Before we dive deep into our own medieval history, it will be useful to have an overall perspective of the background of the rulers who came to rule the fertile tract of India for the next few centuries. As we all know, barriers between western Asia and India was not an insurmountable one (unlike the Himalayas). As a result, the nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes constantly used to enter through them attracted by India’s:
- Fertile soil with plently of water
- Cities and ports that were all florishing and prosperous
- Hardworking farmers, skilled traders and artisans – all wealth generating sources
The rise of Islam:
In the 6th century AD, only a tiny strip of fertile land in southern Arabia and a few oases were suitable for agriculture. The rest of the Arabian Peninsula was a desert inhabited by the courageous Bedouins (nomads) who had adopted the clan-system for survival under such harsh conditions. By the early 600’s towns near the Western coast had become markets for the local, regional and long-distance trade of goods and trade-routes had spurred connecting the peninsula to the Byzantine and the Sassanid (Persian) empires of the north. Yemen became an exporter of incense and spices. Mecca was one of the stops in the trading route and was pretty famous for its shrine called the Ka’baah. Initially, the Ka’bah was associated with the worship of Abraham (the Hebrew prophet and believer of one God) but with the passage of time people had introduced the worship of many gods and spirits in the place. The Arabians, however, at that time believed in one God (their own God), like the Christians and the Jews.
In such a mixed religious environment of Mecca, at around 570 AD (‘the year of the elephant’), Muhammad was born in the Hashemite clan of the Quraysh tribe, to Abd Allah (his father who died before his birth) and Aminah. In order for Muhammad to master Arabic in its pure form and become well acquainted with Arab tradition, Aminah sent him as a baby into the desert, as was the custom of all the great Arab families at that time. In the desert, it was believed, one learned the qualities of self-discipline, nobility, and freedom. A sojourn in the desert also offered escape from the domination of time and the corruption of the city. Moreover, it provided the opportunity to become a better orator through the eloquent Arabic spoken by the Bedouin. Aminah chose a poor woman named Halimah to suckle and nurture his son. And so the young boy spent several years in the desert. Legend has it, that it was during this time that two angels appeared in the guise of men, opened his breast and purified his heart with snow. Amazed by this event, Halimah and her husband took the boy back to Mecca. His mother died when he was 6, and thereafter, he was raised by his grandfather, Abd al-Muttalib, and his uncle, Abu Talib, the father of Ali.
At the age of 25 he became a trader and business manager for a rich businesswoman of 40, Khadijah bin Khuwaylid, whom he later on married. He did not take another wife until after her death. According to apologists, with the exception of Aishah (the daughter of Abu Bakr, his friend) who was betrothed to him at the young age of 6 after Khadija’s death, most of his marriages were for political reasons. Khadijah bore him two sons, both of whom died young and four daughters, Zaynab, Ruqayyah, Umm Kulthum, and Fatimah. It is from the first son, Qasim, that one of the names of the prophet, Abu al-Qasim, derives. The youngest child of his, and the future wife of Ali, Fatimah, had the greatest impact on history of all his children. Shiìte imams and Sayyids or Sharifs are thought to be descendants of Muhammad, from the lineage of Fatimah and Ali. At about 35, Muhammad had become a very respected figure in Mecca and had taken Ali into his household. His reputation stemmed, in part, from his deep religiosity and attention to prayer. He would often leave the city and retire to the desert for prayer and meditation. At about 40, in the month of Ramadan, the deeply religious Muhammad, during one of these retreats, heard a voice call him while he was meditating outside a cave in Mecca, the Jabal al-Nur. It is said that, initially, Muhammad tried to flee from the site, but the man who had spoken to him revealed his real form, a form so immense that it covered the whole sky, which had turned green, the official colour of Islam to this day. It was revealed to him that the voice belonged to the archangel Gabriel and thereafter the process of the Qur’anic revelation began. The revelations would either come through the words of the archangel or be directly revealed to him in his heart. This lasted for about 23 years and ended shortly before his death. The voice convinced him that he was the last of the prophets and so he began to teach that Allah was the one and only God and that other Gods must be abandoned. His first followers were Khadijah, Ali, Zayd ibn al-Harith, and Abu Bakr, his close friend. In Arabic, Islam means ‘submission to the will of Allah’. People who adhered to his teachings were called Muslims. Muslim means ‘one who has submitted’.
By 613 AD, Muhammad began to preach publicly in Mecca but was met with hostility, especially, by the most influential families involved in trade who were afraid that the new religion would destroy the favoured position of the Ka’bah which would in turn affect commerce. In 619 AD Muhammad was greatly saddened by the death of two people who were close to him, Khadijah and his uncle Abu Talib. In such difficult times Muhammad underwent the supreme spiritual experience of his life. On one of his nightly visits to the Ka’bah, he fell asleep in the Hijr, an uncovered sanctuary attached to the north wall of the Ka’bah, and experienced the Nocturnal Ascent known as Isrā or Mirāj, when he was taken by Gabriel to the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem from which they ascended through all the higher states of being to the Divine Presence itself. Even Gabriel could not accompany him any further close to God implying that Muhammad had reached a state higher than that of the archangels. At this moment God revealed to him the final form and number of the islamic daily prayers. After this experience and after a few of his followers were further attacked he decided to leave Mecca in 621 AD and settled at Yathrib, 200 miles north of Mecca. This migration came to known as the Hijrah and this event became the starting point for the Islamic calendar. In Yathrib, which was later renamed Madinah al-Nabi (City of the Prophet), Muhammad displayed impressive leadership skills and was accepted as the political leader of the tribes residing there. As a religious leader, he found many more religious converts who found his message appealing. His most trusted and early followers from Mecca came to be known as al-muhajirun and the Medinan helpers as al-ansar. It is said that in the second year of the Hijrah, the direction of daily prayers, or ‘qiblah’, was changed by divine order from Jerusalem to Mecca, which marked the clear crystallisation of Islam as a distinct monotheistic religion.
