Week 11

Question 1

Pre-Islamic Arabia (to the 600s CE)

Answer 1

-Trade Routes
-Camel Saddles
-Arab Tribes
-Mecca and the Ka’ba
-The people who lived in the Arabian Peninsula prior to the birth of Islam were a varied mix of nomads and settled societies
~The Red Sea and the west coast of Arabia were important trade routes dating to the era of the Ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians
Merchants shipped incense (particularly frankincense) and a variety of African goods north via these trade routes, but these people were, from a geopolitical perspective, essentially nobodies up to about 300 BC
**They had domesticated camels and prospered from this trade, but they were not military threats to any of their surrounding neighbors
**That started to change around 300 BC when the Arabs invented a new sort of camel saddle
Prior to this point, it took two people to ride a camel into a battle (one held the reins and the other fought from the back)
**However, with the new saddle, one person could ride and fight at the same time
**This made their armies faster and more maneuverable, and it allowed them to seize control over the trade routes
-In the center of the peninsula, most of the Arabs lived in tribal communities controlled by chiefs
~These groups were forced on raising herds of animals but also on raiding one another’s herds
Engaging in raids and taking vengeance on one another for sights and injuries suffered in these battles defined valor and bravery
These could occasionally result in seemingly endless cycles of feuds and conflict
**They worshiped a wide variety of deities associated with natural forces of the universe and believed that various natural objects (in particular some sacred stones) were imbued with natural forces
**Because nomads could not haul around many of these devotional objects, they were housed as sacred sites, particularly in the Ka’ba in the city of Mecca
-Mecca was a major caravan city midway up the Arabian Peninsula
~Because the city housed so many sacred objects, the Quraysh tribe that controlled the city was quite prominent and grew wealthy from both the north-south-trade routes but also from pilgrims who came to the city to worship

Question 2

Kingdom of Aksum (circa 100-900 CE)

Answer 2

-Cope Christianity
-A wide variety of other religious influences started to creep into the peninsula in the early centuries CE
~To the north, Christianity spread south from Rome and the Byzantine Empire, and a variety of Gnostic sects attracted followers as they spread south as well
*To the east, Zoroastrianism spread from Persia
**To the west, the kingdoms of East Africa particularly the Kingdom of Aksum, heavily influenced Arabia
-Aksum was founded sometime around 100 CE and dominated most of Ethiopia and the rest of East Africa
~From there, Aksum was connected to the Silk Roads and spread African goods (particularly gold, ivory, and slaves) as far as India and China
Around 300, the rulers of the kingdom converted to Coptic Christianity due to the influence of Saint Frumwntius
**According to legend, Frumentius was a Syrian merchant who was shipwrecked and taken to Aksum
**There he earned his freedom, traveled to Egypt where he became a bishop, and returned to spread Coptic Christianity
-Coptic Christianity is somewhat different due to disagreement over the exact nature of Christ and from there they developed separate traditions
-The Aksumites identified so closely with Christianity that they began to identify themselves with the Queen of Sheba and the early development of Judaism
~In fact, even to this day, Ethiopian Christians believe that Ethiopia is the home of the Ark of Covenant, which was sent by King Solomon
**It is not in a mysterious warehouse being studied by “top men;” instead, it is inside, it is inside this church where a single monk protects and care for it until his death

Question 3

Himyarite Kingdom (circa 110-525 CE)

Answer 3

-Judaism
-To the south, Judaism had a sizable influence
~The kingdoms of southern Arabia (modern Yemen and Oman) controlled sizable urban populations and grew wealthy from the trade along the Arabian Peninsula
-In the 300s, the kings of the Himyarite Kingdom converted to Judaism
~While this was undoubtedly the result of belief, it was probably also intended to combat the spread of Christianity from Rome and Aksum
*In the 400s and early 500s, this resulted in conflict as these kingdoms started to compete for control over the incense trade
**This reached its peak in the early 520s when the Himyarite king attacked the Christian population of the region
-An image of a Himyarite king is currently in the MET, but this was probably part of a royal statue
~We can tell that it is supposed to be royal because of the laurel wreath that is around the head (a symbol that came from the Mediterranean)
*More importantly, one can tell that the individual depicted here is Jewish because of the curl of hair down the left cheek
**Today, the MET notes that is the hairstyle of Yeminin Jews

***In response, the Aksumites invaded the south and conquered the region

Question 4

Muhammad (circa 570-632 CE)

Answer 4

-Early Life
~Abu Talib
~Khadija
-Recitations (610 CE)
~Allah
~Seal of the Prophets
-By the 500s, Arabia was a melting pot of religious and cultural traditions
~Various forms of Christianity, traditional Arab religions, Zoroastrianism, and Judaism combined with African, Mediterranean, Persian, and other traditions as merchants and missionaries traveled in this region
*It’s in this environment that Muhammad was born
-According to tradition, Muhammad was born sometime around 570 in Mecca
~While he was a member of the ruling Quraysh tribe, he was a part of the Hashim clan, which was not particularly important within the city
*Most of our sources tell us that he led a pretty tough early life
**His parents died when he was young and he was cared for by various relatives (in particular his uncle Abu Talib)
-During his early years, traditional legends and stories about Muhammad tell us that he traveled north with his uncle on various commercial expedition
~Exactly where he went, how long he spent, and what interactions he had with the various religions of the region are hotly debated and the subject of various Islamic legends
*Some of these later legends talk about Christian monks and others recognizing that he would be an important individual, which suggests some level of interaction with individuals of a variety of faith, these stories seem to be later legends intended to reinforce Muhammad’s status as a prophet
**He married a wealthy, older widow (Khadija), and according to most accounts, spent a good portion of the 590s and early 600s managing her caravan business
-In 610, when he was around 40 years old, he was meditating when the angel Gabriel appeared to him and commanded him to recite
~At that point, he began to receive divine revelations from Allah (Allah is an Arabic word that simply means God)
These revelations revealed to Muhammad that Allah was the same god worshiped by Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus, and other great prophets who had preached to the Jews and Christians in previous centuries
**However, while their prophecies had provided true teachings, they were incomplete
**The revelations provided to Muhammad were the final set of teachings (he was the Seal of the Prophets) that Allah would provide
-These early teaching seem to have focused on instructing individuals on the necessity of living moral lives via submission to God (which is what Isalm means) and warning that if they did not heed the commandments of God, people would suffer the pains of hell and a final judgment of all souls
~Muhammad began preaching this among the people of Mecca, convincing his wife and possibly his uncle (although that’s disputed) of his status as a prophet
-However, he seems to have gained only a small number of followers in Mecca
~According to tradition, despite the small size of his followers, he began to face opposition, and in 615, a small group of Muslims left the city for the safety of Aksum, where they were sheltered by the Aksumites
*Because of the opposition, in 622 Muhammad decided to leave Mecca for the city of Medina to the north
-The image shows the moment when Gabriel called Muhammad to begin reciting from a central Asian manuscript that dates to the early 1400s
~Gabriel is easily identifiable due to his wings, and one can see Muhammad with a characteristic flame-like halo
One may have heard that depictions of Muhammad are forbidden
**Generally speaking, that is true, and condemnations of figural representations have led to more geometric or abstract decorations in mosques as well as the development of calligraphy as a form of decoration
**However, there have been depictions of Muhammad made by Muslims throughout the history of Islam, particularly in Persia and Central Asia

Question 5

The Hijra (622 CE)

