Interaction of Christianity and Islam Prior to the 20th Century

I throw my support behind anglagard!so back on track...What would have happened if the Muslim armies weren't halted by Charlemagne at Tours? Where would europe, or even North America, be now?

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-I believe in God, I just call it Nature
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As these questions are on topic, I feel addressing your post is appropriate even if it does break into the chronological scenario as set up by Quetzal. The armies, or as some have asserted more properly, collection of raiding parties, were defeated under the leadership of Charles Martel, Charlemagne's grandfather in 732. The Wikipedia articleBattle of Tours - Wikipediaappears at first glance to be substantially correct, although personally I feel the numbers involved may be exaggerated as is common among ancient and medieval sources. Also, according to what I have heard from history professors, the Muslim "armies" consisted largely of raiding parties temporarily consolidated for the battle, which were otherwise primarily seeking plunder, a common occurance at the time, long before, and somewhat after, throughout the world. According to the book I am reading now, Islam: A Short History by Karen Armstrong (p. 50), The Muslim invasion of Frankish lands was not a highly organized effort, nor was it considered a major goal of the Islamic Empire under the Umayyads, so the defeat at Tours was not considered a major setback. The Muslims apparently had little interest in {ABE - Western} Europe at the time outside of their Spanish holdings, considering it backward and unprofitable. Additionally, the importance of this battle among European sources is considered exaggerated, under the circumstances.The Islamic Empire at the time was also beginning to show some problems with rapid growth and was about to enjoy greater internal dissent in both the political and religious spheres, which would have rendered continued expansion in Europe problematic. I will defer a more detailed explination to Quetzal's chronology.Also, what if is anyones guess, personally I prefer actual to speculative history, but that's just my opinion. I will be glad to do further research into the topic if it appears important, but prefer the chronology to run its course through this thread so a better historic background may be set up before jumping in further.However, thanks for your interest, please feel free to post any further On Topic comments.Edited by anglagard, : OT = on topic for onceEdited by anglagard, : add Western to Europe

After reading the last page or so I felt I was seeing much more heat than light, and that the heat was not focused on the topic. I'd like to add my voice to Anglagard's and request that people take care to post on-topic. Review your message before posting it, and if it doesn't seem to bear on pre-20th century Christianity/Islam interaction then just throw it in the bit bucket. Thanks!

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

I hid my post as it was offtopic.ApologiesEdited by SuperNintendo Chalmers, : No reason given.Edited by SuperNintendo Chalmers, : No reason given.Edited by Admin, : Add closing div tag.Edited by SuperNintendo Chalmers, : No reason given.

Edited by AdminJar, : off topic

I'm aware that my interaction here is going to be off topic since it concerns pre-Islamic history. Problematic since jar's thread seems to focus on 19th and 20th Century history and this one concentrates on post 6th Century stuff, yet some of my contributions have been questioned.It seemed that many wanted to go back in time in jar's thread because the Muslims started it and jar was skipping over that period of history which some felt was improper (or whatever). My suggestion was 'why stop with the Muslims' why not go further back, to the Greeks...Alexander's conquest of the known world was bloody. Wikipedia tells me he was known as Arda Wiraz Nmag or "the accursed Alexander" by the Persians for his destruction of Persepolis.Indeed, Anatolia (Turkey) has been a flashpoint between east and west for a long long time. And that was my point, trying to find one group or orientation to blame for things is not easy and probably won't have an satisfactory conclusion. As with all of history - it is rarely a simple case of one cause, one effect.We could, should we choose, take it back to the Iron Age. Perhaps we can take it further. No matter - there is merit in discussing only the 19th and 20th Century influences on the current emnity - with a nod to the previous few centuries for background.Onto Voltaire. It is easy to think that the Holy Roman Empire and the classic Roman Empire are linked, and it is easy to think that the two are entirely seperate. To clarify what might be a misunderstanding of my position I was coming at this from a Byzantine angle. Classic Rome was split into the Western and Eastern parts (the Eastern part becoming what is now called the Byzantine Empire), and when Classic Western Rome was shrivelled and overcome by Visigoths and Franks etc, Eastern Rome remained (aka Constantinople). Of course the Holy Roman Empire did have the Holy Roman connection (The Pope was a major political figure - to the point where civil war broke out regarding exactly how major he should be) as well as the fact that the Holy Roman Empire recognized the Byzantine Empire's soveriegnity. Another case of history being a little more complex than convenient.

