THE ARAB PERIOD
Islam in its earlier form was entirely an Arab religion. The temporal
side of the Prophet Muhammad’s mission shows him engaged in an effort
to unite the tribes of the Hijaz in a fraternal union, to limit the
custom of the _razzia_ (_ghazza_) or marauding foray, and to form an
orderly community. These temporal aims were due to the influence of
Madina on the Prophet and to the conviction that it was only in such a
community that his religious teaching could obtain a serious attention.
In Mecca he had been faced with constant opposition chiefly due to the
tribal jealousies and strife which formed the normal condition of a
Bedwin community. Madina was a city in a sense quite different from
that in which the term could be applied to Mecca. It had developed a
civic life, rudimentary no doubt but very far in advance of the Meccan
conditions, and had inherited a constitutional tradition from Aramaean
and Jewish colonists. At Madina the Prophet began to perceive the
difference produced by the association of men in an ordered communal
life as contrasted with the incoherence of the older tribal conditions,
and the accompanying difference of attitude towards religion. This
last was not really due to civic life but more directly to Jewish
influence, although no doubt the conditions of city life were more
favourable to the evolution of speculative theology than those of the
wilder tribes. The older Arabs seem to have accepted the idea of one
supreme God, but speculated little about him: they did not regard the
supreme deity as at all entering into their personal interests, which
were concerned only with the minor tribal deities who were expected
to attend diligently to tribal affairs and were sharply censured when
they appeared to be negligent about the interests of their clients.
The desert man had no tendency to the sublime thoughts about God with
which he is sometimes credited, nor had he any great reverence towards
the minor members of his pantheon. The Prophet found it one of his
most difficult tasks to introduce the observance of prayer amongst the
Arabs, and they do not appear very much attached to it at the present
day. In Madina the Prophet was in contact with men whose attitude
towards religion was very different and who were more in sympathy with
the principles which he had learned from very much the same sources as
themselves.
In Madina, therefore, the Prophet added a temporal side to the
spiritual work in which he had been previously engaged. It was not
consciously a change of attitude, but simply the adoption of a
subsidiary task which seemed to provide a most useful accessory to
the work which he had already been doing. Its keynote is given in the
Madinian Sura 49.10, “Only the faithful are brethren, wherefore make
peace between your brethren.” It was a call to his fellow Arabs of the
Hijaz to cease their strife and to unite in the bonds of brotherhood.
Such a union on the part of those whose habits and ideals were warlike
and who were disinclined to the arts of peace, necessarily produced
an attitude of hostility towards persons outside their community.
Was this militant attitude any part of Muhammad’s plans? The answer
must certainly be in the negative. The military enterprises of early
Islam were no part of its original programme. In those enterprises the
Prophet and his immediate successors show a hesitating and dubious
attitude; obviously their hands were forced and they take the lead
reluctantly. As Fr. Lammens says:--
Le Qoran travailla à réunir les tribus du Higaz. La prédication de
Mahomet réussit à mettre sur pied une armée, la plus nombreuse, la
plus disciplinée qu’on êut vue jusque-là dans la Péninsule. Cette
force ne pouvait longtemps demeurer sans emploi. Par ailleurs
l-islam, en imposant la paix entre les tribus, ralliées à la
nouvelle religion ou simplement à l’état médinois en formation,--le
_ta´līf al-qoloūb_ poursuivait ce dernier objectif--l’islam allait
fermer tout issue à l’inquiète activité des nomades. Il prétendait
supprimer à tout le moins limiter, le droit de razzia, placé à
la base de cette société patriarcalement anarchique. Il fallait
s’attendre à voir le torrent; momentanément endigué, déborder sur
les régions frontières.
“Que Mahomet ait assigné ce but à leurs efforts? Il devient
difficile de défendre cette thèse, trop facilement acceptée
jusqu’ici.”
(Lammens: _Le berceau de l’islam_. Rome, 1914, i. p. 175.)
In the expedition against Mecca a militant attitude was the inevitable
result of compelling circumstances. The Meccans were actively hostile
and had adopted a persecuting attitude towards those who accepted
the new religion. At the time the Quraysh tribe, to which Muhammad
belonged, was so far in the ascendant that its adhesion was necessary
for the progress of Islam in the Hijaz: the championship of some
prominent tribe was essential, and Muhammad himself was deeply attached
to the traditional “House of God” at Mecca, to which his own family was
bound by many associations; besides he desired the adherence of his
own tribe as his mission was to it in the first place. Had the Meccan
opposition not been broken down the Muslim religion could have been
no more than the local cult of Madina, and even as such would have
had to be perpetually on the defensive. No doubt the “holy war” as an
institution was based on the traditions of this expedition, but such a
war is related to the later enterprises for the conquest of non-Arab
nations by a line of development which the Prophet himself could hardly
have anticipated. The challenge to Heraclius is on a similar footing.
Although we may not be disposed to accept the traditional account given
by Bukhari, there no doubt was some such challenge. But Heraclius had
only recently re-conquered Syria for the Byzantine Empire, the land he
had acquired included a considerable portion of the Syrian desert which
formed a geographical unity with Arabia, and amongst his subjects were
Arab tribes closely akin to those of the Hijaz.