Answer 5

-Why Medina?
-The Ummah
~The People of the Book
~The Five Pillars
-Muhammad’s move from Mecca to Medina is known as the Hijra, but exactly why Muhammad chose to move in 622 is unclear
~Traditional Islam sources tell us that his preaching created great hostility among the elites of the Quraysh who resented his opposition to their traditional polytheistic beliefs and saw him as threatening the basis of the economic and social power in Arabia
*As a result, he needed to flee because he was under threat of possible assassination by the leadership of the city
-However, modern historians are unsure of what to make of that account
~The number of people who had converted seems like it would be too small to threaten the stability of the city and the political leadership in a serious way, and some western studies of his early teachings suggest that he may have had a more ambivalent view of Mecca’s polytheistic traditions than later Islamic historians would suggest
Some historians have suggested that the city’s leadership may have seen the writing on the wall and recognized that Muhammad’s movement was about to take off, but the more plausible explanation (at least to my mind( is that in 622, Muhammad’s mission in Mecca have failed
**By this point, his wife and uncle were dead, and he had not attracted the audience he had expected to find
**As a result, he started to look around for more fertile ground for his message
Medina was possibly not his first choice, as he seems to have entered into negotiations to go to the southern city of Taif before looking to Medina
-Muhammad may have been attracted to Medina for two reasons
~First, two watering tribes (the Aws and Khazrai) dominated the city, and he was asked to mediate between them
~Second, the city had a large Jewish population, and Muhammad seems to have seen them as being potential converts
-In Medina, Muhammad began to receive the revelations that shaped Islam’s specific doctrines and beliefs
~It is here that he began to develop the concept of the ummah, the all-encompassing Muslim community in which believers are united as equals, free of previous conflicts and allegiances
This seems to have been his solution to the tribal conflicts that plagued Medina (and Arabia more generally)
**At the center of this new community was the mosque and the leadership provided by God via the recitations provided the Muhammad
**When the Jewish population did not convert as he expected, he broke with his previous tradition of prayer in the direction of Jerusalem to prayer in the direction of Mecca
**When the Meccas began to harass Muslims who traveled to the city, he began to rescind his previous commands of total non-violence to allow for warfare against those who attacked the ummah
-The People of the Book (Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, and various other traditions who had accepted some level of God’s teaching) should be tolerated within society unless they too attacked or attempted to harm the ummah
-The Five Pillars of Islam (the declaration of faith, prayer, the pilgrimage to the mecca [hajj], giving alms, and fasting during Ramadan) began to develop here as well

Question 6

The Rightly Guided Caliphs

Answer 6

-Abu Bakr (reigned 632-634 AD)
-Umar (reigned 634-644 AD)
-Uthman (reigned 644-656 AD)
-By the time Muhammad died in 632, he and his followers had managed to conquer Mecca and most of the elites within Arabia had converted
~However, there were serious problems
*Muhammad had no male heirs and he did not appoint anyone to be the leader of the ummah
-Consequently, after his death, the elders of the ummah gathered to determine what to do
~At this meeting, they elected Abu Bakr, Muhammad’s father-in-law to be the first caliph or deputy of the prophet
~As caliph, Abu Bakr was not a prophet but rather the political and religious leader of the ummah
He only ruled for two years, but he helped secure the foundation of Islam by waging a series of wars against tribes that attempted to develop their own forms of Islam or split away in the aftermath of Muhammad’s death
**Abu Bakr had the foresight to appoint a successor, Umar who wound up being assassinated in 644 by an individual who was upset about his level of taxation
**Upon Umar’s death, another election was held among the elites of the ummah, which resulted in the election of ‘Uthman (mainly because it seems that people thought that ‘Uthman was so old that he would die soon and could be easily controlled, neither of which was true in the end)

Question 7

The Age of Expansion (622-750 CE)

Answer 7

-Why?
~People of the Book and dhimmi
-It is during the region of Abu Bakr, Umar, and ‘Uthman that Arab armies began to move out of Arabia into the Persian and Byzantine Empires to their north
~Everything that Muhammad and Abu Bakar unified, while everything else was conquered by the 660s
*The timing of this was ideal
-The Persians and Byzantines had just wrapped up a twenty-six-year long conflict that the Persians had almost won
~Both states were exhausted and unable to muster sizable armies at short notice
*However, the real question is why this occurred at all
-When speaking of the ummah and the early history of Islam, it’s tempting to see a unified Muslim community governed by a caliph with complete control over the actions of those living under his control
~That’s certainly the idea, but in fact the ummah was made up of a diverse array of tribes with conflicting interests, and it is unclear what role the caliphs actually played in organizing and arranging for these conquests
*If anything, these conquests often seem to be the result of nearly independent armies, often comprised of non-Muslim Arabs, fighting and conquering territory as the caliphs tried vainly to control the situation from Arabia
-In addition, these conquests were certainly not for the purpose of conversion
~Muhammad was quite clear that Islam was not a missionary religion (the Qur’an states that there is no compulsion in religion), and this continued during the great expansion of the 600s and 700s
*The armies that conquered the Middle East, North Africa, and central Asia did not attempt to convert the people that they conquered
**They tried to maintain their separation from the local population as much as possible (some of the great cities of the Middle East, like Basra and Cairo, started as military camps that kept early Muslim armies separate from the population of Mesopotamia and Egypt)
-Instead of attempting to convert the population, they began to create dhimmi contracts with Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians in order to regulate their behavior within the ummah
~These contracts allowed the People of the Book to practice their traditions as long as they lived apart from the Muslims, did not try to convert them, did not build new churches and holy shrines, wore special clothing, and paid the poll tax (the jizya)
*This policy actually resulted in the early caliphs discouraging conversion since more converts wound up depriving them of one of their main sources of revenue

Question 8

Civil War (656-662 CE)

Answer 8

-Ali (circa 601-661 CE)
-Umayyads
-Sunni and Shia
-Regardless of why the conquests occurred, they only showed down for a short period as the ummah experienced its first major controversy
-In 656, ‘Uthman was assassinated in Mecca
~When the elders gather to elect a new caliph, they choose ‘Ali, the son-in-law, and cousin of Muhammad
*Apparently, ‘Ali had thought that he deserved to be caliph upon the death of Muhammad, but the community had passed over him
**When Umar died, he wanted to be caliph, but he could not muster enough support and reluctantly supported ‘Uthman
-Once ‘Uthman died, ‘Ali finally got his chance to lead, but oddly, he did nothing to punish the assassins who had killed ‘Uthman (which is not to say that he was complicit in the assassination except by not actively intervening to protect him)
~When word of this reached Syria, where members of ‘Uthman clan (the Umayyads) ruled, they demanded justice and civil war was the result
*This only ended with the assassination of ‘Ali in 661 and the accession of the Umayyads as the new rulers of the Islamic world
-Of course, one can see the legacy of this conflict today
~Those individuals who argued that the Umayyads were the legitimate caliphs were the ancestors of Sunni Muslims, while the followers of ‘Ali who denied the legitimacy of the Umayyads were the ancestors of modern Shia Muslims
*Since 661 they have gone their own ways on a variety of theological issues (most Shia believe that a series of divinely inspired teachers [imams] followed Muhammad and ‘Ali and continued to teach in the centuries after ‘Ali’s death), and have developed their own holy sites around the tomb of ‘Ali and his son (in the mosque housing the tomb of ‘Ali)

