Islam in the World Today: A Handbook of Politics, Religion, Culture, and Society

By Werner Ende

Considered the most authoritative single-volume reference work on Islam in the contemporary world, the German-language Der Islam in der Gegenwart, currently in its fifth edition, offers a wealth of authoritative information on the religious, political, social, and cultural life of Islamic nations and of Islamic immigrant communities elsewhere. Now, Cornell University Press is making this invaluable resource accessible to English-language readers. More current than the latest German edition on which it is based, Islam in the World Today covers a comprehensive array of topics in concise essays by some of the world's leading experts on Islam, including:

• the history of Islam from the earliest years through the twentieth century, with particular attention to Sunni and Shi'i Islam and Islamic revival movements during the last three centuries;

• data on the advance of Islam along with current population statistics;

• Muslim ideas on modern economics, on social order, and on attempts to modernize Islamic law (shari'a) and apply it in contemporary Muslim societies;

• Islam in diaspora, especially the situation in Europe and America;

• secularism, democracy, and human rights; and

• women in Islam

Twenty-four essays are each devoted to a specific Muslim country or a country with significant Muslim minorities, spanning Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the former Soviet Union. Additional essays illuminate Islamic culture, exploring local traditions; the languages and dialects of Muslim peoples; and art, architecture, and literature. Detailed bibliographies and indexes ensure the book's usefulness as a reference work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Release date: Dec 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9780801464898

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PREFACE

The present volume is a translation from the German of the fifth edition of Der Islam in der Gegenwart, published in Munich in 2005.

The first edition appeared in 1984, at a time when the world was still under the impact of the revolution in Iran, in which mobilization of the masses by a (Shiʿa) Islamic cleric played the decisive role. The revolution was the climax of a development that was described as re-Islamization, for lack of a more precise term. In their foreword to the 1984 edition, the editors wrote that re-Islamization was essentially concerned with reinstating Islam as the basis of the political, social, and economic order of the ‘Muslim world.’ Although this was a very general description of the phenomenon, it reflected the editors’ wish to provide comprehensive information about the forms in which the Islamic religion is manifested in the politics and society of states where Muslims live as a majority or a significant minority. The volume was intended to be different from the mass of publications that focus primarily on political Islam (issues such as fundamentalism, Islamism, and the like) and that attempt to analyze its roots and background, determine its significance in the context of the modern history of the Islamic world, classify it in relation to comparable phenomena in other parts of the Third World, and give it a theoretical superstructure in terms of social and political science. While the 1984 edition of Der Islam in der Gegenwart sought to take account of religious and theological developments, it did not prioritize them. Where they are referred to in the present volume, it is mainly to help explain political and social developments. The same applies in relation to Islam as an element of the pattern of language, literature, and the arts in those parts of today’s world where it has influence.

Habent sua fata libelli. It is evident that the two decades between the initial publication of Der Islam in der Gegenwart and the fifth edition could not pass without having their effect on the work. The trend toward re-Islamization became a broad political and social tendency. Chapters on new topics such as Islamic economics and the position of women had to be incorporated. Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Islamist groups and movements had to be identified and described, and there was also the need to devote more attention to the social situation of Muslim communities in Europe and the United States.

The editors’ concern in the present volume is to provide a manual rather than an academic monograph. The different contributions do not necessarily offer new insights but are intended to present the current state of research and knowledge clearly and factually. The book is designed for lay readers with a personal or professional interest in the Muslim world, as well as students seeking an introduction to the problems of modern Islam. We have therefore tried our best to ensure that the topics are comprehensibly presented, keeping specialist jargon to a minimum and limiting endnotes to strictly necessary information. The same applies to the bibliographical references. The different essays are intended to outline the current state of research on specific topics, but we have avoided going into detail about overly specialized aspects. While sources in English take priority in this American edition, we have included some important works in German and other languages. References to German works in the endnotes have obviously been retained.