Between 622 AD and 630 AD there were multiple confrontations and battles between Muhammad and the hostile Quraysh tribesmen from Mecca who wanted to put a stop to the spread of Islam but the Quraysh failed to hurt Muhammad (although Muhammad did lose a great many valiant soldiers and eminent muslims in this struggle for dominance). The Jews of Medina were alleged to have taken sides with the Quraysh against Muhammad. In 628-629 Muhammad’s first conquest was made when the Muslims captured Khaybar in a battle in which the valour of Ali played a major role. The Jews and Christians of Khaybar were allowed to live in peace, protected by the Muslims, but they were required to pay a religious tax called the Jiz’yah. In 630 AD, the Prophet and 10,000 of his followers captured Mecca and destroyed the Ka’bah. Meccans were Islamized. They now became a part of the ‘Umma’ or the Muslim religious community. Muhammad died 2 years later, at the age of 62, after making his first Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca (al-hajj), which remains the model to this day for the millions of Muslims to make the hajj each year. It was in the same year, when on his way back from Mecca, that he and his entourage stopped at the pond called Ghadir Khumm where he appointed Ali as the executor of his last will and as his wali, a term that means ‘friend’ or ‘saint’. This major event is seen by the Sunni Muslims as signifying a personal and family matter, while the Shiites believe that at this time Ali received the formal investiture to succeed the Prophet. The expansion of the Arab Empire in the years following Muhammad’s death led to the creation of caliphates (successors of Muhammad), occupying a vast geographical area and conversion to Islam was boosted by missionary activities particularly those of Imams (Muslim leaders), who easily intermingled with the local populace to propagate the religious teachings. The urgent need for a successor to Muhammad as political leader of the Muslim community was met by a group of Muslim elders in Medina who designated Abu Bakr (a Saiyyad), the prophet’s father-in-law as the first caliph.
The first four caliphs – Abu Bakr, Umar I, Uthman and Ali, whose reigns constituted what later generations of Muslims would often remember as a golden age of pure Islam – largely established the administrative and judicial organisation of the Muslim community. These early caliphates, coupled with muslim economics and trading and the later expansion of the Ottoman Empire, resulted in Islam’s spread towards both the east and the west and the creation of the Muslim world.
The Abbasid Empire
The Abbasid Empire
The assassination of Uthman and the ineffectual caliphate of Ali that followed sparked the first sectarian split in the Muslim community. By 661 AD Ali’s rival Muawiyah I, a fellow member of the Umayyad clan, had wrested away the Caliphate, and his rule established the Umayyad Caliphate that lasted for the next century. The Umayyads were followed by the Abbasid Dynasty that thus became the second of the two great dynasties of the Muslim Empire of the Caliphate. It was the third of the Islamic Caliphates, overall, to succeed prophet Muhammad. It overthrew the Umayyad caliphate in 750 AD (in the Battle of Great Zab) and reigned until destroyed by the Mongol invasion in 1258 AD. The name is derived from that of the uncle of the Prophet Muhammad, Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib. They ruled as caliphs, for most of the period from their capital in Baghdad in modern-day Iraq. Unlike the Ummayads, who had focussed on the West (North Africa, the Mediterranean, and southern Europe), the Abbasids turned eastwards. They gradually developed a stronghold in Persia and took over much of the Persian (Sasanian) tradition of government. Between 750 and 780 the Abbasids raised the prestige and power of the empire, promoting commerce, industry, arts and science, particularly during the reigns of al-Mansur, Harun ar-Rashid, and al-Mamun. Their temporal power, however, began to decline when in the 940’s Muslim Berber (islamized inhabitants of North Africa, also known as Amazigh), Slavs and Turkish forces were incorporated in their armies. The unity was lost and the army became the breeding ground of internal rivalries. This became one of the major causes of the downfall of the Abbasid Dynasty.
Islam and India
By 10th century AD, Islam had been firmly established in West Asia, Iran, Khurasan (northeast of Persia/Iran) and Central Asia, and particularly in the fertile tract of land called Mawara-un-Nahar or Transoxania, i.e. the areas between the rivers Amu and Syr, thus eliminating India’s cultural and political influence in these areas, which was largely Buddhist. India’s overland trade between China and West Asia and the sea-trade with Western Asia was also affected. However, there is ample evidence that Indian traders still thrived in the areas around the Persian Gulf and beyond, and that Indian ‘vaids‘ and craftsmen were welcomed at the courts of the Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad. Arab sea trade saw its high during this time with evidences suggesting Arab traders settling in the Malabar coastal region of India. They were welcomed at the courts of the Rashtrakuta rulers, who controlled the western part of India, ruling over Malwa and parts of southern India, and were even allowed to build mosques for worship.
Rashtrakuta Empire
More in next part….
IASBakra 