Question 9

The Qur’an

Answer 9

-Suras
-To examine the foundations of Islam; the Qur’an is, of course, the collected recitations from Muhammad
~According to tradition, Muslims began collecting these sayings soon after Muhammad’s death, but it was under ‘Uthman that the Qur’an developed into the text
*Images come from a rather recent discovery at the University of Birmingham
-According to ti radiocarbon dating of the parchment, the text is written on the skin from no later than 645
~It is unclear when the actual text was written, but given the date of the parchment, this may be one of the earliest known copies of the Qur’an currently in existence
-Unlike the Old or New Testament, the Qur’an is the word of God rather than a series of stories or reminisces written by humans about God
*Because God revealed this message in Arabic, it was not translated into other languages to preserve it, and as a result, reading Arabic was one of the prerequisites to conversion in the first wave of Muslim expansion (which helped limit conversion)
-THe work is divided into 114 suras (chapters) that were given at various times (some originated from Muhammad’s first years in Mecca while others come from Medina)
~These suras provide a variety of instructions, prayers, laws, and other exhortations regarding the power of God
Many of the suras focus on Moses, Abraham, Jesus, and other important prophets who came before Muhammad
**While many of these stories are familiar from the Bible, others come from various infancy, wisdom, and passion gospels that circulated widely in Arabi during the 400s and 500s CE
**However, there are some differences, while the Qur’an is unclear as to what exactly happened to Jesus, it is clear that God did not allow him to die on the cross
-Regardless, read the first two suras of the Qur’an
~The first is quite short, but the second, The Cow, is the longest sura, and it provides a complete depiction of Muslim belief (it is known as The Cow because it recounts a story of Moses and a cow)
According to tradition, this sura was given in Medina during a time of great conflict and turmoil, and the Muslim community was in the process of defending itself from attacks by other religious groups
**The introduction to this sura will provide more information about this period
**This sura provides a great deal of information about the relationship between Muhammad, Abraham, Jesus, and the other founders of monotheism, the power of God, the coming final judgment, God’s infinite generosity and compassion for those who believe, and warfare and violence
-It is important to note that various suras often contain contradictory information, particularly when it comes to issues of warfare and violence since it seems that Muhammad’s views of these topics changed based on the circumstances that he faced
~Thus, at some point he stressed nonviolence but provided other instructions when he and his followers were attacked

Question 10

The Qur’an

Answer 10

-Suras
-To examine the foundations of Islam; the Qur’an is, of course, the collected recitations from Muhammad
~According to tradition, Muslims began collecting these sayings soon after Muhammad’s death, but it was under ‘Uthman that the Qur’an developed into the text
*Images come from a rather recent discovery at the University of Birmingham
-According to ti radiocarbon dating of the parchment, the text is written on the skin from no later than 645
~It is unclear when the actual text was written, but given the date of the parchment, this may be one of the earliest known copies of the Qur’an currently in existence
-Unlike the Old or New Testament, the Qur’an is the word of God rather than a series of stories or reminisces written by humans about God
*Because God revealed this message in Arabic, it was not translated into other languages to preserve it, and as a result, reading Arabic was one of the prerequisites to conversion in the first wave of Muslim expansion (which helped limit conversion)
-THe work is divided into 114 suras (chapters) that were given at various times (some originated from Muhammad’s first years in Mecca while others come from Medina)
~These suras provide a variety of instructions, prayers, laws, and other exhortations regarding the power of God
Many of the suras focus on Moses, Abraham, Jesus, and other important prophets who came before Muhammad
**While many of these stories are familiar from the Bible, others come from various infancy, wisdom, and passion gospels that circulated widely in Arabi during the 400s and 500s CE
**However, there are some differences, while the Qur’an is unclear as to what exactly happened to Jesus, it is clear that God did not allow him to die on the cross
-Regardless, read the first two suras of the Qur’an
~The first is quite short, but the second, The Cow, is the longest sura, and it provides a complete depiction of Muslim belief (it is known as The Cow because it recounts a story of Moses and a cow)
According to tradition, this sura was given in Medina during a time of great conflict and turmoil, and the Muslim community was in the process of defending itself from attacks by other religious groups
**The introduction to this sura will provide more information about this period
**This sura provides a great deal of information about the relationship between Muhammad, Abraham, Jesus, and the other founders of monotheism, the power of God, the coming final judgment, God’s infinite generosity and compassion for those who believe, and warfare and violence
-It is important to note that various suras often contain contradictory information, particularly when it comes to issues of warfare and violence since it seems that Muhammad’s views of these topics changed based on the circumstances that he faced
~Thus, at some point he stressed nonviolence but provided other instructions when he and his followers were attackedT

Question 11

The Umayyad Caliphate (661-750 CE)

Answer 11

-Damascus and Byzantine Influence
~Dome of the Rock
-After the defeat of ‘Ali, the Umayyads set up a new capital in Damascus
~They had a variety of reasons for this
*First, Syria was the base of their power, so Damascus provided a haven against their numerous enemies
Second, Damascus was much closer to the military frontiers of North Africa and Anatolia
**By basing themselves in Damascus, there could portray themselves as military leaders who were protecting them ummah against Byzantines
**This decision also meant that the Umayyads had access to a wide array of Christian and Jewish administrators who previously had helped administer the Byzantine state
**The Umayyad state absorbed these administrators, and they used their expertise to turn the Umayyads into a centralized state along the same lines of what they knew previously
-However, conversion was not something that was encouraged in the first wave of Islamic expansion
~The Umayyads did not encourage conversion, and they generally looked down upon non-Arab Muslim converts (they forced them to pay the same sort of taxes required of non-Muslims)
*Even though they used Byzantine administrators, they kept all political and military authority in the hands of Muslim Arabs
**While some caliphs attempted to reform this system, it resulted in resentment and anger that eventually led to their downfall
-The Umayyads also absorbed Byzantine culture more broadly
~Early Umayyad structures are based on Byzantine design
One of the earliest surviving Umayyad buildings is the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem which was built in the late 600s CE
**The design of the buildings, is nearly identical to the martyrs’ shrines produced by the Byzantines prior to the arrival if Islam
**The pillars in the front of the building came from Byzantine buildings, and they provide an additional connection to the past

Question 12

The Great Mosque of Damascus

Answer 12

-One can see the same thing here with the Great Mosque of Damascus, which had been built around 715
~It was built on the site of what had been the Temple of Jupiter, which Christians had turned into a church
*The old church structure and the temple didn’t survive because the mosque replaced them as a symbol of Muslim superiority
**However, the mosque looks almost identical to Byzantine and Roman models, the mosaics in particular, and they incorporated columns and other architectural features from Roman and Byzantine buildings

Question 13

The Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258 CE)

Answer 13

-The Umayyads were never able to fully unify the territory they ruled
~The followers of ‘Ali saw the Umayyads as illegitimate, and while they were never able to overthrow the state, they constantly engaged in low-level unrest
-In the late 740s, the Abbasid family that controlled Persia, rebelled against the Umayyads
~The Abbasids were not Shia, but they and their supporters resented the Umayyad domination of the Muslim world
*The Abbadids themselves traced their ancestry back to Mohammad’s uncle, and thus argued that they had a more legitimate right to the caliphate than the Umayyads
-In 750, the Abbasid armies were able to defeat the armies of the Umayyads, and they proceeded to assassinate or massacre the surviving members of the Umayyad family until only one survived
-One of the first things that the Abbasids did to cement their relationship with the Persian supporters was to move the capital
~In 762, they founded a new capital between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, which became the city of Baghdad
*It was founded as a round city (perhaps based on Persian models, although that’s disputed) with a mosque and placed caliphs in the center
-Here they started to emulate Persian government and style, as well as architecture
~An image one can see is not actually from Baghdad though
*The Abbasids tended to overspend on building palaces and cities, and in the 830s, they built a new capital complete with a new mosque and new palaces at Samarra to the north of Baghdad
**This spiral design is based on Persian lines, and is representative of this shift to the east

