After the death of Mahomet the question arose who was to be his
"representative." The choice lay with the community of Medina; so much
was understood; but whom were they to choose? The natives of Medina
believed themselves to be now once more masters in their own house, and
wished to promote one of themselves. But the Emigrants (see MAHOMET)
asserted their opposing claims, and with success, having brought into
the town a considerable number of outside Moslems, so as to terrorize
the men of Medina, who besides were still divided into two parties. The
Emigrants' leading spirit was Omar; he did not, however, cause homage to
be paid to himself, but to Abu Bekr, the friend and father-in-law of the
Prophet.
The affair would not have gone on so smoothly, had not the opportune
defection of the Arabians put a stop to the inward schism which
threatened. Islam suddenly found itself once more limited to the
community of Medina; only Mecca and Taif (Tayef) remained true. The
Bedouins were willing enough to pray, indeed, but less willing to pay
taxes; their defection, as might have been expected, was a political
movement.[2] None the less was it a revolt from Islam, for here the
political society and the religious are identical. A peculiar compliment
to Mahomet was involved in the fact that the leaders of the rebellion in
the various districts did not pose as princes and kings, but as
prophets; in this appeared to lie the secret of Islam's success.
1. _Reign of Abu Bekr_.--Abu Bekr proved himself quite equal to the
perilous situation. In the first place, he allowed the expedition
against the Greeks, already arranged by Mahomet, quietly to set out,
limiting himself for the time to the defence of Medina. On the return of
the army he proceeded to attack the rebels. The holy spirit of Islam
kept the men of Medina together, and inspired in them an all-absorbing
zeal for the faith; the Arabs as a whole had no other bond of union and
no better source of inspiration than individual interest. As was to be
expected, they were worsted; eleven small flying columns of the Moslems,
sent out in various directions, sufficed to quell the revolt. Those who
submitted were forthwith received back into favour; those who persevered
in rebellion were punished with death. The majority accordingly
converted, the obstinate were extirpated. In Yamama (Yemama) only was
there a severe struggle; the Banu Hanifa under their prophet Mosailima
fought bravely, but here also Islam triumphed.
The internal consolidation of Islam in Arabia was, strange to say,
brought about by its diffusion abroad. The holy war against the border
countries which Mahomet had already inaugurated, was the best means for
making the new religion popular among the Arabs, for opportunity was at
the same time afforded for gaining rich booty. The movement was
organized by Islam, but the masses were induced to join it by quite
other than religious motives. Nor was this by any means the first
occasion on which the Arabian cauldron had overflowed; once and again in
former times emigrant swarms of Bedouins had settled on the borders of
the wilderness. This had last happened in consequence of the events
which destroyed the prosperity of the old Sabaean kingdom. At that time
the small Arabian kingdoms of Ghassan and Hira had arisen in the western
and eastern borderlands of cultivation; these now presented to Moslem
conquest its nearest and natural goal. But inasmuch as Hira was subject
to the Persians, and Eastern Palestine to the Greeks, the annexation of
the Arabians involved the extension of the war beyond the limits of
Arabia to a struggle with the two great powers (see further ARABIA:
_History_).
After the subjugation of middle and north-eastern Arabia, Khalid b.
al-Walid proceeded by order of the caliph to the conquest of the
districts on the lower Euphrates. Thence he was summoned to Syria, where
hostilities had also broken out. Damascus fell late in the summer of
635, and on the 20th of August 636 was fought the great decisive battle
on the Hieromax (Yarmuk), which caused the emperor Heraclius (q.v.)
