Chapter 4: Limits of Empire: Islam Contained
All imperial expansions, even those of the followers of the world’s most warlike religion, eventually end. Supply lines are stretched too far. Panicked adversaries set aside their own differences and form alliances. Strong and skilful leaders arise in the enemy camp. Tribes as fierce as any of the Islamic vanguards prove resistant to Islam’s call. Internal political or religious conflicts shatter Muslim unity. Geographic barriers divert or slow down even the most determined armies. When the advance of a Muslim empire slows, some of the yet unconquered peoples of the dar-al-harb have time to educate themselves about the threat and to apply effective countermeasures.
Early Arab Expansions Contained in Europe
Arab confidence in their invincibility, following the quick victories in Syria, Egypt and the Sasanid lands, was doubtless at its highest point. They must have expected that the remaining Byzantine provinces would quickly succumb to the warriors of the Prophet. However, on three different occasions Arab attacks were broken before the formidable walls of Constantinople. They unsuccessfully besieged the city in the years 669, 674-680 and 716. Finally they were swept out of Anatolia when, in 740, the Greeks “won a decisive victory over Arab invaders at Acrazas in Anatolia, and destroyed a major Syrian army.”[1]Thus was the direct road into Europe blocked for the Arabs.
However, the danger to Europe and Byzantium continued. In the north and in the far west Arab armies were poised to penetrate into Europe and surround Byzantium. But, the next blow to the advancing Muslims occurred in Spain where at the battle of Covadonga in 718 the Moors were first stopped by the Gothic chieftain Pelayo, and a northern enclave of Christian rule was preserved.[2] Despite that setback, the Arabs were not ones to be easily deterred. Avoiding the remaining Christian strongholds in the north of the peninsula they advanced into France where they were finally turned back by Charles Martel in 732 at the famous battle of Tours.
At the same time, another formidable opponent awaited the Arab armies north of the Oxus River and north of the Caucasus. These were the Khazars, a Turkic tribe who slowed down the Arab advance into Transoxiana and actually counterattacked deep into Arab territory. In the year 730, The Khazars shattered the “Arab defenses, defeated them at Ardabil, invaded Armenia, and penetrated as far as Mosul”.[3] In 737 the Arabs counterattacked and were, again, defeated at the hands of the Khazars. Historian of Byzantium Dimitri Obolensky notes the significance of this Khazar victory:
The supreme trial of strength came in 737 when the Arabs marched up the Volga, destroyed the Khazar army, but were compelled to retreat south of the Caucasus. Five years earlier Charles Martel had, by his victory at Poitiers, halted the Arab thrust against Western Christendom on the line of the Pyrenees. The achievement of the Khazars in holding the Caucasus was of comparable importance.[4]
Arthur Koestler notes, as well, that “the gigantic Muslim pincer movement across the Pyrenees in the west and across the Caucasus into Eastern Europe was halted at both ends about the same time.”[5]So it was that the Byzantines were spared from being outflanked on both sides of their stronghold. Also important in halting the Arab advance was the rejection by the Khazars of Islam in favor of Judaism around the year 740. Had the Khazars, like their fellow Turks, accepted Islam, the Muslim religion might have been swept into Eastern Europe by combined armies of Arabs and Turks as was, later, to occur in Transoxiana. Thus, the Khazar decision like the later rejection of Islam by the Russians and their conversion to Orthodox Christianity, once more prevented the Muslims from outflanking Byzantium and penetrating into the heart of Europe.
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It was at this very time that religious dissension within Muslim ranks occurred in North Africa. While Charles Martel was campaigning against the Moors of Spain, Berber Khariji rebels “destroyed a Syrian army of 27,000 men.”[6] Taken together the above events mark the end of the Arab expansion after a century of triumph and the beginning of the end of the Umayyad dynasty. A later Arab attempt to penetrate into Europe, this time coming up through the Italian peninsula was, after considerable effort, thwarted. “The recapture of Bari by the Christians in 871 marks the beginning of the end of the Moslem menace to Italy and Central Europe”.[7]
China: A Wall Blocking the Arab Advance
Chinese rulers recognized early the nature of the rising Muslim threat and moved decisively to preempt it. In 713 the Muslims at the request of the Chinese Emperor sent ambassadors to the Chinese court to expound the Islamic faith. The “reception of the emissaries by the Chinese Emperor was by no means friendly, for he dismissed them with the threat that if his land were invaded the consequences would be terrible for the invaders. However that may be, it is certain that no regular invasion of China was attempted from the direction of Persia, and Qutayba’s [Governor of Khurasan] incursion [into Chinese territory]marks the furthest limits to which Muslim troops advance into central Asia.”[8]
Furthermore, the Chinese were prepared to confront the Arab armies beyond the borders of China. However, they did not succeed in expelling the Arabs from Central Asia. The year 751 marked “the end of any serious resistance to Islam in western Central Asia. It also was the end of any Chinese intervention in the west … Ziyad ibn Salih …marched against a combined Chinese and Turkish army near Talas. … At the battle the Karluks [Turks] deserted the Chinese who were defeated”.[9]
The 8th century Chinese assistance to Iranian refugees and local rulers in central Asia, against the Arabs, stands in sharp contrast to the behavior of various Christians who by endless squabbles and betrayals facilitated the advance of the invading Muslims. The Chinese, to the contrary, recognized the implacable nature and danger of the Muslim advance and were prepared to assist even those of vastly different cultures to resist. While the Chinese campaign in central Asia ultimately failed, by slowing the Arab advance and demonstrating their willingness and ability to resist they discouraged the Arabs from a military invasion of China proper. With its immense wealth and large population China must have presented a tempting target; a large reservoir of booty and slaves, as well as concubines to swell the ranks of the harems. However, the combination of the demonstration of Chinese doughtiness and the large route through inhospitable country inhabited by fierce tribes, made it clear to Arab commanders that such an expedition would be extremely costly and have no clear prospect of success.