Question 14

Political Fragmentation

Answer 14

-Government
~Caliphs
*Ulama and Qadis
-Turks
-While there was an Abbasid Caliph ruling for that entire period (750-1258 CE), they only had substantial military and political authority for about the first two hundred years
~Almoxst as soon as the Abbasids came to power, sections of their empire started to split away
*The last surviving Umayyad prince fled west to Al-Andalus (modern Spain) to escape from the Abbasids and turned the region into an independent state
**Oman and southern Arabia rebelled soon after, as did central Asia
-While the Abbasids could clamp down successfully on a few of these areas, the nature of the Abbasid state prevented them from creating a centralized state
~While the caliphs commanded an army (the Abbasids developed a powerful, professional army), collected taxes, and served as market inspectors, they did not have a great deal of control over the local levels of society
*While they set up a central government and appointed governors or military leaders to run various areas, they often just signed off on the local rulers and asked them to run society for them
**This could work well if the local rulers had close connections to the Abbasids, but otherwise, it allowed rulers to develop their own power bases apart from the Abbasids
-At the local level of society, the government taxed farmers, but they relied upon having local elites allied to them through grants of land or money
~Otherwise, officials known as ulama and qadis ran the majority of local society
*Ulama were educated scholars who were expects in theology and the Qur’an and qadis are judges who were legal experts
**While these individuals were the ones who set moral standards, they were often independent of the state
-Islam does not recognize a priesthood or hierarchy, so these individuals made rules for their local communities but were not necessarily listened to in any other areas
~All of this meant that the Abbasid empire was subject to the same forces of fragmentation that inflicted Western Europe
-As various sections of the empire split away over the course of the 900s, the Abbasids attempted to solve the situation by importing troops and generals from central Asia, primarily from the Turkish nomadic tribes of the region, to establish a new core of soldiers who had no connections with local aristocrats or leaders
While this worked for a few years, in the end, these Turkish generals and soldiers realized that they could just pry off chunks of the empire for themselves (Egypt split away under various Turkish leaders in the 800s and early 900s before it was conquered by the Shia Fatimid Dynasty)
**This led to further fragmentation, and soon the caliphs were simply puppets for whatever ruler happened to control Mesopotamia
**They were still respected and seen as a source of authority because they could trace their family back to Muhammad, so they were never overthrown, but they had little actual authority
**This continued into the 1000s as more and more Turkish groups moved into the area conquering territory as they came

Question 15

The Islamic Golden Age

Answer 15

-Bayt al-Hikma (The House of Wisdom
~India
~Persia
~Greece and Rome
-Regardless, the first 200 years or so in which the Abbasids had practical control over the Islamic world laid the foundation of the Islamic Golden Age, the period in which Muslim culture reached its greatest heights
~In part, this came about because the Abbasids began to gather and blend the philosophical, literary, and scientific ideas of all the various cultures that they can conquer
-In 830, the caliph Al-Ma’mun founded the Bayt al-Hikma, the House of Wisdom, in Baghdad (the image is of a generic library from the Abbasid period)
~Here scholars and scientists gathered from across the world to study and translate the great work of the civilizations ruled by the Abbasids
~From India came great works of math, astronomy, and medicine
~From Persia came scientific ideas as well as collections of folktales and epics
~From Greece and Rome came the great works of classical philosophers and scientists
At the Bayt al-Hikma, scholars translated these works into Arabic and then shipped copies across the world
**Muslim scientists, philosophers, doctors, and others then began and improve upon the works of the ancients, and it was from centers in Sicily and Spain that these Muslim works entered Western Europe
**Indeed, only a small fragment of Aristotle and the other classical philosophers had survived in Western Europe, and so it was from the Muslims of Spain and Sicily that scholars rediscovered the great glory of classical civilization
-Some of the basic points or ideas taken for granted today originated at this time
~Arabic numerals, (the basic numbers that one uses every day (1, 2, 3, etc.)), started as Hindi numbers in India but were used by Muslim scientists and when they entered Western Europe they became the standard form used
*The math invented in this time (algebra and algorithms) along with the origins of chemistry (alchemy), many medical ideas (a rejection of many of Aristotle and Galen’s more extreme notions), and too many more scientific innovations (particularly in optics) to mention here originated because of this cultural blending and slowly made their way into Western Europe
-However, perhaps the most important ideas developed among philosophical circles
~The great philosopher Ibn Rushd attempted to unify the ideas of Aristotle with Islam and argued that one could understand the universe and the Qur’an rationally
*He composed several commentaries on Aristotle that were profoundly influential in Western Europe as well

Question 16

Trade

Answer 16

-Camels
-Dhows
-Perhaps more important than these scientific and mathematical ideas was the growth of trade during the Abbasid period
~The low profile of classical trade routes along the Silk Roads, during the Abbasid period, the trade between the Mediterranean and Asia expanded enormously
*Overland trade was encouraged, at least in part, due to the Arab use of cameks
-Camels are, of course, large obnoxious beasts whose only redeeming value is their ability to carry large loads long distances without much water
~Large camel caravans began to travel to central Asia and India using the overland trade routes
*To encourage this, the Abbasids built a network of waystations where these caravans could stop in peace and security
-Ocean trade also expanded as shows began to sail to India and Southeast Asia
~These characteristic ships are a blend of Indian and Arab design, and they borrowed astrolabes from the Mediterranean world and compasses from China to improve their navigation

Question 17

Boring Commercial Stuff

Answer 17

-Banks and Checks
-Investment Contracts
-Dinars
-These voyages were very dangerous
~While traders could make massive fortunes by engaging in long-distance trade, ships sank on a regular basis, and caravans were robbed
*To help alleviate these dangers, Muslim merchants invented a wide variety of extremely boring commercial innovations
**While banks had opened multiple branches in the Roman period, in the Arab world, banks started to issue letters of credit and other paper documents that allowed merchants to travel long distances without massive bags of gold
-Instead, merchants easily carried concealable pieces of paper that documented their holdings as banks across the world
~ Additionally, rather than paying for goods in cash, people started to use a sakk, which is the root word for a check even today
-They also started to create investment contracts
~In previous years, a single person would hire a ship and be completely responsible if the ship sank or if the ports where the ship sailed did not provide strong markets for the goods onboard
In their contracts, individuals would either invest a small amount in a voyage or pay to put their goods in the trust of a merchant who would sail around selling goods for them
**If the voyage made a profit, investors would get a return, but if it did not, they would just be out their initial investment
**This meant that people did not have to put all their eggs in a single basket or risk their own lives on a voyage
-Perhaps the most interesting element of these was the fact that they could, often did, cross the lines of various faiths
~Muslim, Christian, and Jewish merchants worked together, pooling their resources, to maximize their profits
*This meant traveling with people from other faiths across the world
-Dinars were the standard gold coins used in this period
~They were typically inscribed with verses from the Qur’an
*They were the standard currency for centuries and were used around the world
**They were seen as being a solid and legitimate currency, and as a result, rulers around the world attempted to emulate them
-On the bottom, the coin was minted in the region of King Offa, who ruled a kingdom in England in the late 700s
~He wanted to make sure that people accepted the coin as legitimate, so he modeled them off the best known currency known at the time (the dinar)
*He did not know what all the writing meant, just that good coins were covered in squiggles, so he made sure that his coins were covered in squiggles, so he made sure that good coins were covered in the same squiggles