finally to abandon Syria.[3] Left to themselves, the Christians
henceforward defended themselves only in isolated cases in the fortified
cities; for the most part they witnessed the disappearance of the
Byzantine power without regret. Meanwhile the war was also carried on
against the Persians in Irak, unsuccessfully at first, until the tide
turned at the battle of Kadisiya (Kadessia, Qadisiya) (end of 637). In
consequence of the defeat which they here sustained, the Persians were
forced to abandon the western portion of their empire and limit
themselves to Iran proper. The Moslems made themselves masters of
Ctesiphon (Madain), the residence of the Sassanids on the Tigris, and
conquered in the immediately following years the country of the two
rivers. In 639 the armies of Syria and Irak were face to face in
Mesopotamia. In a short time they had taken from the Aryans all the
principal old Semitic lands--Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, Assyria and
Babylonia. To these was soon added Egypt, which was overrun with little
difficulty by 'Amr ibn-el-Ass (q.v.) in 640. (See EGYPT: _History_, S
Mahommedan.) This completed the circle of the lands bordering on the
wilderness of Arabia; within these limits annexation was practicable and
natural, a repetition indeed of what had often previously occurred. The
kingdoms of Ghassan and Hira, advanced posts hitherto, now became the
headquarters of the Arabs; the new empire had its centres on the one
hand at Damascus, on the other hand at Kufa and Basra, the two
newly-founded cities in the region of old Babylonia. The capital of
Islam continued indeed for a while to be Medina, but soon the Hejaz
(Hijaz) and the whole of Arabia proper lay quite on the outskirt of
affairs.
The ease with which the native populations of the conquered districts,
exclusively or prevailingly Christian, adapted themselves to the new
rule is very striking. Their nationality had been broken long ago, but
intrinsically it was more closely allied to the Arabian than to the
Greek or Persian. Their religious sympathy with the West was seriously
impaired by dogmatic controversies; from Islam they might at any rate
hope for toleration, even though their views were not in accordance with
the theology of the emperor of the day. The lapse of the masses from
Christianity to Islam, however, which took place during the first
century after the conquest, is to be accounted for only by the fact that
in reality they had no inward relation to the gospel at all. They
changed their creed merely to acquire the rights and privileges of
Moslem citizens. In no case were they compelled to do so; indeed the
Omayyad caliphs saw with displeasure the diminishing proceeds of the
poll-tax derived from their Christian subjects (see MAHOMMEDAN
INSTITUTIONS).
It would have been a great advantage for the solidity of the Arabian
empire if it had confined itself within the limits of those old Semitic
lands, with perhaps the addition of Egypt. But the Persians were not so
ready as the Greeks to give up the contest; they did not rest until the
Moslems had subjugated the whole of the Sassanid empire. The most
important event in the protracted war which led to the conquest of Iran,
was the battle of Nehawend in 641;[4] the most obstinate resistance was
offered by Persis proper, and especially by the capital, Istakhr
(Persepolis). In the end, all the numerous and partly autonomous
provinces of the Sassanid empire fell, one after the other, into the
hands of the Moslems, and the young king, Yazdegerd III. (q.v.), was
compelled to retire to the farthest corner of his realm, where he came
to a miserable end.[5] But it was long before the Iranians learned to
accept the situation. Unlike the Christians of western Asia, they had a
vigorous feeling of national pride, based upon glorious memories and
especially upon a church having a connexion of the closest kind with the
state. Internal disturbances of a religious and political character and
external disasters had long ago shattered the empire of the Sassanids
indeed, but the Iranians had not yet lost their patriotism. They were
fighting, in fact, against the despised and hated Arabs, in defence of
their holiest possessions, their nationality and their faith. Their
subjection was only external, nor did Islam ever succeed in assimilating
them as the Syrian Christians were assimilated. Even when in process of
time they did accept the religion of the prophet, they leavened it
thoroughly with their own peculiar leaven, and, especially, deprived it
of the practical political and national character which it had assumed
after the flight to Medina. To the Arabian state they were always a
thorn in the flesh; it was they who helped most to break up its internal
order, and it was from them also that it at last received its outward
death-blow. The fall of the Omayyads was their work, and with the
Omayyads fell the Arabian empire.