Sudan and Northeast Africa
Christian rulers in the Sudan and Ethiopia impeded and delayed the southward progress of Islam. The resistance of the strong Nubian kingdom blocked the Arab advance southward for many centuries and “Islam was denied its easiest line of access to black Africa. Muslim teachers, like Muslim traders, had therefore to cross the great deserts to the west.”[10] In Ethiopia “in the northern highlands at least, where Christianity had been the longest established , the strength and vitality of the Church were sufficient to prevent the merchants from spreading their religion, as they did elsewhere.”[11] After the fall of Nubian Christianity, Ethiopia came under increasing Muslim pressure. However, with the assistance of an unexpected new Christian ally, Ethiopia avoided Muslim conquest. At Lake Tana, “in 1542, the Portuguese intervened to help Christian Ethiopia prevail over the Muslims.” This victory “shattered the Muslim regimes.”[12]
Geographic Barriers
Geographic and climatic factors prevented or, at least slowed down, attempts at conquest or colonization by various Muslim vanguards. Great mountain ranges, such as the Caucasus, impeded the northern advance of both Arabs and Turks. The Himalayas proved to be a totally impenetrable barrier behind which the remnants of Indian and central Asian Buddhism was protected; this range also made a direct route into China impossible. Even in occupied Iran, as Frye points out, geographical factors prevented the Arabs from establishing an easy base for further expansion. “There never was any mass colonization of Iran by the Arabs, who did not care for the climatic conditions, except in the centre and in the south – the Arabian camel cannot endure cold winters – and their great waves of migration halted at the foot of the Zagros.”[13] What was true of Iran was even truer of the colder deserts and steppes north of Iran. In Africa the great Sahara desert made the movement of large armies impossible. Toward the east, Muslim armies were faced with the impenetrable jungles of south Asia.
In India, as we have seen, the resistance of the dense population once alerted to the bloody agenda of Islam, confined the Arabs to the conquered province of Sind. The Hindus finally realized that the Islamic meme was a not a force with which a permanent accommodation could be made. Other implacable warriors of the faith following in the footsteps of the Arabs were ultimately confronted with a number of insurmountable geographic barriers. In India it was the Himalayas that proved a quite effective barrier. “Howsoever, the Himalayas were certainly too physically challenging for the Khalji forces, [in an attempted invasion of Bhutan] most of whom perished in a swollen river.”[14] Under Muhammad bin Tughluq (d. 1351), in an attempt to bring the mountainous territory between India and China under Islam, an “expedition of at least sixty thousand duly headed off into the western Himalayas.” It was “heavily defeated by ‘Hindus who closed the passes and cut off the retreat.’ ‘Only ten horsemen returned to Delhi.’”[15] The Moguls were also halted at the foothills of the mountains. A “Shan people from upper Burma … pre-empted Mughal expansion in Assam and repeatedly rolled back Mughal incursions. In the north, along the foothills of the Himalaya, much was made of the capture … in 1618 of the great fort of Kangra … There followed minor conquests on the frontiers of Kashmir … None of these places can have rewarded the expense of taking them”.[16]
Frigid steppes and fierce nomads blocked the Muslims from penetrating into northern Asia:
…the Dzungarian Confederation, the last of the great Inner Asian nomadic empires … had its origins between 1400 and 1550, when Mongolian peoples were … forced to move westward and northward into eastern Turkestan … By the early seventeenth century an Oirat Khanate had come into existence … and its leaders adopted Tibetan Lamaism as the religion of the confederation. Buddhism helped, as did Islam, to foster political unity among pastoral peoples, and to join them to sedentary populations. Expanding westward the Oirats attacked the Kirgiz and the Uzbeks … and conquered the Tarim basin.[17]
The Oirat conquest paved the way for the later Chinese expansion into Muslim areas of eastern Turkestan.
Turkish Advance Halted
The later expansions of Islam under the Turks and the Golden Horde were halted by a series of military setbacks and by determined European resistance. Tamerlane’s invasion of Turkish territory was an important factor leading to the eventual end of the Turkish expansion. By defeating the Ottomans and capturing their Sultan, he probably delayed their invasion of Europe by 50 years, during which time the nations in Western Europe advanced economically and technologically, so that they were better equipped to contain the Turks. Considering the speed and ferocity with which the Ottomans were to seize southeastern Europe, it is conceivable that without Tamerlane, much of Europe might have ended up under Islamic rule.
Another factor slowing down the Ottoman advance was the fierce and unexpected resistance that awaited them in the Balkans. After the defeat of Serbia on the fields of Kosovo and with the slow death and fall of Constantinople, a series of local Christian kings and commanders carried on the resistance for many years. The Hungarian general Hunyadi, the Albanian leader Skanderbeg and the Serbian Despot Brankovitch along with Venetian naval commanders mounted a futile but valiant resistance that harassed and delayed the Ottomans accustomed as they were to lightning quick victories. At the same time the notorious Rumanian ruler, Vlad the Impaler, who was to be immortalized as the fictional Dracula, invaded Ottoman ruled territory and executed en masse thousands of Ottoman soldiers. After Vlad’s defeat Rumanian resistance was carried on by King Stephen of Moldavia, who before his own defeat, temporarily expelled the Turks from Wallachia.
Over the following two centuries the Ottoman advance was repeatedly checked by a series of desperate European actions. Belatedly, by this time, most western rulers awoke to the danger. In 1480 the Ottoman invasions of Italy and the island of Rhodes were thwarted. In 1529 the first Ottoman siege of Vienna ended in failure and a second attempt on Vienna was turned back three years later. The Ottoman failures at the siege of Vienna ended their advance into Europe. In 1565 the Turks were repulsed by the knights of St. John at the siege of Malta. This was to be followed, in 1571, by the battle of Lepanto which was the first major Ottoman maritime defeat. In 1683 the final siege of Vienna was followed by the rapid decline of Ottoman power in Europe.
In Russia, also, the Muslim tide was stopped by determined Christian resistance. The conquests by the Ottoman vassals of the Golden Horde represented the farther-most northern extension of the Muslim oecumene. Their advance toward the north was halted in 1380 when the Russians under Prince Dmitri Donskoi defeated the Tatars at the battle of Kulikovo. A century later in 1480 Ivan the Terrible turned back the last Tatar advance on Moscow.
