Stearns, Chapter 11

 Bedouin  Social organization = clans  Shaykhs, slave families, rivalries  Constant fighting  Mecca dominated by Umayyad clan  Medina is disputed territory  Women have status and don’t wear veils  Why does Islam flourish here?

 Muhammad  Khadijah  610- revelations  Quran  Umayyads plot against him – why?  Flees Mecca to Medina  Hijra – flight (622)  Treaty in 628 with Quraysh

 The new religion offers society…  Monotheism  Umma  Ethical system  Zakat  Universal Elements….  Five pillars  Ramadan  Hajj

 Term combining the ideas of a leader, successor, and deputy (of the Prophet)  Abu Bakr was the first caliph; 2 years  Muslim teaching maintained that there is no distinction between the temporal and spiritual domains; social law is a basic strand in the fabric of comprehensive religious law.  Abu Bakr led many assaults; Ridda Wars

 Umar, Uthman, Ali  Caliphate becomes an ‘institution’  Umar began conquests outside Arabia  Prohibited Arabs from assuming ownership of conquered territory  Collected taxes from non-Arabs; remained the minority (language)  Did not try to convert the conquered

 Asserted the right of the caliph to protect the economic interests of the entire umma  Publication of the definitive text of Qur’an  Armies consisted of Muslim Arabs  Introduce Arabic as official language  Distinctive Muslim coinage; new order  Accused of nepotism; appointed power positions to family  Assassinated in 656

 Refused to punish the soldiers that killed Uthman  Umayyads reject Ali’s claim to the throne  Warfare erupts; Ali’s experience gives him the upper hand  Battle of Siffin; accepts mediation  Mu’awiya (Uthman’s cousin) proclaimed caliph in Jerusalem  Ali was assassinated a year later

 Sunnis backed the Ummayad  Shi’a were supporters of Ali  Over the years differences have compounded

 Mu’awiya switched capital to Damascus (Syria)  Reached from Spain to central Asia (biggest since the Romans)  ‘Arab conquest state’  Muslim Arabs only taxed for charity  Muslim warrior elite kept isolate  Intermarriage meant a loss of taxes

 Mawali  Still had to pay taxes; Received no share of the ‘booty’  Couldn’t get good gov’t positions; Not members but ‘clients’  Frustrated by the royal elaborate caliphal court  The hajib, or chamberlain, resisted access to the caliph, who now received visitors seated on a throne surrounded by bodyguards

 Royal harems  ‘aloof’ in their pleasure gardens and marble palaces  Soldiers in Iran began to resent orders from Damascus  Marched under the banner of ‘al-Abbas’, Muhammad’s uncle in 747  Shi’a and Mawali all help in the defeat  Umayyad are slaughtered (p 253)

 New capital in Iraq  Gradually became more ‘Sunni’ although Shi’a continued to support them. Why?  Bureacrats, servents and slaves  Wazir – chief administrator, royal executioner  Integration of new converts; mass conversions  Growth of merchant class, urban expansion, dhows, guilds, slaves often rose to power

 Priceless works of Plato, Aristotle, Galen, Hippocrates, Ptolemy and Euclid were saved and written in Arabic  Material was spread throughout the empire  Made the Scientific Revolution possible  Read p 258 – Global Connections