World History Chapter 11

Dynasty of caliphs who ruled an increasingly fragmented Islamic state from 750 to 1258, eventually becoming little more than figureheads. (pron. ah-BASS-id)

Arabic name for Spain (literally "the land of the Vandals"), most of which was conquered by Arab and Berber forces in the early eighth century C.E. (pron. al-AND-ah-loos)

Ancient name of Asia Minor, part of the Byzantine Empire that was gradually overrun by the Turks and that now is the Republic of Turkey. (pron. an-ah-TOLE-ee-yah)

Arab victory over the Chinese in 751 C.E. that checked Chinese expansion to the west and enabled the conversion of Central Asia to Islam. (pron. tah-las)

Nomadic Arabs. (pron. BED-wins)

"Protected subjects" under Islamic rule, non-Muslims who were allowed to practice their faith as "people of the book" in return for their paying special taxes. (pron. DIM-ees)

Great Muslim theologian, legal scholar, and Sufi mystic (1058-1111) who was credited with incorporating Sufism into mainstream Islamic thought. (pron. al-gha-ZAHL-ee)

Traditions passed on about the sayings or actions of Muhammad and his immediate followers; hadiths rank second only to the Quran as a source of Islamic law. (pron. hah-DEETHS)

The pilgrimage to Mecca enjoined on every Muslim who is able to make the journey; one of the Five Pillars of Islam. (pron. HAHJ)

The "flight" of Muhammad and his original seventy followers from Mecca to Yathrib (later Medina) in 622 C.E.; the journey marks the starting point of the Islamic calendar. (pron. HIJ-ruh)

An academic center for research and translation of foreign texts that was established in Baghdad in 830 C.E. by the Abbasid caliph al-Mamun.

Fourteenth-century Arab traveler (1304-1368) who wrote about his extensive journeys throughout the Islamic world. (pron. IB-uhn ba- TOO-tuh)

One of the greatest polymaths of the Islamic world (980-1037), a Persian who wrote prolifically on scientific (especially medical) and philosophical issues; he is often known as "Avicenna," the Latinized form of his name. (pron. ibn SEE-nah)

In Shia Islam, leaders with high religious authority; the twelve imams of early Shia Islam were Muhammad's nephew Ali and his descendants. (pron. EE-mahms)

Arabic for "struggle," this term describes both the spiritual striving of each Muslim toward a godly life and armed struggle against the forces of unbelief and evil. (pron. jee-HAHD)

Special tax paid by dhimmis in Muslim-ruled territory in return for freedom to practice their own religion. (pron. jeez-YAH)

Great stone shrine in Mecca that was a major pilgrimage center for worshippers of many different deities before it was reconsecrated to monotheistic use by Muhammad. (pron. KAH-bah)

Formal colleges for higher instruction in the teachings of Islam as well as in secular subjects, founded throughout the Islamic world beginning in the eleventh century. (pron. MAH-dras-ahs)

Key pilgrimage center in Arabia that became the birthplace of Islam.

"Would-be Arabs" in Muslim-ruled Spain, referring to Christians who adopted much of Arabic culture and observed many Muslim practices without actually converting to Islam. (pron. MOH-zah-rabs)

The Prophet of Islam (570-632 C.E.).

Literally, "one who submits"; the name was adopted by Muhammad and his followers to describe their submission to God.

The five core practices required of Muslims: a profession of faith, regular prayer, charitable giving, fasting during Ramadan, and a pilgrimage to Mecca (if financially and physically possible).

The most famous European traveler of the Middle Ages (1254-1324), whose travel account of his time in China was widely popular in Europe.

The first four rulers of the Islamic world (632-661) after the death of Muhammad.