At a later time, in India, Southeast Asia, and Inner Asia, in addition to the Balkans, Islam was contained by more technically advanced European, Russian and Chinese imperialists. Furthermore, the “spread of Islamic polities in both East and West Africa was checked at the beginning of the twentieth century by the sudden imposition of European colonial rule.”[18]
Islamic Decline
Civilizations and empires rise and decline. However, the rise and decline of the various Islamic polities were particularly rapid. Even the long lasting Ottoman Empire quickly became a shadow of its previous self; its life being artificially extended by the continued existence of large numbers of non-Muslim subjects for the Muslim elite to exploit and by the jealous rivalries of the European states. Hitti describes the rapid rise and fall, which characterized Islam in general, with particular reference to the Arabs:
If anything parallels the astounding rapidity with which the sons of the Arabian desert conquered in the first Islamic century most of the civilized world, it is the swift decadence of their descendants’ domination between the middle of the third and the middle of the fourth centuries. About 820 more extensive authority was concentrated in the hands of one man, the caliph in Baghdad than in those of any other living person; by 920 the power of his successor had so diminished that it was hardly felt even in his capital city.[19]
One cause of the decline was the geographical dispersion of authority. This “decentralization was the inevitable consequence of such a far-flung domain with difficult means of intercommunication. In all local affairs the governor’s authority tended to become supreme and his office hereditary.”[20] Another cause or, perhaps, simply an accompaniment of decline was the administrative dispersion of power exemplified in the office of the vizier. “The vizir acted as the caliph’s alter ego and grew in power as his chief indulged increasingly in the pleasures of the harem.”[21] An additional factor, detailed in a subsequent chapter,[22] was the harem intrigue resulting from the indulgence of those pleasures. Finally, the distrust of rulers for their own troops and the consequent employment of foreign mercenaries and slave soldiers was a development whose consequences for the political and social order were inevitably dire. The introduction of foreign units by al-Mutawakkil (847) “contributed to the destruction of the necessary conditions for the upkeep of the morale and esprit de corps.”[23]
Similar conditions marked the decline of the Ottoman Empire beginning in the 17th century. Kinross views the signal event of this decline being the assassination of the able vizier Sokollu, a victim of court intrigue, in 1578. Following this event, there was no check on the increasing dissipation of the Ottoman line; his murder “set the seal on a long period of Ottoman decadence.”[24] However, the factors described above may be only symptoms of the real underlying cause. Kinross summarizes the following as the real cause of Ottoman decline; it can just as easily apply to all Muslim empires:
In part this derived from the fact that the Empire had … exhausted both its field and its capacity for territorial conquest in Europe, which had served as its chief motive force. Centuries of war had inspired in the Ottomans unity of purpose; had provided wealth for them in the form not only of spoils but of territories for landed settlement. Now there remained few such outlets, few such rewards. In default of an enemy to plunder, men plundered one another; in default of land, they flocked to the cities or spread disorder through the countryside.[25]
This point is expanded upon in the subsequent chapter on Islamic parasitism.[26] When blocked, the energies released by the Islamic ideology must find another outlet or turn inward until even that is exhausted and the civilization settles down to the stagnation that has characterized Islam into modern times. The chapters to follow also go into more detail with respect to the reasons for political, social, economic and intellectual decline.
The Counter Jihad
It was inevitable that the followers of other traditions, viewing with a fearful fascination the inexorable advance of Islam’s inspired warriors, should seek to imitate those militarily useful aspects of the Prophet’s militant faith. The most famous of the non-Muslim holy wars was, of course, the Crusades. The Crusades, despite the notoriety attached to them in certain historical circles, were just one of a number of “counter jihads” by Christians. There were also instances of such counter-jihads among Hindus and even Buddhists. Bernard Lewis draws the following important distinction between jihad and its’ non-Islamic imitations.
The idea of holy war - a war for God and the faith – was not new in the Middle East. It suffuses the books of Deuteronomy and Judges, and inspired the Christian Byzantines in their wars against Persia and in their struggles to repel the Arab and later Turkish invaders. But these were wars with limited objectives – the conquest of the promised land, the defence of Christendom against non-Christian attack. Even the Christian crusade, often compared with the Muslim jihad, was itself a delayed and limited response to the jihad and in part also an imitation. But unlike the jihad it was concerned primarily with the defence or reconquest of threatened or lost Christian territory. It was, with few exceptions, limited to the successful wars for the recovery of southwest Europe, and the unsuccessful wars to recover the Holy Land and to halt the Ottoman advance in the Balkans. The Muslim jihad, in contrast, was perceived as unlimited, as a religious obligation that would continue until all the world had either adopted the Muslim faith or submitted to Muslim rule. In the latter case, those who professed what Muslims recognized as a revealed religion were allowed to continue the practice of that religion, subject to the acceptance of certain fiscal and other disabilities. Those who did not, that is to say idolaters and polytheists, were given the choice of conversion, death or slavery.[27]
Centuries before the Crusades, various Christian leaders envious of the advantages conferred on their Muslim opponents by the militant doctrine of jihad, suggested instituting a similar doctrine. The late ninth century Byzantine Emperor Leo VI “speaks with some respect of the doctrine of the holy war and of its military value, and even suggests that Christians might be well advised to adopt something of the same kind.”[28] In the following century Byzantine Emperor Phocas (ca 964) stated that for “the Muslims the jihad … was a duty enjoined by Islam. Phocas, highly religious and an ascetic, wished to have every soldier who fell in the wars declared a martyr for the faith, but was frustrated by the disagreement of the patriarch.”[29]
Furthermore, the Byzantines had a number of “military saints” to lend an aura of divine sanction and protection to their campaigns. Doubtless, the almost continuous assault by the Islamic jihad led to an increased emphasis on these divine warriors. “St. Demetrius was, with St. Theodore Stratilates, St. Theodore of Tyre and St. George, one of that great quartet … of warrior saints who protected Byzantine armies in battle.”[30] There can be no doubt that the Russians, who inherited the mantle of Byzantium, pursued the Tatars and Turks through the steppes and into central Asia with the same Byzantine religious fervor.
Leaders of the Christian west, long before the Crusades, also advocated imitating Muslim theology as a means of motivating Christian warriors. In 846, when an Arab fleet raided the coast of Italy and sacked Rome, a synod sent an appeal for help to the various Christian monarchs. Pope Leo IV “offered a heavenly reward to all those who died fighting the Muslims.” A similar promise was made thirty years later by John VIII “offering forgiveness of sins for those who fought” in defense of Church and faith and “eternal life for those who died fighting the infidel.”[31]
The most famous of these counter-jihads, the Crusades originated with Pope Urban II who ‘borrowed’ the Muslim idea of earthly riches, or else martyrdom and a heavenly reward for those who die in battle, in the service of their faith. Urban is quoted as saying at the Council of Clermont in 1095:
You, who sell for vile pay the strength of your arms to the fury of others, armed with the sword of the Machabees, go and merit an eternal reward. If you triumph over your enemies, the kingdoms of the East will be your reward. If you are conquered, you will have the glory of dying in the very same place as Jesus Christ, and God will never forget that he found you in the holy battalions.[32]
Not to be outdone, shortly afterward, Peter the Hermit promised his followers, in a very Muslim-like way, that “for all those who took part in the expedition the gates of Paradise would open.”[33]
A direct consequence of the ideology of the Crusades was the religious fervor fueling the Reconquista in Spain. As early as “the eleventh century the northern armies of la reconquista were filled with monks who had become soldiers. … The three great military orders created during the crusade against the Moors were called Calatrava, Santiago, and Alcantara.”[34] Indeed, like the Byzantine military saints, Santiago “was transformed in Spain from a peaceful apostle into a fierce warrior, capable of panicking the Moors … Santiago, the Moor-slayer … fortified the soul of the reconquest. … If Santiago was on our side, then so was God, and our war was every bit as holy as the other side’s.”[35] These military orders were to soon imitate those created to battle the Muslims in the Holy Land. “In the second half of the twelfth century the reconquest became institutionalized. Religious-military fraternities, such as the orders of Calatrava and Santiago, financed by landed estates, conquered and colonized Muslim territories.”[36]
The newly unified Spanish absorbed the attitudes of their erstwhile Muslim masters well. “Yet another facet of the identification between war and religion, between sword and cross, to be determining in the conquest of the New World, had been established. The militant religious orders were founded to conciliate a warring clergy with holy aims. … The armies of la reconquista were also the seed of the future Latin American armies.”[37] Naipaul discussing the Arab conquest of Sind also emphasizes the relationship between the experience of Spanish Christians under their Muslim masters and their later conquests in the Americas.