Islam became a militant religion because it spread amongst the
Arabs at a time when they were beginning to enter upon a career of
expansion and conquest, and this career had already commenced before
Muhammad had got beyond the first--the purely spiritual--stage of his
work. The only reason why the earlier Arab efforts were not followed
up immediately seems to have been that the Arabs were so surprised
at their success that they were unprepared to take advantage of it.
For some time previously Arab settlements had been formed in the
debateable land where the Persian and Byzantine Empires met, but this
encroachment had been more or less veiled by the nominal suzerainty
of one or other of the great states. The Quda, a tribe of Himyaritic
Arabs, had settled in Syria and become Christian, and was charged by
the Byzantine Emperor with the general control of the Arabs of Syria
(Masudi: iii., 214-5); that tribe was superseded by the tribe of Salih
(id. 216), and that by the Arab kingdom of Ghasan which acknowledged
the Emperor of Byzantium as its overlord, whilst the Arab kingdom of
Hira acknowledged the Persian king. Somewhere between A.D. 604 and 610,
when the first beginnings of persecution were falling on the Prophet
in Mecca, the Arabs led by al-Mondir inflicted a crushing defeat upon
the Persian army under King Khusraw Parwiz, who, a few years before,
had led a victorious force to the invasion of the Byzantine province
of Syria. This victory showed the Arabs that, in spite of its imposing
appearance, the Persian Empire, and presumably the Byzantine also, were
vulnerable, and a determined effort might easily place the wealth of
both at the disposal of the Arabs.
The Muslim conquests of the 7th century A.D. form the last of a series
of great Semitic outspreads of which the earliest recorded in history
resulted in the formation of the empire of Babylon some 2225 years
before the Christian era. In all these the motive power lay in the
Arabs who represent the parent Semitic stock, the more or less nomadic
inhabitants of the barren highlands of Western Asia, who have always
tended to prey upon the more cultured and settled dwellers in the river
valleys and on the lower slopes of the hills.
“The belts between mountain and desert, the banks of the great rivers,
the lower hills near the sea, these are the lines of civilization
(actual or potential) in Western Asia. The consequence of these
conditions is that through all the history of Western Asia there runs
the eternal distinction between the civilized cultivators of the plains
and lower hills and the wild peoples of mountain and desert. The great
monarchies which have arisen here have rarely been effective beyond the
limits of cultivation; mountain and desert are another world in which
they can get, at best, only precarious footing. And to the monarchical
settled peoples the near neighbourhood of this unsubjugated world
has been a continual menace. It is a chaotic region out of which may
pour upon them at any weakening of the dam hordes of devastators. At
the best of times it hampers the government by offering a refuge and
recruiting ground to all the enemies of order.” (Bevan: _House of
Seleucus_, i., p. 22.)
Scornful of agriculture and with a strong distaste for settled and
especially for urban life, the Bedwin are those who have remained
nomads by preference, and like all races at that stage of evolution,
find the most congenial outlet for their vigour in tribal warfare and
plundering expeditions. From the earliest dawn of history they have
always been strongly tempted by the wealth of the settled communities
within reach, and appear in the oldest records as robber bands.
Sometimes predatory excursions were followed by settlement, and the
invading tribes learned the culture of those amongst whom they settled:
all the Semitic groups other than the Arabs had formed such settlements
before the 7th century A.D., and these groups are distinguished one
from another, and all from the parent stock, simply by the cultural
influences due to the earlier inhabitants of the lands they entered;
the Arab stock itself remained high and dry, the stranded relic of more
primitive conditions, though itself not absolutely free from a reacting
influence. The only thing that ever has restrained the incursions of
these nomadic tribes into such neighbouring lands as offer hope of
plunder is the military power of those who endeavour to place a barrier
for the protection of the settled community of the cultivated area,
and every Arab outspread has been due, not to the pressure of hunger
resulting from the desiccation of Arabia, nor to religious enthusiasm,
but simply to the weakness of the power which tried to maintain a dam
against them.
In the 7th century A.D. the two powers bordering on the Arab area
were the Byzantine and Persian empires. Both of these were, to all
appearance, flourishing and stable, but both alike were in reality
greatly weakened by external and internal causes which were closely
parallel in the two. Externally, both had been severely shaken by
some centuries of warfare in which they had disputed the supremacy
of Western Asia, and both had suffered from rear attacks by more
barbarous foes. Internally, both alike had a thoroughly unsatisfactory
social structure, though the details differ: in the Byzantine Empire
almost the whole burden of a very heavy taxation fell upon the middle
classes, the _curiales_, and the armies were mainly composed of foreign
mercenaries, whilst in the Persian Empire a rigid caste system stifled
natural development. In both we see a state church engaged in active
persecution and thereby alienating a large section of the subject
population.
The career of Muslim conquest came with great suddenness. Between the
years 14 and 21 A.H. (A.D. 635-641) the Arabs obtained possession of
Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and Persia. They owed to Islam the united action
which made these conquests possible, but the older Muslims who had
shared the ideals and labours of the Prophet, though put at the head,
were carried forward reluctantly and yet irresistibly by the expanding
force behind them. Many of them viewed these large accessions with
very real anxiety. When the second Khalif Umar saw the large number of
prisoners and captives from Jalûlâ (Persia) flocking into Arabia, he
exclaimed, “O, God, I take refuge with thee from the children of these
captives of Jalûlâ.”