Question 18

Food and Urbanization

Answer 18

-Perhaps the most important trade goods that moved during the Islamic Golden Age were the plants and food crops that moved around the world
~Spinach, watermelon, sour oranges, sugar cane, rice, coconuts, cotton, eggplant, and various other crops moved from India and Southeast Asia north into the Mesopotamia, North Africa, and Spain
These plants were rich in nutrients and produced valuable trade goods
**In addition to these new crops, new forms of agriculture and irrigation allowed for greater agricultural productivity
**More and better quality food meant that cities expanded during this period
-Cities such as Baghdad, Cairo, Tunis, and Cordoba had populations of several hundred thousand, far larger than any city in Western Europe
~Cordoba, had libraries, streetlights, public baths, and elements of urban life that did not exist in Western Europe for centuries
*An image of the Great Mosque of Cordoba, which combines Roman and Islamic design in one of the most spectacular mosques built during the Islamic Golden Age

Question 19

Setting the Secen

Answer 19

-Investiture Controvercy
-Urban II (r. 1088-1099)
-Alexios Komnenos (r. 1081-1118)
~Seljuk Turks
-In the 1070s Pope Gregory VII and Emperor Henry IV started to argue about the true authority in Western Europe
~In particular, the argument centered on the role of the emperors in investing bishops and other religious authorities with their secular and religious authority
*In the short term, Henry IV elected his own pope and drove Gregory VII from Rome
-Gregory’s successors attempted to find some route to win the investiture Controversy by reclaiming the moral authority in Western Europe
~They needed an issue that they could use to develop their authority
-When Urban II came to power in 1088, he found that issue when letters from the Byzantine Emperor Alexios Komnenos asking for aid began to arrive in Western Europe
~The Muslim invasions and wars of the 600s and 700s had severely weakened the Byzantine Empire, but they had survived in Anatolia and the Balkans
*They had developed a relatively stable border with the Abbasids in the 800s and 900s and had expanded against the Bulgars, Slavs, and other groups that entered the Balkans during that period
**However, in 1055 the Seljuk Turks, who were relatively new arrivals in the Middle East, occupied Bagdad and most of Persia, and they reopened the conflicts with the Byzantine Empire
-In 1071, they defeated a major Byzantine army at the Battle of Manzikert and occupied the heartland of Anatolia
~Consequently, the Byzantines were in serious trouble and various emperors had asked for aid against this new Muslim onslaught, but Gregory VII was unable to help, although he did develop plans to lead an army east
**However, Urban II saw this situation as a way to raise his status within Western Europe, to make himself the standard bearer for morality and religion in the West, and he was able to tap into changing ideas of Islam in order to do this

Question 20

Changing Views of Islam

Answer 20

-Views prior to 1000
-Rumors
-Heresy?
~Simon Magus
-This change started to occur in the mid-1000s
~Prior to this point, Western Christians had fought against Muslim pirates in southern France, they had conquered some territory in the Pyrenees and northern Spain, and they had unconquered Sicily from its Muslim rulers
However, these wars were not necessarily seen as religious in nature
**The Muslim states of Spain and southern Italy, as well as those in North Africa, were powerful secular opponents who were certainly enemies, but they were seen as foes to be feared and respected rather than as members of a religion that was in direct opposition to the Christina society of Western Europe
**In Sicily, the Christian rulers who conquered the island accepted Muslims in their courts, and Christian scholars and clergy traveled to Spain to study Muslim science and philosophy
-However, starting in the early 1000s, reports and rumors started to circulate that Muslims were harassing Christians traveling to Jerusalem
~According to these stories, the new Turkish rulers of the Holy Land were more violent and aggressive toward pilgrims and more hostile toward Christianity
These new Muslims were destroying Christian shrines and churches and they were massacring the Christians of the Byzantine Empire
**These stories told of groups of pilgrims being besieged along the side of the road and only being saved from the death of enslavement via the power of God
**These stories and rumors were false, the Seljuks were no more hostile than previous Muslim rulers, but they created the perception of danger among Christians in the West
-This perception intensified due to changing ideas of what exactly Islam was
~While in previous centuries Christians saw Islam as just another pagan religion, starting in the late 100s, they started to notice that Muslims referenced and revered Jesus, Mary, and other Christian figures
*As a result, they began to see Islam as a heresy or perversion of traditional Christian belief
**If the Muslims were like pagans, their beliefs were clearly incorrect, but if Muslims were a heresy, that was something that needed to be defeated and stamped out since heretics directly opposed Christian doctrines
-A growing association between Muhammad and Simon Magus amplified this idea
~In the Mew testament, Simon Magus attempted to buy power from Saint Peter; however, this story was developed in early medieval legends so that Simon Magus was a magician who performed fake miracles with the assistance of the Devil
*According to these traditions, to prove his power, Simon Magus flew with the assistance of demons, but Saint Peter prayed and the demons abandoned him and Simon fell to the ground where he died
-The first biography of Muhammad in Western Europe, which appeared around 1100, described him as a disciple of the Simon
~As a result, Muslims were not just heretics who prevented Christian doctrine; they were also potentially being deceived by the Devil

Question 21

Calling the First Crusade

Answer 21

-The Council of Clermont (1095)
-Peter the Hermit
-Unexpected Success (Jerusalem, July 1099)
-These are the ideas that circulated in the 1000s, and these are the ideas that Urban II was able to tap into when calling for volunteers to go east in an effort to help the Byzantines against the Muslims
-In 1095, he encouraged the warriors of Western Europe to end their internal squabbling and put their swords to better use by defending the Christians of the East and liberating the Holy Land in a speech at the Council of Clermont
-We don’t know exactly what urban II said or what it looked like (an image of this speech is from the late 1400s)
~But what seems to have been truly unique about Urban II’s call in 1095 was the suggestion, or offer, that those who fought in these wars were performing a sort of armed pilgrimage in which they would be able to atone for their sins through their service
*It is unclear if this was something that was completely original to Urban II, as some historians suggest that previous popes and religious leaders had made similar offers in order to encourage participation in wars against the Muslims in Spain
**Regardless, Urban II’s call reached a mass audience and succeeded beyond his wildest expectations (presumably since we don’t have an exact record of what his expectations were)
-In 1095, his message spread among the common people of Western Europe due to the presence of charismatic preachers like Peter the hermit
~While Urban II seems to have envisioned an army of knights and the aristocratic elite of Western Europe, Peter inspired men, women, children, and according to some reports even animals to head east
*He inspired a rag-tag assembly to march east where they promptly wound up being slaughtered almost as soon as they crossed from the Byzantine Empire into Muslim territory in late 1096
**However, the second wave of better-prepared and better-organized elites followed behind and, after three years of campaigning and besieging the remnants of their forces managed to besiege and take Jerusalem in July 1099

Question 22

Why and How?