Also transliterated as Qur'án and Koran, this is the most holy text of Islam, recording the revelations given to the prophet Muhammad. (pron. kuh- RAHN)

Islamic law, dealing with all matters of both secular and religious life. (pron. sha-REE-ah)

Sufi teachers who attracted a circle of disciples and often founded individual schools of Sufism. (pron. SHAKES)

A significant syncretic religion that evolved in India, blending elements of Islam and Hinduism; founded by Guru Nanak (1469-1539). (pron. SEEK-ism)

Islamic mystics, many of whom were important missionaries of Islam in conquered lands and who were revered as saints. (pron. SOO-fees)

Major Turkic Muslim state established in northern India in 1206. (pron. DEL-ee)

Great city of West Africa, noted as a center of Islamic scholarship in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. (pron. tim-buk-TOO)

Islamic religious scholars. (pron. oo-leh-MAH)

Family of caliphs who ruled the Islamic world from 661 to 750 C.E. (pron. oo-MY-ad)

The community of all believers in Islam. (pron. UM-mah)

• Islam drew on an older Arab identification of Allah with Yahweh, the Jewish High God, and Arab self-identification as children of Abraham. • The Quran denounced the prevailing social practices of an increasingly prosperous Mecca and sought a return to the older values of Arab tribal life. • The message of the Quran also rejected the Arab tribal and clan structure, which was prone to war, feuding, and violence. Instead, the Quran sought to replace this structure with the umma, the community of all believers.

Islam, like Judaism and Christianity, is monotheistic. Allah is the only God, the all-powerful Creator. • As "the Messenger of God," Muhammad presented himself in the tradition of earlier prophets like Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. • Like the Jewish prophets and Jesus, Muhammad demanded social justice and laid out a prescription for its implementation.

• The Islamic community, or umma, broke with the previous tribal structure defined by family and clan in Arabia, replacing it with a system in which membership was a matter of belief rather than birth. • The early Islamic community found itself constituted as a state at the very beginning of its history. • Muhammad was not only a religious figure but also a political and military leader able to implement his vision of an ideal Islamic society. • Islam possessed no separate religious organization, although tension between r eligious and political goals frequently generated conflict. • No professional clergy mediating between God and humankind emerged within Islam. • No distinction between religious law and civil law existed in the Islamic world.

• For the first time, a shared faith in Islam allowed the newly organized state to mobilize the military potential of the entire Arab population. • The Byzantine and Persian empires were weakened by decades of war with each other and by internal revolts. They also underestimated the Arab threat. • Merchant leaders of the new Islamic community wanted to capture profitable trade routes and wealthy agricultural regions. • Individual Arabs found in military expansion a route to wealth and social promotion. • Expansion provided a common task for the Arab community, which reinforced the fragile unity of the umma. • Arabs were motivated by a religious dimension, as many viewed the mission of empire in terms of jihad, bringing righteous government to the peoples they conquered.

• Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians could find familiar elements of their own faiths in Islam. • From the start, Islam was associated with the sponsorship of a powerful state. • Conquest called into question the power of old gods, while the growing prestige of the Arab Empire attracted many to Allah. • Although forced conversion was rare, living in an Islamic-governed state provided a variety of incentives for claiming Muslim identity. • In Islam, merchants found a religion friendly to commerce, and in the Arab Empire they enjoyed a huge and secure arena for trade. • People aspiring to official positions found conversion to Islam an aid to social mobility.

• Sunnis held that the caliphs were rightful political and military leaders, selected by t he Islamic community, while the Shia held that leadership in the Islamic world should derive from the line of Ali and his son Husayn, blood relatives of Muhammad. • For Sunni Muslims, religious authority in general emerged from the larger community, particularly from the religious scholars known as ulama. Meanwhile, the Shia invested their leaders, known as imams, with a religious authority that the caliphs lacked, allowing them alone to reveal the true meaning of the Quran and the wishes of Allah. • The Shia tradition included a messianic element that the Sunni tradition largely lacked.

• Sufism was sharply critical of the more scholarly and legalistic practitioners of the sharia; to Sufis, establishment teachings about the law and correct behavior did little to bring the believer into the presence of God. • Sufis held that many of the ulama of mainstream Islam had been compromised by their association with worldly and corrupt governments.