There are resemblances to the Spanish conquest of Mexico and Peru, and they are not accidental. The Arab conquest of Spain, occurring at the same time as the conquest of Sind, marked Spain. Eight hundred years later, in the New World, the Spanish conquistadores were like Arabs in their faith, fanaticism, toughness, poverty, and greed.[38]
An additional parallel between the Spanish conquistadors and the Arab jihadists was that the one fifth of the booty after conquest reserved for the caliph, as specified in the Sharia, is reflected in the institution of the Spanish “royal fifth” of the proceeds from the American conquests.
Another spillover from the ideology of holy war that the Christians copied from Islam occurred in northeastern Europe when Christian crusaders were redirected against pagan Slavs and other Baltic tribes. “The Teutonic Knights … were one of the militant orders founded during the crusades to further the conquest of the Holy Land from the Infidel. In the early thirteenth century the Order was granted wide uninhabited districts in Transylvania to found a frontier march against the heathen” Kuman tribes. In 1225 “a new field of activity was opened … in the lower valley of the Vistula. … Farther to the east … the Prussians … fiercely resisted the spread of Christianity. Against them crusades were proclaimed.”[39] Also “the Knights Templars and the Hospitallers took a very active part in the colonization of the east.”[40]Christianity had generally spread among pagan areas through a slow process of conversion. Subsequent to the Crusades, in the remaining pagan areas of Europe and in the New World, Christianity was deliberately spread by force of arms.
Christian Europe was not the only area of origin for counter-jihads. In India the Rajputs were a military caste of knights who emerged in the 12th century to oppose the march of Islam. As Keay describes them:
Although perjured and persecuted during centuries of Islamic supremacy, they were in fact the native aristocracy of India … They had … shown a bold front in the face of Muslim aggression. And for whatever that defiance had lacked in the way of coherence, they had amply compensated with a stalwart perseverance unequalled in the annals of mankind.[41]
The religious zeal exhibited by the Rajputs was in no way inferior to that of their opponents. In the Rajput hill forts when “all was lost … the womenfolk hurled themselves into the flames, the men rode out in a still brighter blaze of glory to kill until they were killed. Fanaticism was not an exclusively Islamic prerogative.”[42]
Later centuries saw the rise of other militant religious orders in India who were aroused by the fanatical Mogul emperor Aurangzeb. The Islamist policies of Aurangzeb “to non Muslim groupings of a more martial disposition, like the Sikhs, Rajputs and Marathas … furnished both pretext and support for outright defiance.”[43] The Sikhs under their leader Guru Govind established themselves in the Punjab hills where they metamorphosed from “a movement for religious and social reform into an embryonic political and military formation.”[44] In the 1660s, another militant group the Marathas under Shivaji revived “Hindu kingship at a time of awesome and markedly orthodox Muslim supremacy. … they have also” encouraged Hindus “in the belief that martial prowess is … part of their tradition”.[45]
In the northern reaches of Central Asia, the normally pacific Buddhists also found militant defenders. The Oirats, founders of the Dzungarian Confederation adopted Tibetan Lamaism. Using Buddhism as a means of establishing tribal unity the Oirats defeated the Kyrgyz and the Uzbeks and established themselves as masters of the Tarim basin.[46]Here was a belated Buddhist counter jihad under the aegis of a militarily adept tribal people practicing a more militant and primitive form of the religion.
Thus, in all instances, the formidable advance of Islam came to a halt. There is, however, one additional factor that helped to fuel almost all of the remarkable military campaigns of the warriors of the Prophet. The next chapter describes the great skill with which Muslim commanders exploited the political, religious and ethnic rivalries present within the ranks of the infidels.
[1] Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, p. 54.
[2] Carlos Fuentes, Buried Mirror, New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1992, p. 52.
[3] Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, p. 54.
[4] Dimitri Obolensky, The Byzantine Commonwealth, New York, Praeger, 1971, p. 172.
[5] Arthur Koestler, The Thirteenth Tribe, London, Hutchinson, 1976, p. 30.
[6] Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, p. 54.
[7] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 605.
[8] Levy, The Social Structure of Islam, p. 23.
[9] Frye, The Heritage of Central Asia, p. 214.
[10] Oliver and Fagan, Africa in the Iron Age, p. 131.
[11] Ibid, p. 137.
[12] Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, p. 436.
[13] Frye, The Cambridge History of Iran Volume 4, p. 306.
[14] Keay, India, A History, p. 244.
[15] Ibid, pp. 267-68.
[16] Ibid, p. 330.
[17] Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, p. 352.
[18] Ibid, p. 438.
[19] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 484.
[20] Ibid, p. 331.
[21] Ibid, p. 318.
[22] Chapter 7: Culture of the Harem.
[23] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 329.
[24] Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, p. 277.
[25] Ibid, p. 280.
[26] Chapter 11: The Parasitic Civilization.
[27] Lewis, The Middle East, pp. 233-34.
[28] Ibid, p. 235.
[29] Vryonis, Byzantium and Europe, p. 87.
[30] John Julius Norwich, Byzantium: The Apogee, Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1992, p. 249 n. 1.
[31] Lewis, The Middle East, p. 235.
[32] Robert Payne, The Dream and the Tomb, New York, Dorset, 1990, p. 35.
[33] Ibid, p. 37.
[34] Fuentes, Buried Mirror, pp. 60-61.
[35] Ibid, p. 63.
[36] Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, p. 314.
[37] Fuentes, Buried Mirror, pp. 60-61.
[38] Naipaul, Among the Believers, p. 132.