Answer 22

-Motivations
~Bohemond
~Raymond of St. Gilles, the Count of Toulouse
-How
~Seljuk Empire
-The exact motivations and intentions of these individuals is a matter of some debate among historians
~Some historians see these individuals as being filled with the sincere desire to spread Christianity while others have seen more mercenary motivations and the possibility that they were driven primarily by the desire to carve out new kingdoms and attain wealth that was lacking in Western Europe
*Rather than seeing things as either strictly religious or mercenary, most historians seem to argue that is was a mix of both
-Some of the crusade leaders, such as Bohemond, who led a contingent from Sicily and southern Italy, may have had more mercenary intentions
~Bohemond had attempted to conquer Byzantine territories with his father and seized control of the city of Antioch soon after the Crusaders captured it despite the fact that the crusaders had agreed to hand their conquests to the Byzantines
*Medieval accounts certainly tend to portray him in a rather negative perspective, although one of the main ones comes from Anna Komnenos, Alexios’s daughter, who was not the most unbiased source
**Others, such as Raymond of St, Gilles, the Court of Toulouse may have had more devout motivations
-Raymond passed his territory to his son and brought his wife and infant son with him to the East
~He seems to have anticipated dying in the Holy Land, and contemporary accounts certainly portray him as being truly devout and committed to the liberation of Jeruslem
*Of course, once that had been accomplished, he proceeded to conquer the territory around Tripoli, which became an independent county
-Regardless, these warriors were able to accomplish this, at least in part, because the Muslim world was in a state of chaos
~In 1091, the Seljuk Empire had fallen apart due to the assassination of the ruler, Malik Shas I, and Nizam Al-Mulk, the vizier who had run the empire for him and his father (an event seen here from a mid-1600s manuscript)
*A number of individuals claimed the right to the throne, and civil wars and political chaos were the results
**While there was still an Abbasid Caliph and a Seljuk Sultan, instead of invading a massive and well-organized empire that could respond with overwhelming force, the armies of the First Crusade were facing a number of small Muslim states that were unwilling to ally with one another
-In addition, the Seljuk elite based themselves in Bagdad and areas further east; Syria was an economic and cultural backwater on the fringes of their state, so they were not particularly interested in exerting resources to control the area
~It’s this fragmentation and general disinterest that then allowed the crusaders to expand on their initial conquest to develop the Crusader States, or as they were known in the Middle Ages, Outremer, which is French for “overseas”

Question 23

The Crusader States (Outremer)

Answer 23

-County of Edessa
-Principality of Antioch
County of Tripoli
-Kingdom of Jerusalem
-Reliance of the West
-In the aftermath of the conquest of Jerusalem, the crusaders who did not immediately return home began to carve out territory for themselves
~The most precarious of these was the County of Edessa which had no access to the sea, and thus was unable to receive direct aid from the West
Bohemond, took the city of Antioch and carved out the Principality of Antioch, while Raymond spent his final years attempting to take the city of Tripoli and turned the surrounding territory into the County of Tripoli
**The defenses of both Antioch and Tripoli were formidable, and because they had easy access to the sea, they were able to receive aid from the West on a regular basis maintaining the city proved to be difficult, particularly in times of war
-Even at their height, these kingdoms were never able to muster large military forces
**Finally, in the south, the kingdom of Jerusalem itself was isolated in the interior and thus supplying and maintaining the city proved to be difficult, particularly in times of war
-Even at their height, these kingdoms were never able to muster large military forces
~While there was a wave of migrants who arrived in the aftermath of the First Crusade, that started to die down
-In order to encourage the nobles who arrived to support the local king or court, the rulers of these states gave them new arrivals large grants of land
~While in the short term this meant that these rulers secured their claims, in the long term it meant that they created large numbers of very powerful lords who chipped away at their power
*Because of their lack of military power, these rulers were never able to fully compete with their Muslim neighbors on the battlefield on their own, and as a result, they relied upon alliances with their Muslim neighbors and with regular help coming from Western Europe
**Pilgrims in the form of knights who would fight to atone for their sins, or mercenaries from Italy or even surrounding Muslim states were intrinsic to the survival of these states

Question 24

Nature of Society in the East

Answer 24

-Apartheid?
-Cultural Blending and Coexistence?
-What sort of society developed because of these conquests
~Well, that’s something that historians have argued about for centuries
*On one hand, it is pretty clear that in rural areas, Muslim and Christian villagers did not live together
-Instead, they developed separate communities ruled by their local leaders
~Muslim officials controlled Muslim villages and served as intermediaries between local and the new western elites
-Western settlers formed their own villages and communities, usually close to cities where they could flee in times of war
~Religiou and secular authorities encouraged this separation through legislation that forbade intermarriage and demanded that Muslims pay a poll tax for the right to live in Christian territory (in an inversion of Muslim traditions)
*To protect their territory, Christians built massive fortifications that allowed their fairly small number to control the surrounding countryside (pictures of Crac des Chevaliers, one of the most famous of the crusader castles, and one that has been heavily damaged during the Syrian Civil war)
**The occasional massacre of Muslim communities, their economic exploitation by Western elites, and reports of Muslim cursing Christian rulers and actively working to undermine their rule certainly led to an impression of an almost apartheid-like environment
-On the other hand, in cities, mosques operated as they had for centuries, Muslims traveled through the region on a regular basis on their way from Egypt to Baghdad or other areas, Christians began to absorb Arab culture, and these crusader states formed alliances with the surrounding Muslim states
~In many cities, Muslims, Jews, Armenian Christians, Orthodox Greek Christians, Syrian Christians, and westerners lived and worked side by side
*They shared holy sites and came to a power-sharing agreement to determine which groups could use churches or sites at particular times
**Because they wanted to encourage trade, western and Muslim rulers made sure to allow travel across their borders
-Western aristocrats began to wear Muslim-style clothing, learned Arabic, studies Muslim scientific and philosophical works, they began to eat new foods, they began to build palaces and fortifications in the Muslim style and started to absorb Muslim standards of cleanliness, particularly around regular bathing
-These traditions spread west as nobles visited the area and then returned home or merchants brought new foodstuffs and material goods to the ports of western Europe
~To survive, they formed alliances with the rulers of Damascus and Aleppo against the Egyptians or other groups of Turks
This led to the occasional odd battle when Christians and their Muslim allies fought against other groups of Christians, the forces of Antioch and Aleppo fought against the combined forces of Edessa and Mosul at one point
**This warfare and conflict yet close connections between Christians and Muslims led to cross-border friendships, particularly, since many Western leaders were occasionally captured in battle and would spend years in captivity in Aleppo or elsewhere before being released or executed
**This actually resulted in a prominent role for in many of the Crusader States since men were occasionally gone for decades, leaving control over their lands and the raising of minors to their wives
**Regardless, the depiction of society leads to the impression of cultural blending and coexistence in these states rather than apartheid