The RiddahAfter the death of the Prophet, Islam came very close to extinction as a religion. The short reason is Mohammed never designated a successor. During his lifetime, he was the charismatic secular, military, AND religious leader of the new movement. Nearly every decision in these areas was referred to him directly. Many writers have criticized the oversight, including many Moslems. The truth is, in traditional Arab society, leaders simply didn’t choose their successors. Especially in Bedouin culture, leaders were selected, usually by clan elders, based on ability or some other criteria. No, this isn’t democracy as we understand it. There was no franchise, etc. However, the Bedouin amirs led by sufferance rather than obedience - they cajoled, bribed, advised and persuaded, they didn’t order. In addition, to compound the problem, there was no mechanism for secular, and worse yet, for religious succession. This was to prove a deadly combination.No one had ever managed to unite the Arab tribes - Mohammed was the first. Upon his death, the coalition he had forged collapsed almost overnight. Many of the tribes and clans claimed that Mohammed’s death nullified all extant treaties. Some went so far as to “deconvert” from Islam. A few even rallied around leaders proclaiming themselves new prophets. Literally almost overnight, the Moslems went from domination of the entire Peninsula to barely controlling the cities of Mecca and Madinah. The harab al-riddah, or Wars of Apostasy, had begun.The ansari of Madinah, using the old system of selecting leaders and concerned that a Madinan wouldn’t be acceptable to those clans still loyal, chose the Quraysh elder Abu Bakr (remember, one of the early followers of Mohammed and his best friend - I told you to remember those names) to lead them. Although this choice was to set the scene for the greatest schism in Islam, at the time it turned out to be nothing less than brilliant. Abu Bakr took the title of khalifat rasul Allah (Successor to the Messenger of God), which today we know in English as “caliph”. As military leader after Mohammed, he also became amir al-muminin, Commander of the Faithful.Abu Bakr’s first move as new caliph was to dispatch Islam’s two greatest generals, Khalid ibn al-Walid and Amr ibn al-As to put down the revolts. Khalid was given the task of defeating the two most powerful new prophets - Tulayha al-Asad and Musaylima al-Khatab, who had each gathered a collection of clans. Tulayha actually attacked Madinah at one point (Khalid was on the last raid into Palestine ordered by Mohammed himself and returned in the nick of time to raise the siege - a raid, btw, whose booty convinced several of the nearby clans to rejoin the confederation). While Amr and other Moslem commanders were leading cavalry columns across Arabia to “remind” the majority of the clans to pay the zakat tax (the major bone of contention), Khalid led the main Moslem armies against the apostates. He met and decisively defeated Tulayha at the Battle of Buzakha, and then moved on Musaylima, defeating him at the Battle of Akraba in 633.Side note: It was during these latter two battles that the infamous order from Abu Bakr was written: Khalid ruthlessly carried out this order - some say to excess. For his zeal, he earned the title Sayf Allah, or Sword of God. Be that as it may, although clearly aimed at the rebellious Arab tribes when written (and even then declaring the Bani Hanifa clan to which Musaylima belonged as “apostates” is specious, as the clan had never converted in the first place), modern Islamist radicals have used this order (and the rather ambiguous Qu’ranic verses supporting it) to justify murder, terrorism, and destruction by the simple expedient of redefining what “return to Islam” actually means. They take it out of context, and usually ignore the “return” issue completely. They hold up Khalid even to this day as a shining example of what to do with the unbelievers. Fortunately for Islam, they didn’t take this stance at the time, except against those tribes who had been declared apostate.The Conquest BeginsWithin two years, Arabia was once again under Moslem control. Abu Bakr was faced with a critical question: how to hold the shaky coalition together. Something was needed beyond the rather superficial adherence to Islam, and fear of the Moslem armies. This is when he made the second greatest decision of his career: harness the tribes’ warlike nature and turn it outward.After the death of Abu Bakr in 634, his successor Omar al-Khattab (like Abu Bakr selected from the Quraysh), two large armies were formed, and launched north. An army under Khalid attacked through the old Lakhmid Kingdom into Mesopotamia, and a second column under Amr attacked into Palestine.Although the Ghassanids had previously defeated a Moslem raid (at Mu’ta), this time Amr’s army was unopposed: the Byzantines could no longer afford to pay their nominal allies, and the Ghassanids - monophysite Christians whose co-religionists in Syria and Egypt were on the receiving end of one of Byzantium’s periodic pogroms against heresy - joined the Islamic armies in large numbers. It is interesting to note that some of the first interactions between Moslem conquerors and conquered Christians entailed the latter joining the former in their conquest! To quote from Goldschmidt (1999, A Concise History of the Middle East, pg 46), “Contrary to their image in popular histories, not all Arab warriors were fired up with Moslem zeal. A few were, but others belonged to Christian tribes estranged from the Byzantine Empire. Being Christian did not bar an Arab from fighting for the Caliphate. Some Moslem tribes and leaders may have believed in jihad. Most tribal Arabs believed in looting.” The reinforced army under Amr got caught by a Byzantine counteroffensive, and Khalid made a forced-march 500 km across the Syrian desert in time to defeat the Byzantines. At the Battle of the Yarmuk (August 636), the Byzantines are decisively defeated. Khalid then takes Damascus, and Emesa (Homs). Jerusalem falls in 637 after a Jewish and Coptic Christian revolt (the Jews were suffering heavily from retribution enacted following a Jewish massacre of Byzantine Orthodox Christians which in turn followed the