[39] F. L. Carsten, The Origins of Prussia, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1958, pp. 5-6.
[40] Ibid, p. 13.
[41] Keay, India, A History, p. 232.
[42] Ibid, p. 257.
[43] Ibid, p. 344.
[44] Ibid, p. 345.
[45] Ibid, p. 350.
[46] Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, p. 352.
Early Arab Expansions Contained in Europe
Arab confidence in their invincibility, following the quick victories in Syria, Egypt and the Sasanid lands, was doubtless at its highest point. They must have expected that the remaining Byzantine provinces would quickly succumb to the warriors of the Prophet. However, on three different occasions Arab attacks were broken before the formidable walls of Constantinople. They unsuccessfully besieged the city in the years 669, 674-680 and 716. Finally they were swept out of Anatolia when, in 740, the Greeks “won a decisive victory over Arab invaders at Acrazas in Anatolia, and destroyed a major Syrian army.”[1]Thus was the direct road into Europe blocked for the Arabs.
However, the danger to Europe and Byzantium continued. In the north and in the far west Arab armies were poised to penetrate into Europe and surround Byzantium. But, the next blow to the advancing Muslims occurred in Spain where at the battle of Covadonga in 718 the Moors were first stopped by the Gothic chieftain Pelayo, and a northern enclave of Christian rule was preserved.[2] Despite that setback, the Arabs were not ones to be easily deterred. Avoiding the remaining Christian strongholds in the north of the peninsula they advanced into France where they were finally turned back by Charles Martel in 732 at the famous battle of Tours.
At the same time, another formidable opponent awaited the Arab armies north of the Oxus River and north of the Caucasus. These were the Khazars, a Turkic tribe who slowed down the Arab advance into Transoxiana and actually counterattacked deep into Arab territory. In the year 730, The Khazars shattered the “Arab defenses, defeated them at Ardabil, invaded Armenia, and penetrated as far as Mosul”.[3] In 737 the Arabs counterattacked and were, again, defeated at the hands of the Khazars. Historian of Byzantium Dimitri Obolensky notes the significance of this Khazar victory:
The supreme trial of strength came in 737 when the Arabs marched up the Volga, destroyed the Khazar army, but were compelled to retreat south of the Caucasus. Five years earlier Charles Martel had, by his victory at Poitiers, halted the Arab thrust against Western Christendom on the line of the Pyrenees. The achievement of the Khazars in holding the Caucasus was of comparable importance.[4]
Arthur Koestler notes, as well, that “the gigantic Muslim pincer movement across the Pyrenees in the west and across the Caucasus into Eastern Europe was halted at both ends about the same time.”[5]So it was that the Byzantines were spared from being outflanked on both sides of their stronghold. Also important in halting the Arab advance was the rejection by the Khazars of Islam in favor of Judaism around the year 740. Had the Khazars, like their fellow Turks, accepted Islam, the Muslim religion might have been swept into Eastern Europe by combined armies of Arabs and Turks as was, later, to occur in Transoxiana. Thus, the Khazar decision like the later rejection of Islam by the Russians and their conversion to Orthodox Christianity, once more prevented the Muslims from outflanking Byzantium and penetrating into the heart of Europe.
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It was at this very time that religious dissension within Muslim ranks occurred in North Africa. While Charles Martel was campaigning against the Moors of Spain, Berber Khariji rebels “destroyed a Syrian army of 27,000 men.”[6] Taken together the above events mark the end of the Arab expansion after a century of triumph and the beginning of the end of the Umayyad dynasty. A later Arab attempt to penetrate into Europe, this time coming up through the Italian peninsula was, after considerable effort, thwarted. “The recapture of Bari by the Christians in 871 marks the beginning of the end of the Moslem menace to Italy and Central Europe”.[7]
China: A Wall Blocking the Arab Advance
Chinese rulers recognized early the nature of the rising Muslim threat and moved decisively to preempt it. In 713 the Muslims at the request of the Chinese Emperor sent ambassadors to the Chinese court to expound the Islamic faith. The “reception of the emissaries by the Chinese Emperor was by no means friendly, for he dismissed them with the threat that if his land were invaded the consequences would be terrible for the invaders. However that may be, it is certain that no regular invasion of China was attempted from the direction of Persia, and Qutayba’s [Governor of Khurasan] incursion [into Chinese territory]marks the furthest limits to which Muslim troops advance into central Asia.”[8]
Furthermore, the Chinese were prepared to confront the Arab armies beyond the borders of China. However, they did not succeed in expelling the Arabs from Central Asia. The year 751 marked “the end of any serious resistance to Islam in western Central Asia. It also was the end of any Chinese intervention in the west … Ziyad ibn Salih …marched against a combined Chinese and Turkish army near Talas. … At the battle the Karluks [Turks] deserted the Chinese who were defeated”.[9]
The 8th century Chinese assistance to Iranian refugees and local rulers in central Asia, against the Arabs, stands in sharp contrast to the behavior of various Christians who by endless squabbles and betrayals facilitated the advance of the invading Muslims. The Chinese, to the contrary, recognized the implacable nature and danger of the Muslim advance and were prepared to assist even those of vastly different cultures to resist. While the Chinese campaign in central Asia ultimately failed, by slowing the Arab advance and demonstrating their willingness and ability to resist they discouraged the Arabs from a military invasion of China proper. With its immense wealth and large population China must have presented a tempting target; a large reservoir of booty and slaves, as well as concubines to swell the ranks of the harems. However, the combination of the demonstration of Chinese doughtiness and the large route through inhospitable country inhabited by fierce tribes, made it clear to Arab commanders that such an expedition would be extremely costly and have no clear prospect of success.
Sudan and Northeast Africa
Christian rulers in the Sudan and Ethiopia impeded and delayed the southward progress of Islam. The resistance of the strong Nubian kingdom blocked the Arab advance southward for many centuries and “Islam was denied its easiest line of access to black Africa. Muslim teachers, like Muslim traders, had therefore to cross the great deserts to the west.”[10] In Ethiopia “in the northern highlands at least, where Christianity had been the longest established , the strength and vitality of the Church were sufficient to prevent the merchants from spreading their religion, as they did elsewhere.”[11] After the fall of Nubian Christianity, Ethiopia came under increasing Muslim pressure. However, with the assistance of an unexpected new Christian ally, Ethiopia avoided Muslim conquest. At Lake Tana, “in 1542, the Portuguese intervened to help Christian Ethiopia prevail over the Muslims.” This victory “shattered the Muslim regimes.”[12]
Geographic Barriers
Geographic and climatic factors prevented or, at least slowed down, attempts at conquest or colonization by various Muslim vanguards. Great mountain ranges, such as the Caucasus, impeded the northern advance of both Arabs and Turks. The Himalayas proved to be a totally impenetrable barrier behind which the remnants of Indian and central Asian Buddhism was protected; this range also made a direct route into China impossible. Even in occupied Iran, as Frye points out, geographical factors prevented the Arabs from establishing an easy base for further expansion. “There never was any mass colonization of Iran by the Arabs, who did not care for the climatic conditions, except in the centre and in the south – the Arabian camel cannot endure cold winters – and their great waves of migration halted at the foot of the Zagros.”[13] What was true of Iran was even truer of the colder deserts and steppes north of Iran. In Africa the great Sahara desert made the movement of large armies impossible. Toward the east, Muslim armies were faced with the impenetrable jungles of south Asia.
