The Spread of Islam [antikvár]

Introduction Islam is remarkable above all for its rapid territorial expansion. From its origin in 622 with Muhammad's flight from Mecca to Medina, within two generations it reached the Atlantic on one hand and Central Asia on the other. It is no less remarkable for its subsequent grip upon all these lands so quickly conquered (with the ex-ceprion of those in Europe) as well as its later expansion in south Asia and Africa south of the Sahara. Throughout its history it has included within its ambit many different peoples with varied traditions, customs and languages, and it is fair to ask whether there is a common culture and art which might rightly be called Islamic. This book tries to answer that question by surveying the sites and monuments that survive from the first 800 years of Islam's history in the light of the literary sources and by studying the buildings themselves, their planning, style and decoration. In spite of recent work, much remains to be done in the way of excavation, and the principal material available to the Islamic archaeologist is the standing monuments. However, modem scholarship can now deal fairly with the evidence from a wide range of sources available to the speciahst but not yet to the general reader, to recreate the medieval Islamic past. There are inevitably limits: archaeology tells us what the buildings were hke; but the institutions they housed did not always develop congruently with them. Institutions must be interpreted from the historians or the lawyers; for Islam is such a deeply conservative religion that much can be leamt from the condemnation of innovation. Ideally the legal and historical sources should complement the extant monuments and their inscriptions. However, for Baghdad, which tiU 1258 was the seat of the 'Abbasid Caliphate, virtually nothing remains but medieval topographers' descriptions; and few of the great cities of the Eastern Caliphate (the Mashriq) - Shiraz, Nishapur or Merv - are in any better state. For Qayrawan in Tunisia on the other hand, the greatest medieval city of Westem Islam (the Maghrib) after Cordova, the historical sources for its many monuments have not yet been exploited. There remain 13th- to 15th-century Egypt and Syria, 13th-century Anatolia, and 14th- to 15th-century Persia and Central Asia, where the richness of the documentation and the many standing monuments make detailed investigation particularly fruitful. Elsewhere, the monuments without the sources or the sources without extant monuments have been used with much more caution. The approach is inevitably partial, but the material upon which it concentrates is typical of its period or culture. The material has also determined the temporal limits of this book. Under the Umayyads (632-750) and the 'Abbâsids (750-1258) there occurred not only the major conquests of Islam but also the evolution of Islamic pohtical institutions and administration, theology, law and the sciences. This has often led Westem Orientahsts to conclude that after this Classical Age of Islam there was only decline, and, sometimes, to regret that Islam had no renaissance. There was, indeed, no Islamic revival contemporary with the 15th-century Italian Renaissance; hence my consistent use of the terms "Middle Ages" for the period 622-1171, and "Later Middle Ages" for the period following. However, although the Arabic historians saw the destruction of the 'Abbasid Caliphate at Baghdad in 1258 as the ultimate catastrophe, the process of disintegration had set in long before; nor did progress come to a sudden stop. Even if the semblance of political unity was lost, the legacy of the Great Seljuks was a state in 13th-century Anatolia, which was succeeded by the birth of the Ottoman Empire. The Mongol invasions in Persia and Central Asia, though undoubtedly destructive, were of crucial importance in their development as separate states, and the far more destructive campaigns (1370-1405) of Timur (better known as Tamerlane) were followed by a brilliant cultural flowering under his 15th-century descendants. However, by the late 15 th century these successors of the 'Abbâsids were generally in decline. Persia and Central Asia were overwhelmed by tribal or dynastic warfare. The Mamluk state in Egypt and Syria was seriously weakened by internal faction and economic decline. Granada, the last Muslim enclave in Spain, fell in 1492. And the Ottoman conquest of Syria, Egypt, Iraq and much of North Africa in the early i6th century then established Turkey as the dominant Islamic power. I am deeply indebted to many friends and colleagues, in particular to M. Henri Abdelnour, Mrs Layla 'Ali Ibrahim, M. and Mme Jean-Charles Baity, Mme Yolande Crowe, Dr and Mrs Norman Daniel, Mile Sophie Ebeid, Fr Peter Levi SJ, Professor Muhsin Mahdi, Professor V. L. Ménage, M. André Raymond, Professor G. J. Toomer and Professor and Mrs MagdiWahba. But I am above all indebted to Basil Gray, whose constant interest has encouraged me and whose generous criticism has saved me many errors. To him and to his wife, Nicolete, I affectionately dedicate this book.