temporary occupation of the city by the Sassanid Persians 40 years before, which in its turn followed a lengthy period of Jewish persecution by the Byzantines); Antioch (siege, 638), Aleppo (siege 639), Cesarea and Gaza (640), Ascalon (long, costly siege 644) and Tripoli (siege 645) fall in turn.Meanwhile, back in Persia, a new army under Sa’ad ibn abi-Waqqas, joined by Nestorian Christians from Lakcia, inflicted a series of stinging defeats on the Sassanids, culminating in the Battle of the Qadisiyah and the fall of Ctesiphon (637). The last two Persian armies were decisively defeated at the Battles of Ram Hormuz (640), and Nahavend (641). Although it took another decade to consolidate, the boundary of the ummah in the east now extended to the Oxus River - the borderlands of the Turkish tribes.Finally, while Khalid was completing his conquest of Syria, Amr gained permission from Omar to invade Egypt. He defeated the Byzantines at the Battle of Babylon (640), captured Babylon itself (641), and then Alexandria (642). The Byzantines abandoned all of their former lands, retreating to Constantinople.Another side note. Some of you may be wondering at this point where the hell all these armies came from. The early Moslem conquests should be viewed less in the light of what we normally consider conquest by armies, and more as the migration of a people. As news of the incredible wealth obtained by victory spread, clan after clan and tribe after tribe pulled up stakes and moved north, east or west. Men, women, children, sheep, goats and camels followed the vanguard into the newly conquered lands. As part of their consolidation policy, the Moslems built new garrison cities - many of which still stand today - both to keep their conquests in line, and to help control their own unruly tribesmen. Basrah in modern Iraq, and Cairo in Egypt are two cities that began life in this period as Arab garrisons.So how DID the early Islamic conquerors treat their captive populations? In general, pretty indifferently. There were no forced conversions. There was even some slight confusion over what to do with people who DID want to convert - many of the Arab Moslems of this period believed that Mohammed was a prophet to Arabs only. One of the humorous solutions was to declare recent converts “honorary Arabs”, and inducting them into an existing clan. These Syraic or Persic or Greek speaking mawali soon began to outnumber the pure “Arabs” locally. People could pretty much worship what and how they wished, manage their affairs pretty much unmolested. Payment of a poll tax (the jaziyah) and deference to their new rulers was about all the Moslems asked. The Arabs were uninterested in ruling - and in fact were quite inept at it (they’re desert tribesmen, not bureaucrats). They wanted conquest and tribute. Although Arab generals and Meccan merchants tended to hold the top positions in the new territories, civil administration was mostly left intact. Basically, most average people living in the region couldn’t tell the difference - except they paid taxes to Madinah and not Constantinople or Ctesiphon.Civil warBy the time of Omar’s murder in 644, signs of strain were beginning to be felt. Othman, Omar’s successor (and yet another Quraysh), was very different from his predecessors. Whereas Mohammed, Abu Bakr and Omar were ascetics, Othman liked being rich. During the course of his Caliphate, he managed to amass great estates and he appointed many of his family to positions of power within Madinah. However, the real problems derived from a temporary halt in the conquest, while something resembling consolidation took place. Border warriors do not make good policemen. The borders now extend from Cyrenaica on the frontier of Byzantine Carthage on the west, Anatolia on the north, and Kheresan on the Afghan frontier on the east. The governors of Syria and Egypt are building a fleet to contest with Byzantium in the Mediterranean. In spite of this success, rebellion from disenchanted Arabs explodes from Kufah in Iraq, and eventually engulfs the new Arab world. Othman is murdered in Madinah by mutineers from the Egyptian army. His main legacy is the establishment of an “official” version of the Qu’ran. His replacement, Ali, son of Mohammed’s uncle Abu Talib and husband of Mohammed’s daughter Fatimah, is proclaimed Caliph by the mutineers. His accession was opposed - violently - by the “old guard” of Mohammed’s original band, Mohammed’s wife Ayisha, and the now-entrenched Meccan oligarchs. Ali abandoned Madinah, and moved his capitol to Kufah in Iraq.The Arab civil war, known as the Great Schism, begins. Within 5 years Ali himself will be assassinated. He is succeeded by the rebel Mu’awiya ibn abi-Sufayn, governor of Syria and cousin to Othman. Mu’awiya becomes the first Umayyid Caliph.Never again will the Arabs be united. Never again will Islam be a single entity. Never again will its adherents speak with one voice, follow one leader, and fight with one vision. In spite of all the successes to come, the Great Schism marks the beginning of the end of Arab dominance of Islam.

Wow, great read. I'm a Muslim (Sufi) myself, there was a lot of stuff I was blissfully unaware of. I think you raised some excellent points, especially with regard to the tolerance shown towards other religious groups in the conquered territories (debunking the specious allegations of large-scale forced conversions), and also the fact that Christians (mostly of their own volition) were a large component of the early Arab armies (kind of ironic). I feel that maybe on some aspects you were overly critical, but its understandable if its coming from a secular perspective.Cheers Edited by Isana Kadeb, : No reason given.

Arabs lived in vicious times in those early desert days. Scant resources. Cycle after cycle of vendetta and counter-vendetta. Considering that Muhammad had united disparate Arab tribes and forbidden those who made up the Ummah (Islamic community) to attack each other, after his death people had to expand outwards in order to survive.

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Which actually made subsequent conquests by the ”Arabs an economic necessity, not a religious purpose.

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