• The Spread of Islam

Questions of the Present and Answers of the Past

By the mid-18th century AD the Islamic state had expanded dramatically, and it remained firm for three successive centuries and only the Mediterranean islands of Sicily and Crete were later added. Thus there was an Islamic empire almost similar in terms of size and population to the Roman Empire. Only the Tang dynasty in China matched these two empires.

Those conquests, which established an Islamic civilization whose signs remained even after the old borders disappeared and new plans and challenges emerged, make us pose questions about their secrets, the record speed in which they were made, their enormous expansion and the ingredients for their long survival.

These and other questions are the subject of Hugh Kennedy s book Major Arabian Conquests, subtitled How the Spread of Islam Changed the World we Live in, a translation of which by Dr. Qassim Abdou Qassim has been published in Egypt. The book attempts to explain the present in the light of the past. We have been reading many questions about Islam since the beginning of the third millennium, even after disappearance of the political impact of the conquests and our return to the borders of a map drawn by the West in the 20th century.

The author, who studied Arabic at the Middle East Center for Arab Studies in Beirut and completed his study of Arabic in addition to Persian in Cambridge, has publications in the same field about the age of the first Abbasid caliphate, the Prophet (pbuh), the age of the Orthodox Caliphs, Crusade castles and Islam in Spain and Portugal. He also lectures on the history of architecture.

The author designed the book as a general one for Western readers. It included pictures of signs of civilization, maps of the conquests of Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, Persia, Morocco, Transoxiana, Samarkand and other countries far away in the east and west. He presented these conquests in chronological order, drawing conclusions from the battles fought by armies which were small in number but equipped with faith, saying they were characterized by valour, but with references to their cruelty and destruction, giving evidence to prove his argument.

Islam, which was in the hands, hearts and minds of the people of Arabia and those on fringes of the Syrian and Iraqi desert, is now the religion of areas which speak a different language and have different traditions.

The language of the victors

The Middle East, which Muslims conquered in those early centuries, was a multi ethnic, multi-linguistic and multi-religious society. After the conquests were completed, Arabic became the language of the new elite, and in AD 700 the Umayyad Caliph Abdulmalik Ben Marwan decreed that Arabic would be the only language used at government offices. The decree was so effective that Arabic began to be learnt on a wide scale. Anyone, Arab or non-Arab alike, who wanted to be a civil servant was forced to learn Arabic writing and reading. Inscriptions on coins and city and street signs were all in Arabic. That age also witnessed the start of collecting and recording earlier Arabian accounts of the conquests.

These accounts were not about direct incidents written by a sole author, but a multi-stage process; recording, writing and rewriting. The first stage involved an oral account of heroic acts in battle as part of heritage recorded as in pre-Islamic times in epics which all implied that Muslims victory was conclusive evidence that Almighty Allah sided with them, and supported them by killing their enemies and increasing the of spoils. The second stage involved the collection and recording of the oral material. As the author points out, this step started in the 12th century AH (8th AD) for fear of losing those documentary stories. It was necessary to keep the records of Muslim rule in Iraq and Egypt then. The first knowledge explosion represented by the production of books coincided with the use of paper instead of parchment in the 9th and 10th centuries.

Liberators and editors

Interestingly, in his reference to Muslim historians in the third and fourth centuries AH he described them as editors, in view of the fact that they were collectors of oral accounts of early Islamic conquests which they included in their books. However, the translator used the word historian which is familiar to the Arab reader.

The language of the victors did not contain letters and words only but enjoyed a high status. The men who proved that their predecessors had shared in early conquests felt they had the right to receive salaries from the Treasury, whereas city dwellers hoped for a tax rebate since they surrendered peacefully to the Muslim armies. In this way the stories of conquests were preserved not only because of intense interest in having a clear historical account but also because it was something useful. Therefore, what was useless, such as presenting historical events in chronological order was consigned to oblivion. That created a gap in the sequence of events and posed a number of questions about contradictions in the lists of warriors and victors in a particular battle. That s why there is confusion between the historical events reported by military leaders and those by manuscript writers.

Those who investigated the historical accounts reported in the Arab sources realised how confused and contradictory they are. There were studies on a wider scale in the 1970s and 1980s to verify the credibility of such oral accounts. As Ulbrecht Noth in Germany noted, many of the accounts of conquests were stereotyped phrases with details some of which were used in reports about all battles without discrimination. Accounts of the fall of cities into the hands of the leaders of Arabian conquests because of high treason committed by some of the population are widely found in many instances reported in a similar way that undermines its credibility. Similarly, Michael Cook and Patricia Crown (London) and many historians do not take these accounts seriously or accept their details. But in his discussion of these views, the author is of the opinion that these writers should verify their arguments not in terms of the contradictions they found in them, but because the Arabian accounts of these conquests can sometimes be checked against sources from outside Arabian heritage.

The Syriac Annals, or the Armenian history written by Sibius, both Christian accounts written centuries after the events they dealt with, and are shorter and less detailed than the Arabian accounts, confirm the general framework of Arabian history, and even confirm the details. E.g., Whereas the Arabian sources say that the well-fortified town of Toster fell into Muslims hands because of treason committed by some of the inhabitants who showed Muslims how to enter the town through covered water ducts, a Christian Syriac source gives an independent account o the story, implying that the town fell as reported in the Arabian sources, confirming modern Western historians suspicions about other areas too.

The construction of ideas

A century after the Arabian conquests mosques were built in Damascus, Jerusalem, Jarash, Amman and Baalbek as well as in Fustat (Egypt) and Istakhr and Sousa (Persia). True, a few of these early mosques survived only in the writings of Arab travellers and historians, but their archaeological significance still continues. Mosques stood alone as a material and spiritual sign of civilization, but other material signs were absent, as it took generations to develop the pottery industry, e.g., which is closely related to Islamic civilization.