In India, as we have seen, the resistance of the dense population once alerted to the bloody agenda of Islam, confined the Arabs to the conquered province of Sind. The Hindus finally realized that the Islamic meme was a not a force with which a permanent accommodation could be made. Other implacable warriors of the faith following in the footsteps of the Arabs were ultimately confronted with a number of insurmountable geographic barriers. In India it was the Himalayas that proved a quite effective barrier. “Howsoever, the Himalayas were certainly too physically challenging for the Khalji forces, [in an attempted invasion of Bhutan] most of whom perished in a swollen river.”[14] Under Muhammad bin Tughluq (d. 1351), in an attempt to bring the mountainous territory between India and China under Islam, an “expedition of at least sixty thousand duly headed off into the western Himalayas.” It was “heavily defeated by ‘Hindus who closed the passes and cut off the retreat.’ ‘Only ten horsemen returned to Delhi.’”[15] The Moguls were also halted at the foothills of the mountains. A “Shan people from upper Burma … pre-empted Mughal expansion in Assam and repeatedly rolled back Mughal incursions. In the north, along the foothills of the Himalaya, much was made of the capture … in 1618 of the great fort of Kangra … There followed minor conquests on the frontiers of Kashmir … None of these places can have rewarded the expense of taking them”.[16]
Frigid steppes and fierce nomads blocked the Muslims from penetrating into northern Asia:
…the Dzungarian Confederation, the last of the great Inner Asian nomadic empires … had its origins between 1400 and 1550, when Mongolian peoples were … forced to move westward and northward into eastern Turkestan … By the early seventeenth century an Oirat Khanate had come into existence … and its leaders adopted Tibetan Lamaism as the religion of the confederation. Buddhism helped, as did Islam, to foster political unity among pastoral peoples, and to join them to sedentary populations. Expanding westward the Oirats attacked the Kirgiz and the Uzbeks … and conquered the Tarim basin.[17]
The Oirat conquest paved the way for the later Chinese expansion into Muslim areas of eastern Turkestan.
Turkish Advance Halted
The later expansions of Islam under the Turks and the Golden Horde were halted by a series of military setbacks and by determined European resistance. Tamerlane’s invasion of Turkish territory was an important factor leading to the eventual end of the Turkish expansion. By defeating the Ottomans and capturing their Sultan, he probably delayed their invasion of Europe by 50 years, during which time the nations in Western Europe advanced economically and technologically, so that they were better equipped to contain the Turks. Considering the speed and ferocity with which the Ottomans were to seize southeastern Europe, it is conceivable that without Tamerlane, much of Europe might have ended up under Islamic rule.
Another factor slowing down the Ottoman advance was the fierce and unexpected resistance that awaited them in the Balkans. After the defeat of Serbia on the fields of Kosovo and with the slow death and fall of Constantinople, a series of local Christian kings and commanders carried on the resistance for many years. The Hungarian general Hunyadi, the Albanian leader Skanderbeg and the Serbian Despot Brankovitch along with Venetian naval commanders mounted a futile but valiant resistance that harassed and delayed the Ottomans accustomed as they were to lightning quick victories. At the same time the notorious Rumanian ruler, Vlad the Impaler, who was to be immortalized as the fictional Dracula, invaded Ottoman ruled territory and executed en masse thousands of Ottoman soldiers. After Vlad’s defeat Rumanian resistance was carried on by King Stephen of Moldavia, who before his own defeat, temporarily expelled the Turks from Wallachia.
Over the following two centuries the Ottoman advance was repeatedly checked by a series of desperate European actions. Belatedly, by this time, most western rulers awoke to the danger. In 1480 the Ottoman invasions of Italy and the island of Rhodes were thwarted. In 1529 the first Ottoman siege of Vienna ended in failure and a second attempt on Vienna was turned back three years later. The Ottoman failures at the siege of Vienna ended their advance into Europe. In 1565 the Turks were repulsed by the knights of St. John at the siege of Malta. This was to be followed, in 1571, by the battle of Lepanto which was the first major Ottoman maritime defeat. In 1683 the final siege of Vienna was followed by the rapid decline of Ottoman power in Europe.
In Russia, also, the Muslim tide was stopped by determined Christian resistance. The conquests by the Ottoman vassals of the Golden Horde represented the farther-most northern extension of the Muslim oecumene. Their advance toward the north was halted in 1380 when the Russians under Prince Dmitri Donskoi defeated the Tatars at the battle of Kulikovo. A century later in 1480 Ivan the Terrible turned back the last Tatar advance on Moscow.