2. _Reign of Omar_.--Abu Bekr died after a short reign on the 22nd of
August 634, and as a matter of course was succeeded by Omar. To Omar's
ten years' Caliphate belong for the most part the great conquests. He
himself did not take the field, but remained in Medina with the
exception of his visit to Syria in 638; he never, however, suffered the
reins to slip from his grasp, so powerful was the influence of his
personality and the Moslem community of feeling. His political insight
is shown by the fact that he endeavoured to limit the indefinite
extension of Moslem conquest, to maintain and strengthen the national
Arabian character of the commonwealth of Islam,[6] and especially to
promote law and order in its internal affairs. The saying with which he
began his reign will never grow antiquated: "by Allah, he that is
weakest among you shall be in my sight the strongest, until I have
vindicated for him his rights; but him that is strongest will I treat as
the weakest, until he complies with the laws." After the administration
of justice he directed his organizing activity, as the circumstances
demanded, chiefly towards financial questions--the incidence of taxation
in the conquered territories,[7] and the application of the vast
resources which poured into the treasury at Medina. It must not be
brought against him as a personal reproach, that in dealing with these
he acted on the principle that the Moslems were the chartered plunderers
of all the rest of the world. But he had to atone by his death for the
fault of his system. In the mosque at Medina he was stabbed by a Kufan
workman and died in November 644.
3. _Reign of Othman._--Before his death Omar had nominated six of the
leading Mohajir (Emigrants) who should choose the caliph from among
themselves--Othman, Ali, Zobair, Talha, Sa'd b. Abi Waqqas, and
Abdarrahman b. Auf. The last-named declined to be a candidate, and
decided the election in favour of Othman. Under this weak sovereign the
government of Islam fell entirely into the hands of the Koreish
nobility. We have already seen that Mahomet himself prepared the way for
this transference; Abu Bekr and Omar likewise helped it; the Emigrants
were unanimous among themselves in thinking that the precedence and
leadership belonged to them as of right. Thanks to the energy of Omar,
they were successful in appropriating to themselves the succession to
the Prophet. They indeed rested their claims on the undeniable priority
of their services to the faith, but they also appealed to their blood
relationship with the Prophet as a corroboration of their right to the
inheritance; and the ties of blood connected them with the Koreish in
general. In point of fact they felt a closer connexion with these than,
for example, with the natives of Medina; nature had not been expelled by
faith.[8] The supremacy of the Emigrants naturally furnished the means
of transition to the supremacy of the Meccan aristocracy. Othman did all
in his power to press forward this development of affairs. He belonged
to the foremost family of Mecca, the Omayyads, and that he should favour
his relations and the Koreish as a whole, in every possible way, seemed
to him a matter of course. Every position of influence and emolument was
assigned to them; they themselves boastingly called the important
province of Irak the garden of Koreish. In truth, the entire empire had
become that garden. Nor was it unreasonable that from the secularization
of Islam the chief advantage should be reaped by those who best knew the
world. Such were beyond all doubt the patricians of Mecca, and after
them those of Taif, people like Khalid b. al-Walid, Amr-ibn-el-Ass,
'Abdallah b. abi Sarh, Moghira b. Sho'ba, and, above all, old Abu Sofian
with his son Moawiya.
Against the rising tide of worldliness an opposition, however, now began
to appear. It was led by what may be called the spiritual noblesse of
Islam, which, as distinguished from the hereditary nobility of Mecca,
might also be designated as the nobility of merit, consisting of the
"Defenders" (_Ansar_), and especially of the Emigrants who had lent
themselves to the elevation of the Koreish, but by no means with the
intention of allowing themselves thereby to be effaced. The opposition
was headed by Ali, Zobair, Talha, both as leading men among the
Emigrants and as disappointed candidates for the Caliphate. Their
motives were purely selfish; not God's cause but their own, not religion
but power and preferment, were what they sought.[9] Their party was a
mixed one. To it belonged the men of real piety, who saw with
displeasure the promotion to the first places in the commonwealth of the
great lords who had actually done nothing for Islam, and had joined
themselves to it only at the last moment. But the majority were merely a
band of men without views, whose aim was a change not of system, but of
persons in their own interest. Everywhere in the provinces there was
agitation against the caliph and his governors, except in Syria, where
Othman's cousin, Moawiya, son of Abu Sofian (see below), carried on a
wise and strong administration. The movement was most energetic in Irak
and in Egypt. Its ultimate aim was the deposition of Othman in favour of
Ali, whose own services as well as his close relationship to the Prophet
seemed to give him the best claim to the Caliphate. Even then there were
enthusiasts who held him to be a sort of Messiah.