Question 25

Muslim Reaction

Answer 25

-Concern and Confusion
-Jihad
~al-Sulami
~Ibn al-Khashshab
~Zengi
~Nur al-Dan
-But what was the Muslim reaction to this event, what was their understanding of these new people who had suddenly arrived in their midst?
-On the geopolitical level, the rulers of the various Muslim states surrounding the region regarded these crusaders as being new allies in their power struggles
~Thye were willing to accept the Kingdom of Jerusalem as a buffer state between Egypt and Damascus if trade and travel were allowed through Christian territory
-However, noted scholar of the period Carole Hillenbrand notes that medieval academics and historians expressed more confusion and concern about the arrival of the Christians, and their accounts do not suggest that they knew much about society in the West
~Everyone was referred to as Franks, and there does not seem to be an understanding that they spoke different languages, had different customs or came from different countries
*Why that had shown up was debated, with some Sunni historians and scholars arguing that the Shia Fatimid Dynasty in Egypt had invited the Crusaders to strike at the Sunni Turks
**Of course, the Crusaders had defeated Egyptian armies, but that was brushed aside in favor of the more pleasing conspiracy theory
-The larger response came from madrassas (schools) that were built in the aftermath of the First Crusade
~At these schools, we start to see teachers begin to stress the idea of jihad
*Today jihad is known as the idea of holy war, but it’s important to remember that jihad more literally translates as “struggle,’ and that the Qur’an and these madrassas thought that there were two forms of jihad, the greater jihad, and the lesser jihad
**The greater jihad involves the struggle to live up to the values set out in the Qur’an, in one’s community but also within one’s self
**The lesser jihad is the holy war against unbelievers
-Scholars such as al-Sulami, who wrote in the early 1100s at the Great Mosque of Damascus, argued that the arrival of the Franks and Muslim defeats in Spain and Sicily were a sign that Muslims had begun to stray from the true teachings
~Before the lesser jihad could be carried out, the greater jihad needed to be completed so that the ummah could regain the favor of God
*While al-Suami wrote primarily theoretical works-and Hillenbrand notes that his influence was quite limited in the early 1100s- other preachers and scholars advocated for more direct action
-Ibn al-Khashshab, a Shia religious leader in Aleppo openly advocated for a pan-Arab, militant reaction against the Crusaders
~WHen the religious and secular elite in Baghdad did not respond appropriately, he led public protests that shamed them into sending armies to fight in Syria
*He was also present at one of the great early victories against the forces of the Crusaders
**In 1119, before the forces of Aleppo annihilated the armies of Antioch and their allies at the Field of Blood, he preached a sermon that advocated the necessity of jihad against the West that, at least according to later accounts, brought the Muslim forces to tears
-However, this rhetoric only became popular in later years as Muslim forces started to succeed against the West
~Sometimes this was deliberate, but often conquerors used this rhetoric of jihad to justify their conquest of other Muslims
Zengi and his son Nur al-Didn worked to unify Syria from their base in Mosul
**Muslim sources widely acknowledge that Zengi was a violent despot, but in December 1144 he conquered Edessa, which made him a hero to those advocating for jihad
**When he died, Nur al-Din ruled from Aleppo, and he continued this rhetoric of jihad, not because he was necessarily interested in occupying the crusader’s states but more because he was interested in conquering Damascus and unifying Syria; this was a useful tool he could use to justify his conquests
-In 1161, he went on the hajj, both for religious purposes also to burnish his status as a holy warrior
-In 1169, he was also able to add Egypt to his empire after an extended series of wars in which the Kingdom of Jerusalem tried desperately to avoid being encircled by Nur al-Din
~HE also commissioned this minbar (pulpit) one can see that the stated intention of installing it in Jerusalem when he unconquered the city
*He died suddenly in 1174, before the minbar was complete, and was replaced by the Great Kurdish general Saladin who took up the banner of jihad (either out of a sincere belief or because it was a way to unify Nur al-Din’s diverse empire)
**Saladin, of course, unconquered Jerusalem, installed Nur al-Din’s completed minbar, and nearly ended the existence of the Crusaders States in the late 1100s
-An image of Nur al-Din’s minbar
~Wish for a colored photo of the minbar since it was (according to records) an amazing piece of art, but it was burned in 1969 by a visiting Christian evangelical

Question 26

Usamah Ibn-Mundidh (1095-1188)

Answer 26

-Kitab al-I’tibar (The Book of Contemplation)
~Moral Examples and Jokes
-To think about the Muslim view if the Franks, one to read a short excerpt of Usamah ibn-Munquih’s Kitab al-I’tibar (The Book of Contemplation)
~Usama was born in 1095 in Syria
*His family was a part of the local aristocracy, and they owned a castle in northern Syria
**He was raised to be a warrior, poet, and scholar, and he seems to have interacted with people from the nearby crusaders’ states
-However, he wound up being exiled from his home by his uncle and spent most of the 1130s and 40s traveling around Syria under the patronage of Zengi
~When Zengi died, Usama traveled to Cairo where he witnessed the collapse of the Fatimid Dynasty and the conquest of the region by Nur al-Din
*He returned to Syria where he served Nur al-Din and then Saladin
-During this time, he was a political advisor to these various rulers, but more importantly, he wrote poetry and prose on a variety of topics that were dedicated to these rulers
~These are not works that common individuals on the streets would have read; instead these are intended for elite readers, and they served to provide moral examples about the power of God
*That’s the point of The Book of Contemplation
-This work, Usamah provides a series of short moral examples of stories about the people and places that he traveled to over the course of his life
~One on hand, these provide a unique window into the interaction between Westerners and Muslims in the Crusader States
~On the other hand, one should not be taking these too literally
Usamah wrote these works to show the power and glory of God; they are examples that readers should contemplate and examine because they show us the mysterious workings of God in the world (and they are intended to amuse readers at the same time)
**As a result, his stories about the Westerners that he encourages are full of jokes and exaggerations
**However, they do provide a window into hoe elite Muslim authors viewed Westerners and their presence in the Crusader states during the late 1100s

Question 27

The Sahara in the Classical World

Answer 27

-Sahara a major barrier to trade and contact
~That’s certainly the case today, but it’s important to keep in mind that millennia ago the Sahara was quite a bit smaller and quite a bit wetter than it is today
-Rock art from the Sahara suggests that around 3000 BC, animals, and people were able to survive in the central Sahara, and even though that slowly changed, these people did not just disappear
-Instead, they continued to eke out a living through farming and hunting on the fringes of the ever-expanding desert
~They were not nobodies
The Garamantes developed a powerful kingdom in what is today central Libya from around 1000 BE to 700 CE
**They traded with the Greeks, Carthaginians, and Romans, and survived through intensive irrigation
**Even in the center of the Sahara, Tuareg tribes survived via trade and herding in what is today southern Algeria

Question 28

Ghana Empire (400s-1200s CE)

Answer 28

-Trade
~Salt
~Gold, ivory, Slaves
-Islam and Animism
-Further south, a variety of states developed in the Sahel and Sudan, the grasslands and forests that form the southern border of the Sahara separating the desert from the rainforests of central Africa
~While these people were traditionally nomadic farmers and herders, the people of the region traded with the areas farther south for gold, ivory, slaves, and other goods in return for salt mined in the desert to the north
*This trade encouraged the development of urban centers and kingdoms as people sought to protect their farms and wealth from nomadic raiders
-It’s unclear what the first kingdom or settled civilization was in the region, but when Muslim traders began to cross the desert in the 700s, they discovered that the Ghana Empire dominated a vast swath of territory between the Niger and Senegal Rivers
~The region did not actually produce any gold, but the rulers (known as the ghana) had a monopoly over the trade and were able to prosper from it
*It is unclear when the Empire began, but Muslim traders and merchants thought that it had existed for centuries before the arrival
**In return for their goods, ghana procured manufactured goods from the Mediterranean but primarily needed horses to protect the urban centers that controlled the region’s trade
-Starting in the 700s, Muslim merchants and traders began to settle in the region, primarily in the cities
~They encouraged trade and commerce across the Sahara, and they began to attract converts to Islam
The majority of the people would have practiced some sort of animistic tradition
**Animism can take a wide variety of forms, but traditional African beliefs usually centered on a distant, world-creating deity
**This deity created a wide variety of lower spirits and deities associated with special sites or objects that were imbued with power
**These beings, as well as the spirits of one’s ancestors, needed to be honored and esteemed in order to maintain order in the world
-The ghana and the royal household converted to Islam in the 900s, but it is unclear if this was the result of true belief or if they were primarily interested in fostering contact and trade with the Muslim states of North Africa
~Regardless, what is clear is that the ghanas were uninterested in stamping out the animistic traditions or even taxing them as non-Muslims
-Instead, Muslim accounts of the region suggest that they continued to follow and honor animistic traditions even after converting
~Abu Ubaydallah al-Bakri’s Book of Routes and Realms relates that the great capital at Koumbi Shelah was made up of two separate walled towns some miles apart surrounded by houses
One town was for Muslims and contained mosques and madrassas while the other was for the ghana
**The ghana’s residence was surrounded by traditional shrines and idols, as well as the tombs of their predecessors
**Traditional Islam and animistic traditions lived side by side for centuries on Ghana

Question 29

Mali Empire (1200s- 1600s CE)