Already the community of Islam contained three distinct strata. (i)
The “old believers,” i.e., the _sahibs_ or companions of the Prophet
and the early converts who placed the religion of Islam first and
desired that religion to produce a real brotherhood of all believers,
whether Arab or not. Important by their prestige they were numerically
in the minority. (ii) The Arab party, consisting of those who had
embraced Islam only when Muhammad had shown his power by the capture
of Mecca. They accepted Muslim leadership because Muhammad and the
first two Khalifs were at the moment in the ascendancy, but they had
no attachment to the religion of Islam. They were those who would have
gone forward to conquest under any efficient leader as soon as it was
clear that Persia and the Greek Empire were vulnerable, and to them
it was a detriment that union under a leader incidentally involved
adherence to a new religion. At the head of these purely secular Arabs
was the Umayyad clan of the tribe of Quraysh, and the main thing which
gained their continued adherence to Islam was that the Prophet himself
had belonged to that tribe and so the prestige of Islam involved that
of the Quraysh who thereby became a kind of aristocracy. Although
the Umayyads were thus able to gratify their personal pride, always
a strong factor in semi-civilised psychology, and even to obtain a
considerable measure of control over the other tribes, this only served
to perpetuate the pre-Islamic conditions of tribal jealousy, for the
primacy of the Quraysh was bitterly resented by many rivals. For the
most part the true Arab party was, and still is, indifferent towards
religion.
“The genuine Arab of the desert is, and remains at heart, a sceptic
and a materialist; his hard, clear, keen, but somewhat narrow
intelligence, ever alert in its own domain, was neither curious nor
credulous in respect to immaterial and supra-sensual things; his
egotistical and self-reliant nature found no place and felt no need
for a God who, if powerful to protect, was exacting of service and
self-denial.” (Browne: _Literary Hist. of Persia_, i., pp. 189-190.)
The Arab certainly was not disposed to regard the conquered alien, even
if he embraced Islam, as a brother. To him the conquest of foreign
lands meant only the acquisition of vast estates, of great wealth
and unlimited power: to him the conquered were simply serfs to be
used as a means of rendering the conquered lands more productive. The
conquered were allowed the choice either to embrace Islam or to pay the
poll tax, but the `Umayyads discouraged conversion as damaging to the
revenue, although the cruel and hated Hajjaj b. Yusuf (d. 95) forced
even converts to pay the tax from which they were legally exempt. (iii)
The third stratum consisted of the “clients” (mawla, plur. mawâlî),
the non-Arab converts, theoretically received as brethren and actually
so treated by the “old believers,” but regarded as serfs by Arabs of
the Umayyad type. Owing to the wide expansion of Islam these rapidly
increased in number until, in the 2nd century of the Hijra, they formed
the vast majority of the Muslim world.
The two first Khalifs were “old believers” who had been companions of
the Prophet in his flight from Mecca. The third, `Uthman, had also been
one of the Prophet’s companions, but he was a weak man and moreover,
belonged to the `Umayyad clan, which, as the aristocratic element in
Mecca, was then in the ascendant and, unable to free himself from
the nepotism which is an Arab failing, allowed the rich conquests
of Syria, Egypt, `Iraq, and Persia to become the prey of ambitious
members of the clan and thus suffered the complete secularising of the
Islamic state. When, in 35 A.H., he fell a victim to the assassin,
he was succeeded by `Ali, one of the older Muslims and the Prophet’s
cousin and son-in-law. But at `Ali’s accession the internal division
appears as an accomplished fact. The purely secular Arabs, led by the
`Umayyad Mu`awiya, who was governor of Syria, entirely refused to
recognise `Ali, affecting to regard him as implicated in the murder of
`Uthman, or at least as protecting his murderers. On the other hand,
the Kharijite sect, claiming to represent the older Muslim type, but
in reality mainly composed of the Arabs of Arabia and of the military
colonies, who were envious of the power and wealth of the Umayyad
faction, at first supported him, then turned against him, and in 41
were responsible for his assassination.
At `Ali’s death Mu`awiya became Khalif and founded the Umayyad dynasty
which ruled from 41 to 132 A.H. During the whole of this period the
official Khalifate was Arab first and Muslim only in the second place.
This forms the second period of the history of Islam when the religion
of the Prophet was allowed to sink into the background and the Arab
regarded himself as the conqueror ruling over a subject population.
There was no forcible conversion of a subject population, indeed,
save in the reign of `Umar II (A.H. 99-101) conversions were rather
discouraged as detrimental to the poll tax levied on non-Muslims. There
was no attempt to force the Arabic language: until the reign of `Abdu
l-Mâlik (65-86), who started an Arabic coinage, the public records
were kept and official business transacted in Greek, Persian, or
Coptic, as local requirements demanded, and the change to Arabic seems
to have been suggested by the non-Muslim clerks. When Arabic became
the official medium of public business then, of course, motives of
convenience and self-interest caused its general adoption. Hitherto it
had been used in prayer by those who had become Muslim, but now it had
to be learned more accurately by all who had to do with the collection
of the revenue or the administration of justice. Incidentally this
became a matter of great importance, as it provided a common medium for
the exchange of thought throughout the whole Muslim world.