• The Quran included a mix of rights, restrictions, and protections for women. It banned female infanticide, gave women the right to own property and granted them rights of inheritance, defined marriage as a contract between consenting parties, granted the right to sue for divorce under certain circumstances, and regulated polygyny. It also allowed men to have sexual relations with consenting female slaves, but only under the condition that any children born of these unions were free, as was the mother once her owner died. • In practice, as the Arab Empire grew in size, the position of women became more limited. Women started to pray at home instead of in the mosque, and veiling and seclusion of women became standard practice among the upper and ruling classes, with special areas within the home becoming the only place where women could appear unveiled. Such seclusion was less practicable for lower-class women. These new practices derived far more from established traditions of Middle Eastern cultures than from the Quran, but they soon gained a religious rationale in the writings of Muslim thinkers. • Other signs of tightening patriarchy, such as "honor killing" of women by their male relatives for violating sexual taboos and, in some places, clitorectomy (female circumcision), likewise derived from local cultures, with no sanction in the Quran or Islamic law. But where they were practiced, such customs often came to be seen as Islamic. • Negative views of women, presenting them variously as weak, deficient, and a sexually charged threat to men and social stability, emerged in the hadiths, traditions about the sayings or actions of Muhammad, which became an important source of Islamic law. • Islam also offered new outlets for women in religious life. The Sufi practice of mystical union with God allowed a greater role for women than did mainstream Islam. Some Sufi orders had parallel groups for women, and a few welcomed women as equal members. • In Shia Islam, women teachers of the faith were termed mullahs, the same as their male counterparts. • Islamic education, either in the home or in Quranic schools, allowed some women to become literate and a few to achieve higher levels of learning. • Visits to the tombs of major Islamic figures as well as the ritual of the public bath provided some opportunity for women to interact with other women beyond their own family circle.

• Islam spread to India, Anatolia, and Spain in part through force of arms of Islamic armies, while Islam arrived in West Africa with Muslim traders. • Sufis facilitated conversions by accommodating local traditions, especially in India and Anatolia, but played little role in West Africa until at least the eighteenth century. • In India, West Africa, and Spain, Islam became one of several faiths within the wider culture, while in Anatolia it became the dominant faith.

• The demographic balance made a difference. Unlike India, far more Turkic-speaking peoples settled in Anatolia. This, coupled with the much smaller population of Anatolia and the massacres, enslavement, famine, and flight that occurred during the conquest, gave Turks a much more important position in Anatolia. • Anatolian society was more centralized than India, and the Christian Church and Byzantine imperial infrastructure in Anatolia were fatally weakened during the Turkic invasion. India's more decentralized civilization was better able to absorb the shock of external invasion. • The Turkish rulers of Anatolia built a new society that welcomed converts, and the cultural barriers to conversion were arguably less severe there than in

• At the core of that civilization was a common commitment to Islam. • No group was more important in the transmission of Islamic beliefs and practices than the ulama, an "international elite" who created a system of education that served to bind together an immense and diverse civilization. • The Sufi religious orders established an educational network and organized in a variety of larger associations, some of which included chapters throughout the Islamic world. • The pilgrimage to Mecca (the hajj) drew many thousands of Muslims to Mecca each year from all over the Islamic world. • The Islamic world also cohered as an immense arena of exchange in which goods, technologies, food products, and ideas circulated widely.

• The Islamic world valued commerce and fostered vibrant networks of exchange. Muslim merchants plied the Silk Roads, Sea Roads, and Sand Roads of the Afro-Eurasian world, and the Islamic world promoted long-distance economic relationships by actively supporting a prosperous, highly developed, "capitalist" economy. • Islamic civilization also facilitated a substantial exchange of agricultural products and practices. Rice, new strains of sorghum, hard wheat, bananas, lemons, limes, watermelons, coconut palms, spinach, artichokes, sugarcane, and cotton came to the Middle East from India. Sugarcane and cotton also came with knowledge of complex production processes. Some of these Indian crops subsequently found their way to Africa and Europe from the Middle East. • Technology also diffused widely within the Islamic world. Ancient Persian techniques for obtaining water by drilling into the sides of hills spread to North Africa. Muslim technicians made improvements on rockets developed in China. Techniques for manufacturing paper also arrived in the Middle East from China and later spread from the Middle East to India and Europe. • Ideas also spread, with Jewish and Christian precedents influencing Islamic thinkers; Persian bureaucratic practice, court ritual, and poetry influencing the elite in particular; and Greek and Indian scientific, medical, and philosophical texts being systematically translated into Arabic and studied throughout the Islamic world. • Those traditions mixed and blended to generate a distinctive Islamic civilization that made many original contributions to the world of learning—including the development of algebra as a novel mathematical discipline, original work in astronomy and optics, and medicine and pharmacology.