However, something more important was there: the values held by many Arabian Bedouins who shared in early Islamic conquests. Poets exalt attack and retreat and power in battle, their excellent horses and their fighters bravery. Many of these values were carried to the battlefield. There was also strong mutual solidarity between Arabian Bedouins and merchants and farmers in sedentary areas, as some tribes consisted of sedentary farmers and nomads alike. That solidarity was the basis on which the armies involved in early Islamic conquests evolved.

The author took pains to explain the concept of jihad in Quranic verses, focusing on the concept of fighting only, but he did not distinguish between the verses about infidels and those about Jews and Christians. He did not benefit from the views of Muslim scholars who discussed the meaning of the word jihad and its scope. He discussed fighting, thinking it meant jihad, though there is crucial difference between them, which reveals the extent of fallacies about Islam and Arabian conquests as well as the stereotypical image of Islam, which is replicated in the West today in thinkers writings, politicians decisions and audio, visual and print media.

In the winters of AD 636 and 637 a Muslim detachment led by Abou Obaida Ibn Aljarrah and Khalid Ibn Alwaleed was sent from Damascus to Homs, which was a major Roman city, and laid siege to it in spite of severe cold. The city s defenders thought the Muslims were doomed to defeat because they wore nothing but slippers. However, the siege continued until spring and there were requests for peace from its population, particularly as there was another account which reported the destruction of most of the city s walls hit by an earthquake, which confirms that the conquerors were protected by Providence. Anyway, the Arabian armies made peace and received tribute, and taxes were paid commensurate with the taxpayer s finances. The conquerors secured people s lives and protected their property, city walls, water wheels, mills as well as churches, except John’s Church, which, as reported by Altabari, was converted into a mosque. In another account, the conquerors made arrangements with the people to share places. Muslims occupied vacant places and deserted gardens, and there was urban development according to Muslim armies views.

Existing weakness and forthcoming strength

There was a religious motive behind the conquests which intensified conquerors belief in religion and Paradise for martyrs. These ideals mixed with other pre-Islamic ones, mainly tribal loyalty, familial ties and warrior heroship. This mixture of Islamic and Bedouin values became firmly established in these armies and made them feel invincible, as opposed to poor local political infrastructure, which guaranteed the success of the Arabian armies.

The armies were not in the form of mass migrations. The conquerors left their wives, children and elderly people at home, and their families rejoined them only after victory. In this way they were regular armies which were required to fight even if they ran short of provisions. They lived a very frugal life as opposed to the extravagant life of palace and city dwellers. As the sky formed an important part of desert life, so was it their guide at night, which limited their movements then. The desert and night were their allies in battle.

A significant aspect of the power of those armies involved in conquests was the type of leadership. Most top military leadership came from elite city dwellers in Hijaz, mainly Quraysh. Among the distinguished leaders were Khalid Ibn Alwaleed in Syria, Amr Ibn Al Aas in Egypt and Saad Ibn Abi Waqqas in Iraq. The author referred to a generation which by no means was less efficient than its predecessor. He mentioned Oqba Ibn Nafei in north Africa, Tariq Ibn Ziyad and Moussa Ibn Noseir in Andalusia, and Qutaiba Ibn Muslim Al Bahli in Transoxiana.

The sources also referred to Arabian councils and leaders keenness to consult experts, which asserts the democratic nature of early Muslim society. That leadership was in part the product of political traditions in Arabian society, as leadership passed from generation to generation in particular families and tribes. Each leader had to prove himself, and if he failed, his past successes would not make up for that and he would be replaced. The author described how the Persian Queen Mother was amazed when neither of the sons of the conqueror Quitaba replaced him, which shows the difference between the two cultures. Moreover, inefficient, despotic leaders did not stay long in command. E.g. Obaidullah Ibn Abi Bakra in Herat (in present-day Afghanistan) and Algenaid Ibn Abdulrahman in Transoxiana, who were examples of failure, were removed from command after a short time, and were even attacked by poets.

Whereas military efficiency in the Byzantine Empire deteriorated rapidly because senior military officers sought to rule the empire, there were tight regulations for military conduct in conquests. What astonished the author was the peaceful manner in which successful leaders, such as Khalid Ibn Alwaleed, Amr Ibn Al Aas and Moussa Ibn Noseir, received orders for removal from command and return to the capital city for questioning.

Questioning the present, and lessons of the past

I didn’t t read Hugh Kennedy s book because of the minute details of the conquests it contained but rather to uncover the reasons behind the exceptional expansion of such conquests in a record time. I’m of the opinion that our understanding of the present started the moment we left our Arab land and travelled to foreign lands to promote our ideas there.

However, as past conquests combined the sword and the pen, firmness and tolerance at times, the twenty-first century s conquests must take a different course which enables us to cross geographic boundaries with topographic barriers and loss of life, and without being derailed off the straight path as ordered by our True Religion. Victorious conquerors didn’t t impose severe conditions on the vanquished and made pacts with them under which their lives and property were secured, including their religion related rights. Accordingly, in our today s conquests, (non-military of course), we shouldn’t t impose severer conditions on our relationships with foreigners than those imposed over a thousand years ago.

As the Western author said the vanquished never suffered deliberate destruction or sabatage by Muslims, in contrast, e.g. to Mongols extreme brutality in the 13th century A.D. The Arabians were always less after resources and services than their Byzantine and Sassanian predecessors. This confirms that moderation was the key to success of continued rule.

It was the many questions of the present about our real conditions, our stereotyped image and our unacceptable media presence that made us go through the book, calling for new conquests armed with enlightenment, the promotion of noble ideals, liberation led by an example and siding with democracy, justice and freedom.

Sulaiman Al-Askary

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