As rulers in Syria, the Arabs were in contact with a fully developed
culture which was brought to bear upon them in various ways, in the
structure of society and in social order generally, in the arts and
crafts, and in intellectual life. The Greek influence was nearest
at hand, but there was also a very strong Persian element in close
contact with them. The provincial officials of Syria, all trained
in the methods of the Byzantine Empire, continued in their employ,
and, as Syria was the seat of the `Umayyad government, the state came
under Greek influence. Yet, for all this, even in `Umayyad times,
the Persian influence seems to have been very strong in political
organization. The governments already existing in Egypt and Syria were
provincial, dependent upon and subordinate to, the central government
at Byzantium, and constantly recruited by Byzantine officials, at least
in their upper grades. The Persian government, on the other hand, was
a self-contained one, fully organised throughout and including the
supreme and central authority. Until the fall of the `Umayyads, after
which Persian influence became supreme, the political structure of the
Muslim state was somewhat experimental; apparently the rulers left
the details altogether to the subordinate officials who adapted to
the needs of the state such elements as they could use from the old
provincial administration.
In the matter of taxation the early Khalifate continued the system
already in vogue and employed existing methods for the collection of
the newly imposed poll tax. It was on this side that the `Umayyad rule
was most unsatisfactory. Like many who have been bred in poverty and
have afterwards suddenly come into great wealth, the Arabs behaved
as though their wealth was inexhaustible: each governor bought his
appointment from the state and it became a recognised custom for him to
exact a cash payment from the outgoing governor, and then he was free
to raise what he could from his defenceless subjects to prepare for the
day when his opportunities of exaction came to an end. The thoroughly
unsatisfactory condition of the `Umayyad financial system was one of
the leading causes of their fall. One of the `Umayyad sheikhs, named
Minkari, when asked the reason of their fall, replied:--
“We gave to pleasure the time which should have been devoted to
business. Our subjects, harshly treated by us and despairing of
obtaining justice, longed to be delivered from us: the tax payers,
overburdened with exactions, were estranged from us: our lands were
neglected, our resources wasted. We left business to our ministers who
sacrificed our interests to their own advantage, and transacted our
affairs as they pleased and without our knowledge. The army, with its
pay always in arrear, ceased to obey us. And so the small number of
our supporters left us without defence against our enemies, and the
ignorance of how we stood was one of the chief causes of our fall.”
(Masudi: vi., 35-36.)
It will not be unfair to say, therefore, that during the `Umayyad
period the Arabs learned practically nothing of the art of government
and of the work of administration. They were in the position of
prodigal young heirs who leave all details to their men of business and
content themselves with squandering the proceeds.
In the case of civil law matters were rather different. The civil
law is necessarily based on the social and economic structure of
the community, and in the acquired provinces this was so different
from that prevailing in Arabia that it was necessarily forced on the
attention of the Arabs. Moreover, in primitive Islam, the line was not
clearly drawn between the canon law and the civil law. Inheritance,
the taking of pledges, and such like matters, were to the Arabs
subject to the direction and sanction of the law of God as revealed
by his Prophet. Thus, for example, Sura 4, one of the later Madinian
revelations, contains a statement of the law relating to guardianship,
inheritance, marriage, and kindred topics, according to the social
conditions prevailing at Madina. But in the Greek and Persian dominions
the conquering Arab had to deal with more complex conditions for which
the revealed law made no provision, although what it did contain so
far touched the subject that it could not be treated regardless of
revelation. It seemed impossible to disregard the revealed precepts and
substitute an alien legislation, although this has been done in the
modern Ottoman Empire, but not without many and grave protests; in the
first century it would have been intolerable, for every disaffected
faction would have used it to break up the Muslim state which was
only held together by the prestige of the Prophetical tradition. We
may well suppose that the `Umayyads would have had no reluctance to
try the experiment, but it was too dangerous. The only alternative
was to expand the sacred law so as to include new requirements, and
in the `Umayyad period this was done by the addition of a vast number
of fictitious traditions professing to relate what the Prophet had
said and done in conditions in which he had never been placed. In
describing these traditions as “fictitious,” it is not necessarily
implied that they were fraudulent, although many were so, showing an
obvious motive in increasing the privileges and rights of the dominant
faction or asserting the tribal pre-eminence of the Quraysh, etc.