The malcontents sought to gain their end by force. In bands they came
from the provinces to Medina to wring concessions from Othman, who,
though his armies were spreading terror from the Indus and Oxus to the
Atlantic, had no troops at hand in Medina. He propitiated the mutineers
by concessions, but as soon as they had gone, he let matters resume
their old course. Thus things went on from bad to worse. In the
following year (656) the leaders of the rebels came once more from Egypt
and Irak to Medina with a more numerous following; and the caliph again
tried the plan of making promises which he did not intend to keep. But
the rebels caught him in a flagrant breach of his word,[10] and now
demanded his abdication, besieging him in his own house, where he was
defended by a few faithful subjects. As he would not yield, they at last
took the building by storm and put him to death, an old man of eighty.
His death in the act of maintaining his rights was of the greatest
service to his house and of corresponding disadvantage to the enemy.
4. _Reign of Ali._--Controversy as to the inheritance at once arose
among the leaders of the opposition. The mass of the mutineers summoned
Ali to the Caliphate, and compelled even Talha and Zobair to do him
homage. But soon these two, along with Ayesha, the mother of the
faithful, who had an old grudge against Ali, succeeded in making their
escape to Irak, where at Basra they raised the standard of rebellion.
Ali in point of fact had no real right to the succession, and moreover
was apparently actuated not by piety but by ambition and the desire of
power, so that men of penetration, even although they condemned Othman's
method of government, yet refused to recognize his successor. The new
caliph, however, found means of disposing of their opposition, and at
the battle of the Camel, fought at Basra in November 656, Talha and
Zobair were slain, and Ayesha was taken prisoner.
But even so Ali had not secured peace. With the murder of Othman the
dynastic principle gained the twofold advantage of a legitimate
cry--that of vengeance for the blood of the grey-haired caliph and a
distinguished champion, the governor Moawiya, whose position in Syria
was impregnable. The kernel of his subjects consisted of genuine Arabs,
not only recent immigrants along with Islam, but also old settlers who,
through contact with the Roman empire and the Christian church, had
become to some extent civilized. Through the Ghassanids these latter had
become habituated to monarchical government and loyal obedience, and for
a long time much better order had prevailed amongst them than elsewhere
in Arabia. Syria was the proper soil for the rise of an Arabian kingdom,
and Moawiya was just the man to make use of the situation. He exhibited
Othman's blood-stained garment in the mosque at Damascus, and incited
his Syrians to vengeance.
Ali's position in Kufa was much less advantageous. The population of
Irak was already mixed up with Persian elements; it fluctuated greatly,
and was largely composed of fresh immigrants. Islam had its headquarters
here; Kufa and Basra were the home of the pious and of the adventurer,
the centres of religious and political movement. This movement it was
that had raised Ali to the Caliphate, but yet it did not really take any
personal interest in him. Religion proved for him a less trustworthy and
more dangerous support than did the conservative and secular feeling of
Syria for the Omayyads. Moawiya could either act or refrain from acting
as he chose, secure in either case of the obedience of his subjects.
Ali, on the other hand, was unable to convert enthusiasm for the
principle inscribed on his banner into enthusiasm for his person. It was
necessary that he should accommodate himself to the wishes of his
supporters, which, however, were inconsistent. They compelled him
suddenly to break off the battle of Siffin, which he was apparently on
the point of gaining over Moawiya, because the Syrians fastened copies
of the Koran to their lances to denote that not the sword, but the word
of God should decide the contest (see further below, B.1; also ALI). But
in yielding to the will of the majority he excited the displeasure of
the minority, the genuine zealots, who in Moawiya were opposing the
enemy of Islam, and regarded Ali's entering into negotiations with him
as a denial of the faith. When the negotiations failed and war was
resumed, the Kharijites refused to follow Ali's army, and he had to turn
his armies in the first instance against them. He succeeded in disposing
of them without difficulty at the battle of Nahrawan, but in his success
he lost the soul of his following. For they were the true champions of
the theocratic principle; through their elimination it became clear that
the struggle had in no sense anything to do with the cause of God. Ali's
defeat was a foregone conclusion, once religious enthusiasm had failed
him; the secular resources at the disposal of his adversaries were far
superior. Fortunately for him he was murdered (end of January 661),
thereby posthumously attaining an importance in the eyes of a large part
of the Mahommedan world (Shi'a) which he had never possessed during his
life.