Given the broad sweep of topics covered here, we could hardly hope to achieve a complete picture. This is particularly true of the essays in the historical section, which trace the development of Islam from its origins to the present day. It was also necessary to define the main emphasis of the cross-sectional articles that present different aspects of present-day Islam, and of the analyses by country. This meant, for example, that the single case study of Indonesia has to suffice as an illustration of the combination of Islamic teaching with pre-Islamic and non-Islamic local tradition which is so characteristic of the everyday life of Muslims in the wide area spanning the Maghreb in the west, Indonesia in the east, sub-Saharan Africa in the south, and Central Asia in the north. In presenting the analysis of Islam in individual countries, we focus on those that are of particular importance in the Muslim world, either by virtue of their size or because they demonstrate special developments of some kind. By the same token, in considering the situation of Muslim migrants in Europe, we can provide detailed analysis only of particularly significant cases. Inevitably there is some overlapping, and we had to accept a few minor gaps in content as well.

With respect to transliteration, we had to compromise between academic desirability and the need to be accessible to a broad range of readers. In general, the transliteration is based on that used in the International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES), a quarterly journal published by Cambridge University Press. With the exception of ʿayns and hamzas, diacritical marks have been omitted. Some names appear as they have come to be used in the Western media (although we occasionally had to distinguish between French- and English-based spelling). Terms that have become established in African, Asian, and Western languages, and names of Arabic origin, are generally supplemented in the text by the correct Arabic transcription. In the case of Ottoman words, it was sometimes necessary to compromise between the correct philological transliteration and the modern Turkish spelling. In most instances the correct transliteration is appended at the place where the relevant name or term first appears in a chapter or section.

Verses from the Qurʾan are referenced by the number of the sura, followed by a colon, and then the verse number (e.g., 2:100 for sura 2, verse 100). The verse numbers are based on the official Egyptian edition of the Qurʾan. English quotations from the Qurʾan rely entirely on Marmaduke Pickthall’s translation, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran.

Explicit mention should be made of the general problem of statistical data on the distribution of Muslim populations and the proportion of Muslims in given populations (see the introductory remarks to the contribution by Peter Heine and Riem Spielhaus, Part One, chapter V). The difficult situation of sources, and the contradictory, sometimes vaguely formulated information in the sources used, have made it impossible to achieve definitive coherence in the present volume; in a number of cases it is more a matter of approximation. In fact this is an insoluble problem, and any attempt to produce perfectly accurate figures would be rather misleading. (A recent valuable publication of the Pew Research Center, Mapping the Global Muslim Population, Washington, D.C., October 2009, came too late to be incorporated here.)

The editors and authors of this volume thank the Robert Bosch Foundation for its generosity in funding the American edition of this book. English is becoming increasingly dominant in the humanities (including Islamic studies). While this has enhanced the capacity for international communication, it has also resulted in a tendency for scholars of Islam to become less aware of academic publications in languages other than English. The result is that an area of study that is basically multicultural and multilingual is becoming impoverished. Germany and German-speaking countries are known for their long, important tradition of classical historical-philological work in Islamic studies. This tradition reaches back into the nineteenth century and is still making significant contributions to research today. Compared to this, the concern with contemporary Islam and the modern Muslim world in Germany has lacked the historical depth and broad scope of the Anglo-Saxon tradition. Since the early 1970s, however, German-speaking academics have made considerable efforts to link up with the international research in this field. The present volume is designed to record in a nutshell the many and varied ways in which academics in Germany are working on topics related to the Muslim world over a wide range of disciplines, from historical-philological Islamic studies to ethnology, political and social sciences, and economics.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of many individuals who contributed to the realization of this project. In particular we thank the translators, who skillfully mediated between somewhat unwieldy academic texts in German and the demands of English-language readers.

Peter Potter, Ange Romeo-Hall, and Amanda Heller not only managed the complex process of translating and publishing this sizeable volume but also took care of countless details regarding language style and professional editorial requirements. We thank Dina Dineva for her excellent preparation of the indexes.