But more often they are “fictitious” in the sense of legal fictions
rightly correcting the actual law in the interests of equity. When
entirely new conditions arose, the question would be asked, “How would
the Prophet have acted in this case?” The early companions of the
Prophet, educated in the same environment as he had been educated,
and confident that their outlook was essentially the same as his,
had no hesitation in stating what he would have done or said, and
their statement was almost certainly correct: but they worded their
evidence, or it was afterwards worded for them, as a statement of
what the Prophet actually had done or said. And, later again, in a
subsequent generation, when new problems arose, no difficulty was felt
in accepting the supposition that the Prophet would have admitted the
reasonable and just solution which the Roman jurists proposed. Thus it
finally came to pass that a considerable portion of the Roman civil law
was embodied in the traditions of Islam (cf. Santillana: _Code civil et
commerciel tunisien._ Tunis, 1899, etc.) It is not to be supposed that
Arab governors and judges studied the Roman code, they simply accepted
its provisions as they found them in force in Syria and Egypt, and
thus learned its general principles from the usage of the civil courts
already existing. In many places material is found in the traditions
which can be traced to Zoroastrian, Jewish, and even Buddhist sources,
though these deal rather with ritual and the description of the unseen
world and serve to show how readily Islam absorbed elements with which
it was in contact. So far as the actual needs of the civil law are
concerned, the chief source was the Roman law, and these needs fill a
very large part of the traditions.
It was not until the close of the `Umayyad period that the Muslims
began to develop a scientific jurisprudence and to make a critical
examination and codification of the traditions. In the case of
jurisprudence there were at first two schools, a Syrian and a Persian.
The Syrian school formulated its system under the leadership of
_al-Awza`i_ (d. 157), and for some time it prevailed over all parts
of the Muslim world which had been parts of the Byzantine Empire.
The Persian school owed its origin to _Abu Hanifa_ (d. 150) and, as
the seat of government was removed to `Iraq by the `Abbasids and Abu
Hanifa’s system was enforced by his pupil Abu Yusuf (d. 182) who was
chief Qadi under the Khalif Harunu r-Rashid, it had a tremendous
advantage over the Syrian school. It became the official system of the
`Abbasid courts and still holds its own through Central Asia, North
India, and wherever the Turkish element prevails, whilst the Syrian
system has become extinct. Abu Hanifa’s system represents a serious
and moderate revision of the methods which had already come into use
as extending the discipline of Islam to the needs of a complex and
advanced civilization. Under the `Umayyads the jurists had supplemented
any deficiencies in the law by their own opinion (_ra´y_) which meant
the application of the judgment of a man trained under the Roman law
as to what was just and fair. In that early period no derogatory
sense was attached to “opinion” which rested on the theory that the
intellect could intuitively perceive what is right and just, thus
assuming that there is an objective standard of right and wrong capable
of apprehension by philosophical enquiry, a theory which shows the
influence of Greek ideas embodied in the Civil Code. But the `Abbasid
period experienced an orthodox reaction which tended to limit freedom
in using speculative opinion, and Abu Hanifa shows this limitation.
In his system weight was attached to every positive statement of the
Qur´an which could be taken as bearing upon the civil law, only to a
slight extent did he avail himself of the evidence of tradition, to a
much larger extent he employs _qiyas_ or “analogy,” which means that
a new condition is judged by comparison with some older one already
treated in the Qur´an, and he also employed what he called _istihsan_,
“the preferable,” that is to say, what seemed to be equitable and
right even when it diverged from the logical conclusion which could be
deduced from the revealed law. Only in this latter case did he admit
what can be described as “opinion,” and this is strictly limited to
the adoption of a course necessary to avoid an obvious injustice.
As thus stated, Abu Hanifa’s system was broader, milder, and more
reasonable than any other treatment of the Islamic law: but it is a
mistake to suppose that it still is mild and reasonable, for in the
course of time the decisions pronounced as to “the preferable” have
become hardened into precedents and the Hanifite code expresses only
those fixed decisions of early mediæval Islam without flexibility. The
case is parallel with the English treatment of equity. In older times
equity shows us the philosophical principles of justice correcting the
defects of common law; but modern practice displays these principles
fossilized as precedents and as rigid and formal in their application
as the common law itself. As first conceived, “the preferable” shows
the influence of Roman law and Greek philosophy, both of which
contemplated an objective standard of right and wrong which could be
discovered by investigation, the Stoic teaching, predominant in Roman
law, tending to treat this discovery as intuitive. Unsupported by other
evidence, we might hesitate to suggest that _istihsan_ necessarily had
a Hellenistic basis, but when we compare the ideas of Abu Hanifa with
the contemporary teaching of Wasil b. `Ata (d. 131) in theology, we
are forced to the conclusion that the same influences are at work in
both, and in Wasil these are certainly derived from Greek philosophy.
We are not justified in supposing that Abu Hanifa ever read the
Greek philosophers or the Roman law, but he lived at a period when
the general principles deduced from these sources were beginning to
permeate Muslim thought, though in fact his teaching tends to limit and
define the application of the general principles according to a system.
The older Muslims supposed that good and evil depend simply on the
arbitrary will of God, who commands and forbids as he sees fit: it was
the influence of the Greek philosophy which brought in the idea that
these distinctions are not arbitrary but due to some natural difference
existing in nature between good and evil and that God is just in that
his decrees conform to this standard.
In orthodox Islam there are now four schools of jurisprudence showing
allowable differences in the treatment of the canon law. Most absurdly
they are sometimes described as “sects”: this they are not as the
differences of opinion are fully recognised as all equally orthodox.
