The Handy Islam Answer Book. John Renard
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help (i.e., military aid to fight the Muslims) from the Franks.
Does this view still prevail?
Historians now tend to argue that the low conversion rates during the early centuries of Muslim rule in Iberia militate against the view that Muslim influence exacerbated the wayward tendencies of “adoptionist” Spanish Christians; in other words, those Church authorities were reacting out of fear of Islam. During the eleventh century, the situation was in a way reversed: Islamic theology reflects a feeling of alienation and deep fear of Muslim apostasy and conversion to Christianity. These fears were provoked by the increased missionary work by the Cluniac monks in Spain and a degree of heteropraxy among Muslims. With the capture of Toledo in 1085, the Muslims were no longer invincible in Spain, and the Christian motivation for fighting was “no longer for the collection of tribute, but for the restoration of the land of St. Peter.” Conflict thus became more explicitly religious and not purely political. When the Moroccan Almoravid Muslim dynasty filled the political vacuum in Spain in 1086, they won a decisive victory at Zallayah, provoking an all-out war by the Christians against Islam in the Iberian Peninsula and the East. The Christians wanted Muslims to be baptized, while the Muslims wanted King Alfonso VI to accept Islam. Christians had come to prefer war against the Muslims to dialogue with them.
How did North Africa become Islamized?
Muslim armies conquered the coastal regions of what are now Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco during a long drive that ended with Umayyad troops crossing to Gibraltar in 711. During the eighth century, much of that vast region remained in control of independent tribes of diverse ethnicity. Itinerant Kharijites managed to convert many Berbers (a major ethnic group) to their brand of “puritanical” Islam with its centripetal tendency to dissociate itself from central rule in Damascus and later Bagh-dad. But in 800, the first of many indigenous Muslim dynasties was founded by Ibrahim ibn al-Aghlab, after whom a line of hereditary governors were named “Aghlabids.” Around 868 they declared “officially” their independence from the caliphate. They encountered their first serious competition with the rise of the Fa-timid dynasty, whose founding figures traced their origins to the early Ismaili (aka Sevener) Shi’ites, hard-core opponents of Abbasid central rule in Baghdad. They were more politically activist than the Twelvers, who had effectively deferred hope of righteous rule until the Twelfth imam would emerge from Occultation (Concealment) as the Mahdi, Guided One, at the end of time. Convinced that there would always be an imam present and active in the world, the Fatimids (that is, “descendants of Fatima,” Muhammad’s daughter) pursued a vigorous missionary agenda of da’wa (“inviting” to Islam). Around 909, Ubayd Allah proclaimed himself the new imam, thus launching the Fatimid caliphate and beginning the conquest of what are now Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt. In 969, the Fatimids founded the city of Cairo, from which they ruled the region until 1171, effectively cutting it off from the Abbasid caliphate.
Ruins of a Fatimid castle in Ajdabiya, Libya. The Fa-timid caliphate covered much of northern African and the Middle East, lasting from 909 to 1171 C.E.
How did the history of the central Arabicate Sphere unfold thereafter?
Among the numerous dynasties and political regimes that ruled throughout the Mediterranean and central and south Asia, several stand out. In Egypt, Saladin’s Sunni Ayyubid dynasty (1171–1250) supplanted the Fatimids and was in turn overthrown by the Mamluk dynasty (1250–1517). The Mamluks presided over two and a half centuries of relative peace and prosperity throughout the central Middle East, ruling Egypt and Libya as well as much of “Greater Syria.” They were patrons of the arts and architecture on a grand scale under whom Cairo, especially, grew into a worthy rival of any great Mediterranean city. The Ottoman Turks (1300–1921) succeeded the Mamluks as they expanded to conquer most of the former Byzantine empire and more. To the east, the Safavid dynasty (1501–1722) replaced the descendants of Genghis Khan, who had ruled Iraq and Iran for 250 years. Establishing Twelver Shi’i Islam as the official creed of the realm, the Safavids created splendid art and architecture in cities such as Isfahan.
What is the Persianate sphere? And why not just call it “Persian”?
As the name suggests, at the core of this sphere are Persian language and ethnicity centered historically on the Iranian plateau. Its western reaches begin in eastern Iraq and stretch northward into the Caucasus, eastward across present-day Iran, through Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan, and north of there to cover much of Central Asia, overlapping historically with parts of the Turkic sphere (see below). Extremely diverse ethnically and linguistically, the western half of the sphere embraces ethnic groups such as Kurds, Baluchis, and Pashtuns. The eastern half of the sphere—most of South Asia— begins in eastern Pakistan and covers the northern two-thirds of India, much of Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. In the “Indian subcontinent” Persianate culture blended with Hindu traditions of art, architecture, and literature, and the “classical Persian” language (already much influenced by Arabic) put its stamp on other Indo-European languages such as Sindhi, Punjabi, Gujarati, and Kashmiri. Urdu, now the “national language” of Pakistan and a tongue spoken by many Indian Muslims, is a rich amalgam of Indic, Persian, and some Turkic elements. The Persianate sphere is home to a rich religious diversity: Twelver Shi’ism, especially in the western half (over 90 percent of Iranians and over half of Iraqis, for example), Ismailis sprinkled through the eastern half, and smaller religious minorities such as the Bahais and Parsees (aka Zoroastrians). In addition, Sufi orders especially associated with the Persianate sphere include Chishtis and Suhrawardis as well as distinctive Shi’i orders like the Dhahabis. The term “Persianate” is used here because there are actually several “Persian” languages and because the sphere represents the results of centuries of linguistic and cultural influence that go well beyond lands now typically identified as “Persian.”
How did Persia become Islamized?
When Arab Muslim forces moved into the Iranian plateau in the early seventh century, various Persian Empires had already ruled the region for over a millennium. The dominant languages belonged to the large “Indo-European” family of tongues, entirely different from the Semitic Arabic of the invaders. And the dominant religious tradition was Zoroastrianism, also about a thousand years old by then. Muslim armies brought down the last of the Sasanian rulers by 653 and continued to push eastward toward central and south Asia. Under the Umayyad and early Abbasid caliphates, Muslim administrations managed Persia through regional or provincial governors (amir, uh-MEER). By the mid-ninth century, governors of the always restive region began to proclaim themselves independent of Baghdad. From then on, Persia was ruled by a long succession of dynasties small and large. Most prominent were the Ilkhanids (thirteenth to fourteenth centuries) and the Timurids (fourteenth to fifteenth centuries), both tracing their ancestry to Genghis Khan and holding significant positions in Central Asia. Most of what is now the nation of Iran was unified by the region’s first major Shi’ite dynasty, the Safavids, in the early sixteenth century, and Iran’s dominant faith tradition has been more or less “officially” that of Twelver Shi’ism ever since.
How did Islam become important in South Asia?
Early conquests brought Islam to the region of Sind, in present-day Pakistan, by 711. Over the next several centuries a succession of Muslim dynasties made occasional advances into the Punjab in northwestern India. In 1191 the Ghurid dynasty captured Delhi and established the first major Muslim presence in the heart of India and the first of a succession of sultanates to hold sway in various regions of the subcontinent. The most important of those was that of Tughluq Shah (1320–1351), who managed to unite most of northern and central India from Delhi. For the next sixty years or so the Tughluquids shared power with several other dynasties that ruled to the south, while the kings of Bengal established their independent rule over a newly Islamized population. In 1526 Babur conquered Delhi and established the Islamic Mughal dynasty, whose rule would soon encompass most of the subcontinent.
What happened to the Mughal Empire?
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