At a later time, in India, Southeast Asia, and Inner Asia, in addition to the Balkans, Islam was contained by more technically advanced European, Russian and Chinese imperialists. Furthermore, the “spread of Islamic polities in both East and West Africa was checked at the beginning of the twentieth century by the sudden imposition of European colonial rule.”[18]
Islamic Decline
Civilizations and empires rise and decline. However, the rise and decline of the various Islamic polities were particularly rapid. Even the long lasting Ottoman Empire quickly became a shadow of its previous self; its life being artificially extended by the continued existence of large numbers of non-Muslim subjects for the Muslim elite to exploit and by the jealous rivalries of the European states. Hitti describes the rapid rise and fall, which characterized Islam in general, with particular reference to the Arabs:
If anything parallels the astounding rapidity with which the sons of the Arabian desert conquered in the first Islamic century most of the civilized world, it is the swift decadence of their descendants’ domination between the middle of the third and the middle of the fourth centuries. About 820 more extensive authority was concentrated in the hands of one man, the caliph in Baghdad than in those of any other living person; by 920 the power of his successor had so diminished that it was hardly felt even in his capital city.[19]
One cause of the decline was the geographical dispersion of authority. This “decentralization was the inevitable consequence of such a far-flung domain with difficult means of intercommunication. In all local affairs the governor’s authority tended to become supreme and his office hereditary.”[20] Another cause or, perhaps, simply an accompaniment of decline was the administrative dispersion of power exemplified in the office of the vizier. “The vizir acted as the caliph’s alter ego and grew in power as his chief indulged increasingly in the pleasures of the harem.”[21] An additional factor, detailed in a subsequent chapter,[22] was the harem intrigue resulting from the indulgence of those pleasures. Finally, the distrust of rulers for their own troops and the consequent employment of foreign mercenaries and slave soldiers was a development whose consequences for the political and social order were inevitably dire. The introduction of foreign units by al-Mutawakkil (847) “contributed to the destruction of the necessary conditions for the upkeep of the morale and esprit de corps.”[23]
Similar conditions marked the decline of the Ottoman Empire beginning in the 17th century. Kinross views the signal event of this decline being the assassination of the able vizier Sokollu, a victim of court intrigue, in 1578. Following this event, there was no check on the increasing dissipation of the Ottoman line; his murder “set the seal on a long period of Ottoman decadence.”[24] However, the factors described above may be only symptoms of the real underlying cause. Kinross summarizes the following as the real cause of Ottoman decline; it can just as easily apply to all Muslim empires:
In part this derived from the fact that the Empire had … exhausted both its field and its capacity for territorial conquest in Europe, which had served as its chief motive force. Centuries of war had inspired in the Ottomans unity of purpose; had provided wealth for them in the form not only of spoils but of territories for landed settlement. Now there remained few such outlets, few such rewards. In default of an enemy to plunder, men plundered one another; in default of land, they flocked to the cities or spread disorder through the countryside.[25]
This point is expanded upon in the subsequent chapter on Islamic parasitism.[26] When blocked, the energies released by the Islamic ideology must find another outlet or turn inward until even that is exhausted and the civilization settles down to the stagnation that has characterized Islam into modern times. The chapters to follow also go into more detail with respect to the reasons for political, social, economic and intellectual decline.
The Counter Jihad
It was inevitable that the followers of other traditions, viewing with a fearful fascination the inexorable advance of Islam’s inspired warriors, should seek to imitate those militarily useful aspects of the Prophet’s militant faith. The most famous of the non-Muslim holy wars was, of course, the Crusades. The Crusades, despite the notoriety attached to them in certain historical circles, were just one of a number of “counter jihads” by Christians. There were also instances of such counter-jihads among Hindus and even Buddhists. Bernard Lewis draws the following important distinction between jihad and its’ non-Islamic imitations.
The idea of holy war - a war for God and the faith – was not new in the Middle East. It suffuses the books of Deuteronomy and Judges, and inspired the Christian Byzantines in their wars against Persia and in their struggles to repel the Arab and later Turkish invaders. But these were wars with limited objectives – the conquest of the promised land, the defence of Christendom against non-Christian attack. Even the Christian crusade, often compared with the Muslim jihad, was itself a delayed and limited response to the jihad and in part also an imitation. But unlike the jihad it was concerned primarily with the defence or reconquest of threatened or lost Christian territory. It was, with few exceptions, limited to the successful wars for the recovery of southwest Europe, and the unsuccessful wars to recover the Holy Land and to halt the Ottoman advance in the Balkans. The Muslim jihad, in contrast, was perceived as unlimited, as a religious obligation that would continue until all the world had either adopted the Muslim faith or submitted to Muslim rule. In the latter case, those who professed what Muslims recognized as a revealed religion were allowed to continue the practice of that religion, subject to the acceptance of certain fiscal and other disabilities. Those who did not, that is to say idolaters and polytheists, were given the choice of conversion, death or slavery.[27]
Centuries before the Crusades, various Christian leaders envious of the advantages conferred on their Muslim opponents by the militant doctrine of jihad, suggested instituting a similar doctrine. The late ninth century Byzantine Emperor Leo VI “speaks with some respect of the doctrine of the holy war and of its military value, and even suggests that Christians might be well advised to adopt something of the same kind.”[28] In the following century Byzantine Emperor Phocas (ca 964) stated that for “the Muslims the jihad … was a duty enjoined by Islam. Phocas, highly religious and an ascetic, wished to have every soldier who fell in the wars declared a martyr for the faith, but was frustrated by the disagreement of the patriarch.”[29]
Furthermore, the Byzantines had a number of “military saints” to lend an aura of divine sanction and protection to their campaigns. Doubtless, the almost continuous assault by the Islamic jihad led to an increased emphasis on these divine warriors. “St. Demetrius was, with St. Theodore Stratilates, St. Theodore of Tyre and St. George, one of that great quartet … of warrior saints who protected Byzantine armies in battle.”[30] There can be no doubt that the Russians, who inherited the mantle of Byzantium, pursued the Tatars and Turks through the steppes and into central Asia with the same Byzantine religious fervor.
Leaders of the Christian west, long before the Crusades, also advocated imitating Muslim theology as a means of motivating Christian warriors. In 846, when an Arab fleet raided the coast of Italy and sacked Rome, a synod sent an appeal for help to the various Christian monarchs. Pope Leo IV “offered a heavenly reward to all those who died fighting the Muslims.” A similar promise was made thirty years later by John VIII “offering forgiveness of sins for those who fought” in defense of Church and faith and “eternal life for those who died fighting the infidel.”[31]
The most famous of these counter-jihads, the Crusades originated with Pope Urban II who ‘borrowed’ the Muslim idea of earthly riches, or else martyrdom and a heavenly reward for those who die in battle, in the service of their faith. Urban is quoted as saying at the Council of Clermont in 1095:
You, who sell for vile pay the strength of your arms to the fury of others, armed with the sword of the Machabees, go and merit an eternal reward. If you triumph over your enemies, the kingdoms of the East will be your reward. If you are conquered, you will have the glory of dying in the very same place as Jesus Christ, and God will never forget that he found you in the holy battalions.[32]
Not to be outdone, shortly afterward, Peter the Hermit promised his followers, in a very Muslim-like way, that “for all those who took part in the expedition the gates of Paradise would open.”[33]
A direct consequence of the ideology of the Crusades was the religious fervor fueling the Reconquista in Spain. As early as “the eleventh century the northern armies of la reconquista were filled with monks who had become soldiers. … The three great military orders created during the crusade against the Moors were called Calatrava, Santiago, and Alcantara.”[34] Indeed, like the Byzantine military saints, Santiago “was transformed in Spain from a peaceful apostle into a fierce warrior, capable of panicking the Moors … Santiago, the Moor-slayer … fortified the soul of the reconquest. … If Santiago was on our side, then so was God, and our war was every bit as holy as the other side’s.”[35] These military orders were to soon imitate those created to battle the Muslims in the Holy Land. “In the second half of the twelfth century the reconquest became institutionalized. Religious-military fraternities, such as the orders of Calatrava and Santiago, financed by landed estates, conquered and colonized Muslim territories.”[36]
The newly unified Spanish absorbed the attitudes of their erstwhile Muslim masters well. “Yet another facet of the identification between war and religion, between sword and cross, to be determining in the conquest of the New World, had been established. The militant religious orders were founded to conciliate a warring clergy with holy aims. … The armies of la reconquista were also the seed of the future Latin American armies.”[37] Naipaul discussing the Arab conquest of Sind also emphasizes the relationship between the experience of Spanish Christians under their Muslim masters and their later conquests in the Americas.