The followers of Abu Hanifa form the most numerous of these schools,
the other three being all more or less reactionary as compared with
it. The contemporary Malik b. Anas (d. 179) was openly actuated by
dislike of the admission of _istihsan_ and the recognition thereby
given to “opinion” for this he substituted what he called _istislah_
or “public expediency,” allowing analogy to be set aside only when
its logical conclusion would be detrimental to the community. The
difference seems to be more a verbal correction than a material change,
but the underlying motive is clear and indicates an orthodox reaction.
At the same time he attached much greater weight to the evidence of
tradition, adding to it also the principle of _ijma_ or “consensus,”
which in his system meant the common usage of Madina. Undoubtedly Ibn
Malik’s position was theoretically sound: the Islamic state had taken
form at Madina and nothing could give so clear light on the policy
of the Prophet and his companions as the local customary law of the
mother city. At the same time Ibn Malik took tradition quite seriously,
indeed, the critical and scientific treatment of tradition begins with
his manual known as the _Muwatta_. To-day Ibn Malik’s school prevails
in Upper Egypt and North Africa west of Egypt. The third authority
_ash-Shafi`i_ (d. 204) takes an intermediate position between Abu
Hanifa and Ibn Malik, interpreting _ijma_ as the general usage of
Islam, and not of the city of Madina alone. The fourth authority,
_Ahmad b. Hanbal_ (d. 241), shows an entirely reactionary position
which reverted to a close adherence to Qur´an and tradition; it carried
great weight amongst the orthodox, especially in Baghdad, but now
survives only in remote parts of Arabia.
In the sphere of the arts and crafts, our best evidence lies in
architecture and engineering. In these the Arabs had no skill and
were conscious of their incapacity. The earliest mosques were simply
enclosures surrounded by a plain wall, but a new type was developed
under the first `Umayyad Khalif Mu`awiya, who employed Persian
non-Muslim builders in the construction of the mosque at Kufa, and they
worked on the lines of the architecture already used by the Sasanid
kings. In this mosque the traditional square enclosure was retained,
but the quadrangle was surrounded by a cloister in the form of a
collonade with pillars 30 cubits high of stone drums held together by
iron clamps and lead beddings. From this the cloistered quadrangle
became the general type of the congregational mosque and remained
so until late Turkish times, when it was partly superseded by the
Byzantine domed church. The dome had been used in earlier times only as
the covering of a tomb, standing alone or attached to a mosque.
The same Khalif Mu`awiya employed bricks and mortar in restorations
which he made at Mecca, and introduced Persian workmen to execute the
repairs. In 124 A.H. (A.D. 700) the fifth `Umayyad Khalif found it
necessary to repair the damage caused at Mecca by flood, and for this
purpose employed a Christian architect from Syria.
In the time of the next Khalif al-Walid, the “Old Mosque” of Fustat
(Cairo), that is now known as the “Mosque of `Amr,” was rebuilt by the
architect Yahya b. Hanzala, who probably was a Persian. The earlier
mosque had been a simple enclosure. The next oldest mosque of Cairo,
that of Ibn Tulun (A.H. 283) also had a non-Muslim architect, the
Christian Ibn Katib al-Fargani.
Not only in the earlier period, but also in the days of the Abbasids,
the Muslims relied exclusively upon Greek and Persian, to a less degree
on Coptic, architects, engineers, and craftsmen for building and
decoration. In Spain of the 2nd century (8th century A.D.) we find the
Byzantine Emperor sending a mosaic worker and 320 quintals of tessarae
for the adorning of the great mosque at Cordova.
In origin all Muslim art had a Byzantine beginning, but the traditions
of Byzantine art received a peculiar direction by passing through a
Persian medium, and this medium colours all work done after the close
of the `Umayyad period. Only in the west, in Spain, and to a less
degree in North Africa, do we find traces of direct Byzantine influence
in later times. But Persian art, as developed under the later Sasanids,
was itself derived from Byzantine models, and mainly from models and by
craftsmen introduced by Khusraw I. (circ. A.D. 528); but even at that
early stage there were also some Indian influences apparent in Persian
and East-Byzantine work, as, for example, in the use of the horse shoe
arch which first appears in Western Asia in the church of Dana on the
Euphrates, circ. A.D. 540. But the horse shoe arch in pre-Muslim times,
as in India, is purely decorative and is not employed in construction.
Thus it appears that the real work of Islam in art and architecture
lay in connecting the various portions of the Muslim world in
one common life, so that Syria, Persia, `Iraq, North Africa, and
Spain shared the same influences, which were ultimately Greek or
Graeco-Persian, the Indian element, of quite secondary importance,
entering directly through Persia. Already before the outspread of
Islam, Byzantine art had entirely replaced native models in Egypt,
and this was largely the case in Persia as well. At most we can say
that Islam evolved a quasi-Byzantine style which owed its distinctive
features to the limitations of the Persian artists, but which
occasionally attained a better level by the importation of Byzantine
craftsmen. Exactly the same general conclusions hold good in the
history of the ceramic arts and in the illumination of manuscripts,
though here the observance of the Qur´anic prohibition of the portrayal
of animal figures, strictly observed only in some quarters and least
regarded in Persia and Spain, caused a greater emphasis to be laid on
vegetable forms in decoration, and on geometrical patterns.
