tenth century it was still locally established powers, or the armies
they had originally raised, that took up the leadership that the Baghdad
court no longer provided. But the separate governors and generals stood, in
themselves, for no serious political ideas; they presented mere fragments of
the old caliphal state. By the eleventh century political disintegration had
proceeded so far that alien wandering Turkic nomads, possessed of the single
unpurchasable virtue of military loyalty to their tribe, had solidarity
14
ESTABLISHMENT OF AN INTERNATIONAL CIVILIZATION
Comparative Chronology: The 'fransition into the Middle Periods,
945- IIIR
945-1055 Predominance of Shi'i powers, failure to
establish a Shi'i caliphate
961-976 al-I:Iakam II of Spain (and Morocco),
fosters science and letters at C6rdova; improves
Cordova mosque
978-1008 aI-Mansur (and son, "1002-8) effective
rulers in Spain; peak of Muslim power there
*969-1171 Fatimid dynasty in Egypt on basis of
Isma'ili Shi'ism (not recognized by other Shi'is);
builds naval empire
952-975 al-Mu'izz: Cairo founded and becomes
Fatimid capital, 972
996-1021
｡ｬＭｾ ｫｩｭＺ
his eccentric life is occasion
for founding of Druze sect; patron of optician
Ibn-al-Haytham (965-1039)
944-967 The I:Iamdanid Sayf-al-dawlah tries to
head off Byzantine aggression at Aleppo, where
I:Iamdanids hold till a bout 1015 in some form;
patronized al-Mutanabbi' .(915-965), poet; also
the pioneering Faylasuf, aI-Farab! (d. 950)
968 Antioch lost to Byzantines
949-82 'Adud-al-dawlah, maintains Bftyid centre
in Iran and Iraq; caliph, since 945, figurehead
under Bftyids
976-997 Nul}. II, last strong Samanid ruler maintaining caliphal administrative traditions; his
libraries educate Ibn-Sina (980-1°37), physician
reckoned the greatest Faylasuf
1010 A king at Gao on the Niger converted to Islam
*See the following chart, on the chronology of the individual states, for further
details.
FORMATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ORDER
1031-90 Numerous small dynasties rule various
parts of southern Spain (called Reyes de Taifas);
peak of Spanish Arabic poetry
1034-67 'Ali aI-Da'I, first $ulay1).id, rules much of Yemen
and the
Arabia
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high point of Fatimid Isma'llism in
999-1165 Ileg-khans, heads of a Turkish tribe since
932, small Muslim power at Kashghar, take
Transoxania from Samanids
*998-(1161) Khurasan goes to the Ghaznavids in
the Afghan mountains (from 976 the area had
been newly Islamized under Samanid aegis); after
1001 the Ghaznavids also control the Panjab
998-1030 Ma1).mnd of Ghaznah devastates N. W.
India and attracts scholars from former Samanid
territories
1010 Shah-Na1nah written by Firdawsi, epic of
pre-Islamic Iranian kings
973-1048 aI-Blrnnl, historian and mathematician,
makes a sophisticated study of Indian culture
1050 The Fatimids send the Arab Bedouin Bann
Hilal into N. Africa to punish defection from
Isma'ili cause; they devastate large areas
973-1058 Abu-l-'Ala'al-Ma'arri, sophisticated
ascetic poet of Syria, last great figure of classical
Arabic tradition
1055-1220 Restoration of Sunnism on an international basis (with caliph acting as a political
accreditor. Military leaders as amlrs: madrasahtrained 'ulama' setting the intellectual tone and
that of civil administration, $ftfi shaykhs leading
in spiritual life, all-amirs, 'ulama', and shaykhs
-tending to hold position as much by personal
prestige as by hereditary position or by subordination to authority, and to be relatively free to
move from one Islamic land to another with
role unchanged
15