Answer 29

-Sundiata (r. 1230-1255 CE)
~Farrariya
-Mansa Musa (r. 1312-13337 CE)
~Timbuktu
-Despite their wealth, Ghana began to collapse in the 1000s due to internal pressures, and the Mali Empire replaced them in the 1200s
~According to the great epic of Mali, the Sundiata, the great king Sundiata founded Mali by defeating an evil sorcerer and his magical allies
According to the epic, even though Sundiata is usually described as being Muslim, he practiced traditional magic and continued to accept animistic traditions in order to solidify his control over the region
**He was particularly reliant upon the farariya the cavalry commanders who controlled the army and served as his main officers
**The rulers of Mali expanded the trade with North Africa
**Massive camel caravans traveled across the Sahara, bringing wealth and prosperity to the region like never before
-Later rulers of Mali became more interested in Islam
~Starting with Sundiata’s son, rulers began to officially convert and even go on the hajj
*Mali reached its height during the region of Mansa Musa in the early 1300s
-Mansa Musa went on the hajj in 1324-25, traveling across the desert to Cairo and from there to Mecca
~Egyptian reports of these events suggest that Mansa Musa was famously wealthy but something of a country bumpkin
*He arrived in Cairo with some 60,000 people, and 100 camels each with a 300-pound pack of gold
**Wherever he and his wives went, they were each accompanied by hundreds of slaves holding gold staffs
-However, he and his staff did not know how much food, housing, and other essentials cost
~As a result, the merchants of Cairo were able to gouge him tremendously, to the point that he had to take out loans at enormous rates of interest to get home
When he did, he brought Muslim scholars, architects, poets, and libraries with him, and he turned the city of Timbuktu into a center of Muslim learning and culture
**He filled the city with mosques, shrines, and madrassas (all built in the characteristic architectural style) to spread Islam within his realm
**However, even though Islam spread widely, it never fully displaced traditional beliefs and customs

Question 30

The Swahili Coast

Answer 30

-Bantu Migrations
-Arab Merchants
-In East Africa, Muslim settlement began in the late 700s and early 800s CE
~East Africa was home to a variety of Bantu-speaking people
*The Bantu people had started in West Africa, but they began to migrate east and south sometime after 1000 BC
**While they did not develop large kingdoms or states in Central Africa, they spread as far south as modern Zimbabwe by the 1100s CE
-Along the east coast of Africa, they interacted with Gree, Roman, Arabian, and Indian merchants who sailed to the region in search of gold, ivory, and other trade goods as well as with Malay settlers who arrived in Madagascar
~They may have begun to develop small cities and urban areas, and as Muslim merchants and settlers started to engage in this trade, they started to settle in cities up and down the coast (from Mogadishu in the north to Sofala in the south)
-These cities were primarily located along the coast, particularly on islands just offshore, and as a result, the inhabitants of these cities did not mix with the Bantu people of the interior on a regular basis
~That being said, the combination of Arabic culture and Bantu people slowly developed into a new culture that we know today as Swahili
The word probably comes from the Arabic for “coaster” since they lived along the coast, but it refers to the culture and language currently used in East Africa that developed out of the mixture of Arabic and Bantu
**This developed due to trade with the interior
**Because the inhabitants of these cities waited for goods to come to them, and because they primarily lived in small enclaves that could not feed themselves, they wound up trading with the Bantu people both for trade goods and foodstuff
-An image of the Grate Mosque of Kilwa, which was built out of coral in the 1000s or 1100s CE

Question 31

Great Zimbabwe (circa 1000s-1400s CE)

Answer 31

-Just because the inhabitants of these cities did not travel into the interior of Africa does not mean that they did not influence the interior
~The need to supply trade goods to the coast meant that there were increasing organizations of the Bantu people in the interior
-In modern Zimbabwe, a large state developed centered around Great Zimbabwe
~Zimbabwe is the term for a chief’s dwelling; Great Zimbabwe is one of the largest and most impressive of these sites
Around 1100 construction began at the site
**Made of dry-stone walls (meaning that they were put together without mortar), the complex has walls over 30 ft tall and some 16 ft wide at the base
**Some 12,000 people possibly lived in and around the site, and it served to funnel trade goods to the coast
-Archaeologists have found shads of Chinese porcelain, glass from India, and goods from Arabia at the site, clearly showing their close connection to the coast and the wider world of the Indian Ocean
-Unfortunately, the knowledge about the people of Great Zimbabwe is limited at least in part because of the lack of solid archaeological work at the site
~When the complex was “discovered: by explorers in the late 1800s, the explorers assumed that the native Africans were incapable of building such a civilization and so postulated that Arabs, the Queen of Sheba, a lost tribe of Isreal, or a variety of other mythological civilizations had built the site
-In the twentieth-century, apartheid governments in Zimbabwe and South Africa also censored archaeology since it might lead to speculation that the native African population might not need to be dominated by Europeans
*As a result, it’s only recently that better archaeological studies of the site have been done

Question 32

Great Zimbabwe (circa 1000s-1400s CE)

Answer 32

-Just because the inhabitants of these cities did not travel into the interior of Africa does not mean that they did not influence the interior
~The need to supply trade goods to the coast meant that there were increasing organizations of the Bantu people in the interior
-In modern Zimbabwe, a large state developed centered around Great Zimbabwe
~Zimbabwe is the term for a chief’s dwelling; Great Zimbabwe is one of the largest and most impressive of these sites
Around 1100 construction began at the site
**Made of dry-stone walls (meaning that they were put together without mortar), the complex has walls over 30 ft tall and some 16 ft wide at the base
**Some 12,000 people possibly lived in and around the site, and it served to funnel trade goods to the coast
-Archaeologists have found shads of Chinese porcelain, glass from India, and goods from Arabia at the site, clearly showing their close connection to the coast and the wider world of the Indian Ocean
-Unfortunately, the knowledge about the people of Great Zimbabwe is limited at least in part because of the lack of solid archaeological work at the site
~When the complex was “discovered: by explorers in the late 1800s, the explorers assumed that the native Africans were incapable of building such a civilization and so postulated that Arabs, the Queen of Sheba, a lost tribe of Isreal, or a variety of other mythological civilizations had built the site
-In the twentieth century, apartheid governments in Zimbabwe and South Africa also censored archaeology since it might lead to speculation that the native African population might not need to be dominated by Europeans
*As a result, it’s only recently that better archaeological studies of the site have been done

Question 33

Ibn Battuta (circa 1304-1369 CE)

Answer 33

-Rihal (travels)
-In order to explore the Muslim world of Sub-Saharan Africa, a short segment of the Rihla (Travels) of Ibn Battuta
~Ibn Battuta was born in 1304 in Morocco
*He began to travel at age twenty-one when he set out on the hajj (perhaps something like this thirteenth-century image of pilgrims of the hajj) but spent decades traveling the world
-After visiting Mecca, he traveled throughout modern Iraq and Persia, Arabia, as far south as Kilwa in East Arica, Central Asia, northern and southern India, Southeast Asia, Beijing, and then home to Morocco through the Indian Ocean
~He arrived back in 1349, but then he set out again in 1350
*This time he crossed the Sahara to Mali and then returned home
**Many of these travels were motivated by the desire to see the tombs and shrines as a diplomat and merchant
-Near the end of his life, he began to write a record of his travels for the edification of others
~The portion of his account in which he described his travels in Mali and his impression of the people he encountered there
It is important to keep in mind that his account provides a first-hand look at the world in the early to mid-1300s, but we should not take it as being 100 percent factual
**It is clear that his work is full of exaggerations and stereotypes, he describes some locations that it seems doubtful he could have actually reached, and he describes creatures and locations that are clearly legendary
**However, despite all the caveats about his work, he clearly did not invent everything that he wrote, and while here are perhaps events that are misremembered, we can still take his memories as being generally accurate