In the field of science and philosophy, where we get such abundant
evidence in the `Abbasid period, we are left with very little material
under the `Umayyads. We know that the medical school at Alexandria
continued to flourish, and we read of one Adfar, a Christian, who was
distinguished as a student of the books of Hermes, the occult authority
which did most to divert Egyptian science into a magical direction, and
we are informed that he was sought out by a young Roman named Morienus
(Marianos) who became his pupil and at his master’s death retired to
a hermitage near Jerusalem. Later on the prince Khalid b. Yazid, of
the `Umayyad family (d. 85 A.H.--704 A.D.) is said to have become the
pupil of Marianos and to have studied with him chemistry, medicine,
and astronomy. He was the author of three epistles, in one of which he
narrated his conversations with Marianos, another relates the manner
in which he studied chemistry, and a third explains the enigmatical
allusions employed by his teachers. Long before this medical and
scientific studies had passed over to Persia, but Alexandria retained
its reputation as the chief centre of such work throughout the `Umayyad
period.
Towards the end of the `Umayyad age the influence of Hellenistic
thought begins to appear in the nature of criticism upon accepted
views of Muslim theology. As in jurisprudence, we have no ground for
supposing that Muslims at this stage were directly acquainted with
Greek material, but general ideas were obtained by intercourse with
those who had been long under Hellenistic influences, and especially by
intercourse with Christians amongst whom the premises of psychology,
metaphysics, and logic had encroached very largely upon the field of
theology by the nature of the subjects debated in the Arian, Nestorian,
and Monophysite controversies which turned mainly upon psychological
and metaphysical problems. The ideas with which the Muslims were
brought into contact suggested difficulties in their own theology, as
yet only partially formulated, and in religious theories which had
taken form in a community entirely ignorant of philosophy. Some of the
older fashioned believers met these questions with a plain negative,
simply refusing to admit that there was a difficulty or any question
for consideration: reason (_`aql_), they said, could not be applied
to the revelation of God, and it was alike an innovation to dispute
that revelation or to defend it. But others felt the pressure of the
questions proposed and, whilst strictly faithful to the statements of
the Qur´an, endeavoured to bring their expression into conformity with
the principles of philosophy.
The questions first proposed were concerned with (a) the revelation of
the Word of God, and (b) the problem of free will.
(a) The Prophet speaks of revelation as “coming down” (_nazala_) from
God and refers to the “mother of the book” which seems to designate the
unrevealed source from which the revealed words are derived. It may be
that this refers to the idea of which the word is the expression, and
that in this the Prophet was influenced by Christian or Jewish theories
which had originally a Platonic colouring, but it seems probable that
he had no very clear theory as to the “mother of the book.” At an early
date the view arose that the Qur´an had existed, though not expressed
in words, that the substance and meaning were eternal as part of the
wisdom of God, though it had been put into words in time and then
communicated to the Prophet, which is now the orthodox teaching on the
basis of Qur. 80. 15. that it was written “by the hands of scribes
honoured and righteous,” this being taken to mean that it was written
at God’s dictation by supernatural beings in paradise and afterwards
sent down to the Prophet. That is not the necessary meaning of the
verse, which may refer to the previous revelations made to the Jews
and Christians which the Prophet regarded as true but afterwards
corrupted, so that the Qur´an is simply the pure transcription of
Divine Truth imperfectly represented by those earlier revelations.
Under the `Umayyads, when a rigid orthodoxy was taking form in quarters
not sympathetic towards the official Khalif, a view arose that the
actual words expressed in the Qur´an were co-eternal with God, and it
was only the writing down of these words which had taken place in time.
It seems probable that this theory of an eternal “word” was suggested
by the Christian doctrine of the “Logos.” It can be traced primarily
to the teaching of St. John Damascene (d. circ. 160 A.H. = A.D. 776)
who served as secretary of state under one of the `Umayyads, either
Yazid II. or Hijam, and his pupil Theodore Abucara (d. 217 = 832),
who express the relation of the Christian Logos to the Eternal Father
in terms very closely resembling those employed in Muslim theology to
denote the relation between the Qur´an or revealed word and God. (cf.
Von Kremer: _Streifzuege_. pp. 7-9). We know from the extant works
of these two Christian writers that theological discussions between
Muslims and Christians were by no means uncommon at the time.
The _Mu`tazilites_ of whom _Wasil b. `Ata_ (d. 131) is generally
regarded as the founder, were a sect of rationalistic tendencies, and
they were opposed to the doctrine of the eternity of the Qur´an and
the claim that it was uncreated because the conclusions to be drawn
seemed to them to introduce distinct personalities corresponding
to the persons of the Christian Trinity, and in these views they
were undoubtedly influenced by the form in which St. John Damascene
presented the doctrine of the Trinity. As it was implied that there was
an attribute of wisdom possessed by God which was not a thing created
by God but eternally with him, and this wisdom may be conceived as not
absolutely identical with God but possessed by him, the Mu`tazilites
argued that it was something co-eternal with God but other than God,
and so an eternal Qur´an was a second person of the Godhead and God
was not absolutely one. Al-Muzdar, a Mu`tazilite greatly revered as an
ascetic, expressly denounces those who believe in an eternal Qur´an as
ditheists. The Mu`tazilites called themselves _Ahlu t-Tawhid wa-l-`Adl_
“the people of unity and justice,” the first part of this title
implying that they alone were consistent defenders of the doctrine of
the Divine Unity.