There are resemblances to the Spanish conquest of Mexico and Peru, and they are not accidental. The Arab conquest of Spain, occurring at the same time as the conquest of Sind, marked Spain. Eight hundred years later, in the New World, the Spanish conquistadores were like Arabs in their faith, fanaticism, toughness, poverty, and greed.[38]
An additional parallel between the Spanish conquistadors and the Arab jihadists was that the one fifth of the booty after conquest reserved for the caliph, as specified in the Sharia, is reflected in the institution of the Spanish “royal fifth” of the proceeds from the American conquests.
Another spillover from the ideology of holy war that the Christians copied from Islam occurred in northeastern Europe when Christian crusaders were redirected against pagan Slavs and other Baltic tribes. “The Teutonic Knights … were one of the militant orders founded during the crusades to further the conquest of the Holy Land from the Infidel. In the early thirteenth century the Order was granted wide uninhabited districts in Transylvania to found a frontier march against the heathen” Kuman tribes. In 1225 “a new field of activity was opened … in the lower valley of the Vistula. … Farther to the east … the Prussians … fiercely resisted the spread of Christianity. Against them crusades were proclaimed.”[39] Also “the Knights Templars and the Hospitallers took a very active part in the colonization of the east.”[40]Christianity had generally spread among pagan areas through a slow process of conversion. Subsequent to the Crusades, in the remaining pagan areas of Europe and in the New World, Christianity was deliberately spread by force of arms.
Christian Europe was not the only area of origin for counter-jihads. In India the Rajputs were a military caste of knights who emerged in the 12th century to oppose the march of Islam. As Keay describes them:
Although perjured and persecuted during centuries of Islamic supremacy, they were in fact the native aristocracy of India … They had … shown a bold front in the face of Muslim aggression. And for whatever that defiance had lacked in the way of coherence, they had amply compensated with a stalwart perseverance unequalled in the annals of mankind.[41]
The religious zeal exhibited by the Rajputs was in no way inferior to that of their opponents. In the Rajput hill forts when “all was lost … the womenfolk hurled themselves into the flames, the men rode out in a still brighter blaze of glory to kill until they were killed. Fanaticism was not an exclusively Islamic prerogative.”[42]
Later centuries saw the rise of other militant religious orders in India who were aroused by the fanatical Mogul emperor Aurangzeb. The Islamist policies of Aurangzeb “to non Muslim groupings of a more martial disposition, like the Sikhs, Rajputs and Marathas … furnished both pretext and support for outright defiance.”[43] The Sikhs under their leader Guru Govind established themselves in the Punjab hills where they metamorphosed from “a movement for religious and social reform into an embryonic political and military formation.”[44] In the 1660s, another militant group the Marathas under Shivaji revived “Hindu kingship at a time of awesome and markedly orthodox Muslim supremacy. … they have also” encouraged Hindus “in the belief that martial prowess is … part of their tradition”.[45]
In the northern reaches of Central Asia, the normally pacific Buddhists also found militant defenders. The Oirats, founders of the Dzungarian Confederation adopted Tibetan Lamaism. Using Buddhism as a means of establishing tribal unity the Oirats defeated the Kyrgyz and the Uzbeks and established themselves as masters of the Tarim basin.[46]Here was a belated Buddhist counter jihad under the aegis of a militarily adept tribal people practicing a more militant and primitive form of the religion.
Thus, in all instances, the formidable advance of Islam came to a halt. There is, however, one additional factor that helped to fuel almost all of the remarkable military campaigns of the warriors of the Prophet. The next chapter describes the great skill with which Muslim commanders exploited the political, religious and ethnic rivalries present within the ranks of the infidels.
[1] Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, p. 54.
[2] Carlos Fuentes, Buried Mirror, New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1992, p. 52.
[3] Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, p. 54.
[4] Dimitri Obolensky, The Byzantine Commonwealth, New York, Praeger, 1971, p. 172.
[5] Arthur Koestler, The Thirteenth Tribe, London, Hutchinson, 1976, p. 30.
[6] Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, p. 54.
[7] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 605.
[8] Levy, The Social Structure of Islam, p. 23.
[9] Frye, The Heritage of Central Asia, p. 214.
[10] Oliver and Fagan, Africa in the Iron Age, p. 131.
[11] Ibid, p. 137.
[12] Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, p. 436.
[13] Frye, The Cambridge History of Iran Volume 4, p. 306.
[14] Keay, India, A History, p. 244.
[15] Ibid, pp. 267-68.
[16] Ibid, p. 330.
[17] Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, p. 352.
[18] Ibid, p. 438.
[19] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 484.
[20] Ibid, p. 331.
[21] Ibid, p. 318.
[22] Chapter 7: Culture of the Harem.
[23] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 329.
[24] Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, p. 277.
[25] Ibid, p. 280.
[26] Chapter 11: The Parasitic Civilization.
[27] Lewis, The Middle East, pp. 233-34.
[28] Ibid, p. 235.
[29] Vryonis, Byzantium and Europe, p. 87.
[30] John Julius Norwich, Byzantium: The Apogee, Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1992, p. 249 n. 1.
[31] Lewis, The Middle East, p. 235.
[32] Robert Payne, The Dream and the Tomb, New York, Dorset, 1990, p. 35.
[33] Ibid, p. 37.
[34] Fuentes, Buried Mirror, pp. 60-61.
[35] Ibid, p. 63.
[36] Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, p. 314.
[37] Fuentes, Buried Mirror, pp. 60-61.
[38] Naipaul, Among the Believers, p. 132.
[39] F. L. Carsten, The Origins of Prussia, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1958, pp. 5-6.
[40] Ibid, p. 13.
[41] Keay, India, A History, p. 232.
[42] Ibid, p. 257.
[43] Ibid, p. 344.
[44] Ibid, p. 345.
[45] Ibid, p. 350.
[46] Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, p. 352.
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