• Islam differed sharply from Christianity and Buddhism because its founder was not only a religious figure but also a political and military leader. • Moreover, from the start the Islamic community found itself constituted as a state. Because of this, Islam did not develop as clearly defined a separation between church and state as did both Christianity and Buddhism. • There were some similarities in their religious outlooks: all three religions were founded by single historical figures who had powerful religious experiences; all three provide a clear path to salvation; and all three proclaim the equality of all believers. • However, Islam's conception of monotheism was stronger than that of Christianity; and each religion was shaped in part by the cultural traditions in which it emerged.

• Islam differed sharply from Christianity and Buddhism because its founder was not only a religious figure but also a political and military leader. • Moreover, from the start the Islamic community found itself constituted as a state. Because of this, Islam did not develop as clearly defined a separation between church and state as did both Christianity and Buddhism. • There were some similarities in their religious outlooks: all three religions were founded by single historical figures who had powerful religious experiences; all three provide a clear path to salvation; and all three proclaim the equality of all believers. • However, Islam's conception of monotheism was stronger than that of Christianity; and each religion was shaped in part by the cultural traditions in which it emerged.

• For the first time a shared faith in Islam allowed the newly organized state to mobilize the military potential of the entire Arab population. • The Byzantine and Persian empires were weakened by decades of war with each other and by internal revolts. The two empires also underestimated the Arab threat. • Merchant leaders of the new Islamic community wanted to capture profitable trade routes and wealthy agricultural regions. • Individual Arabs found in military expansion a route to wealth and social promotion. • Expansion provided a common task for the Arab community, which reinforced the fragile unity of the Islamic umma. • Arabs were motivated by a religious dimension, as many viewed the mission of empire in terms of jihad, bringing righteous government to the peoples they conquered. • Islam experienced success in attracting converts: Muhammad's religious message was attractive to many, while Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians could find familiar elements of their own faiths in Islam. • Conquests called into question the power of old gods, while the growing prestige of the Arab Empire attracted many to Allah. • Although forced conversions were rare, living in an Islamic-governed state provided a variety of incentives for claiming Muslim identity. Merchants found in Islam a religion friendly to commerce and in the Arab Empire a huge and secure arena for trade, while people aspiring to official positions found conversion to Islam an aid to social mobility.

• The Islamic civilization embraced at least parts of virtually every other civilization in the Afro-Eurasian hemisphere. • It fostered a network of commerce and exchange that facilitated the spread of crops, technologies, and ideas. • The common commitment to Islam created an identity that transcended more local political and cultural identities in the Islamic world.

• At the core of a single Islamic world was a common commitment to Islam. The ulama through education and Sufis through their associations served to bind the Islamic world together. It also cohered as an immense arena of exchange in which goods, technologies, crops, and ideas circulated widely. • However, Islam was separate and distinct in that is was politically fragmented. It included numerous distinct and sometimes hostile religious traditions, including Sunni/Shia and ulama/Sufi splits. It embraced distinctive cultural traditions from sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia that resulted in different attitudes toward social and cultural norms, such as those concerning women.

• The populations of many regions converted wholly or partly to the Islamic faith. • Regions of the Islamic world were tied more closely together through trade and the exchange of technologies, crops, and ideas. • Older religious and political traditions were at times swept away or at least altered. • Islam was transformed through these encounters, especially when the norms of those societies that converted had an impact on the social and cultural implications of the faith. • The Islamic world and the understanding of Islam itself was shaped by contact with intellectual and cultural traditions like Greek philosophy.