(b) As to the freedom or otherwise of the human will, the Qur´an
is perfectly definite in its assertion of God’s omnipotence and
omniscience: all things are known to him and ruled by him, and so human
acts and the rewards and punishments due to men must be included: “no
misfortune happens either on earth or in yourselves but we made it,--it
was in the book” (Qur. 57. 22); “everything have We set down in the
clear book of our decrees” (Qur. 36); “had We pleased We had certainly
given to every soul its guidance, but true is the word which hath gone
forth from me,--I shall surely fill hell with jinn and men together.”
(Qur. 32. 13). Yet the appeal for moral conduct implies a certain
responsibility, and consequently freedom, on man’s part. In the mind
of the Prophet, no doubt, the inconsistency between moral obligations
and responsibility on the one hand, and the unlimited power of God on
the other, had not been perceived, but towards the end of the `Umayyad
period these were pressed to their logical conclusions. On the one side
were the _Qadarites_ (_qadr_ “power”), the advocates of free will.
This doctrine first appears in the teaching of _Ma´bad al-Yuhani_ (d.
80 A.H.) who is said to have been the pupil of the Persian Sinbuya and
taught in Damascus. Very little is known of the early Qadarites, but it
is stated that Sinbuya was put to death by the Khalif `Abdu l-Malik,
and that the Khalif Yazid II. (102-106 A.H.) favoured their views.
On the other side were the _Jabarites_ (_jabr_, “compulsion”) who
preached strict determinism and were founded by the Persian _Jahm b.
Safwan_ (d. circ. 130). It is baseless to argue that either free will
or determinism were necessarily due to Persian pre-Islamic beliefs, it
is evident that the logical deduction of doctrinal theology in either
direction was done by Persians; they were, indeed, the theologians of
early Islam. It must be noted that the full development of fatalism was
not reached until a full century after the foundation of Islam and that
its first exponent was put to death as a heretic.
The earlier Qadarites had a Persian origin, but the reaction against
the Jabarites was led by Wasil b. `Ata whose teaching clearly
shows the solvent force of Hellenistic philosophy acting on Muslim
theology. Wasil was the pupil of the Qadarite Hasan ibn Abi l-Hasan
(d. 110) but he “seceded” from his teacher and this is given as the
traditional reason for calling him and his followers the _Mu´tazila_ or
“secession,” and did so on the ground of the apparent injustice imputed
to God in his apportionment of rewards and penalties. The details of
the controversy are quite secondary, the important point is that the
Mu`tazilites claimed to be “the people of Unity and Justice,” this
latter meaning that God conformed to an objective standard of just and
right action so that he could not be conceived as acting arbitrarily
and in disregard of justice, an idea borrowed from Hellenistic
philosophy for the older Muslim conception regarded God as acting as he
willed and the standard of right and wrong merely a dependent on his
will.
Throughout the whole `Umayyad period we see the conquering Arabs, so
far the rulers of the Muslim world, in contact with those who, though
treated with arrogant contempt as serfs, were really in possession of a
much fuller culture than their rulers. In spite of the haughty attitude
of the Arab there was a considerable exchange of thought, and the
community of Islam began to absorb Hellenistic influences in several
directions, and so the canon law and theology of the Muslims was
beginning, at the end of the `Umayyad period, to be leavened by Greek
thought. It was, however, a period of indirect influence; there is no
indication, save in a few instances in the study of natural science and
medicine, of Muslim teachers or students availing themselves directly
of Greek material, but only that they were in contact with those who
were familiar with the work of Greek philosophers and jurists. It
was a period of suspended animation, to some extent, during which a
new language and a new religion were being assimilated by the very
diverse elements now comprised in the Khalifate, and those elements
were being welded together in a common life. However great were the
sectarian and political differences of later times, the church of
Islam long remained, and to a great extent still remains, possessed
with a common life in the sense that there is a mutual understanding
between the several parts and that thus an intellectual or religious
influence has been able to pass rapidly from one extreme to the other,
and the religious duty of pilgrimage to Mecca has done much to foster
this community of life and to promote intercourse between the several
parts. Such an understanding has by no means always produced sympathy
or friendliness, and the various movements as they have passed from one
part to the other have often been considerably modified in the passage;
but the motive power behind a movement in Persia has been intelligible
in Muslim Spain--though perhaps intensely disliked there--and most
often a movement beginning in any one district has sooner or later had
some contact with every other district. There is no such division in
Islam as that which prevents the average English churchman from knowing
about and appreciating a religious movement at work in the Coptic or
Serbian church. The common life of Islam is largely based on the use
of the Arabic language as the medium of daily life, or at least of
prayer and the medium of scholarship, and this was extremely effective
before the inclusion of large Turkish and Indian elements which have
never really become Arabic speaking. It was this which made the
Arabic speaking community of Islam so favourable a medium of cultural
transmission. The `Umayyad period was a marking time during which this
common life was being evolved, and with it was evolved necessarily the
bitterness of sectarian and faction divisions which always result when
divergent types are in too close contact with one another.