In addition, we are indebted to Axel Havemann of Freie Universität Berlin (Free University Berlin) and Frank Babing of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Humboldt University Berlin), who assisted us in solving technical challenges with which we would not have been able to cope by ourselves.

WERNER ENDE AND UDO STEINBACH

Berlin, August 2009

Translated by Karen Margolis

Part One

Historical Expansion, Political and Religious History

I

THE WORLD OF ISLAM

A Brief Historical Survey

(Heribert Busse)

1. The Prophet Muhammad and the Emergence of Islam

Islam, at present the religion of more than 1 billion people all over the world, emerged on the Arabian Peninsula in the early decades of the seventh century, at a time when decisive changes were taking place in world history. In Europe, the unrest owing to the migration of populations gave way to the kingdoms of the Goths, the Lombards, and the Merovingians. Muhammad’s contemporary on the papal throne was Gregory I, called Gregory the Great (ca. 540–604), who reorganized ecclesiastical institutions, fought remnants of paganism in Italy, and made a name for himself as the author of homilies and Bible commentaries that were considered exemplary for many centuries. Byzantium had to defend itself on two fronts, in Syria and Mesopotamia versus the Sassanid Empire, its hereditary enemy, and in the Balkans against the Avars, pressing in from the steppe. It assumed the tradition of Rome and carried on the Greek-Hellenistic culture; Christianity had been made the state religion by Theodosius I (379–395) and had become the mainstay of state and society. Persia was ruled by the Sassanids, who saw themselves as heirs of the Achaemenid Empire and protectors and modernizers of Zoroastrianism. In the north they were in direct contact with China, which after unification under the Tang dynasty had expanded its power throughout all of Turkistan. The Arabs still lived according to the traditions of a tribal society that had become semi-settled. In South Arabia the Himyarite kingdom had collapsed in the first half of the sixth century; it was initially succeeded by Ethiopia, which also attempted to expand its influence all the way to Mecca. But then the Sassanids appeared on the scene and established themselves in South Arabia, which played an important role as the hub of trade with India and Africa.

Mecca lay beyond the horizons of the major powers at the time, but it was tied to them in manifold ways. The city was situated on the trade route that led from South Arabia to the Fertile Crescent, reaching the Mediterranean Sea in Gaza. Mecca was ruled by the Quraysh; its businessmen played a leading role in transit trade. There is an echo of it in the Qurʾan: For the taming of Quraysh/For their taming (We cause) the caravans to set forth in winter and summer./So [as thanks] let them worship the Lord of this House [i.e., the Kaʿba],/Who hath fed them against hunger and hath made them safe from fear (sura 106: 1–5, The Quraysh). Mecca lived off long-distance trading, and the Kaʿba, the most significant shrine of heathen Arabia, provided the security that was absolutely essential for it. The city, with the neighboring Plain of ʿArafat, was the site of the annual pilgrimage festival (hajj), which was combined with a highly frequented market. Christianity had not yet gained a firm foothold in Arabia. South of Mecca, at the border of present-day Yemen, lay Najran, where there was a large, ethnically diverse Christian community. Christian anchorites had settled in the desert; isolated Christians also lived in the few cities; and Christian traders and adherents of other religions certainly visited the annual market in Mecca. Legend has it that the apostle Bartholomew preached in Arabia, although organized missionary work had not yet begun there, outside the borders of the Byzantine Empire. Only in the north, in present-day Jordan and Syria, were there Christian Arab tribes with their own church hierarchy. Arab Christianity mirrored the different denominations of the Christian heartland, whereby the two main forms of Eastern Christianity, Monophysitism and Nestorianism, considered heretical by the Greek Orthodox and Roman Church, certainly had the upper hand.

Judaism had been more widespread than Christianity in Arabia for centuries. That was true for South Arabia, and also for the Hejaz (Hijaz). There were Jewish communities in the towns of Wadi al-Qura, stretching in a southeastern direction from Tabuk to Medina. Very little is known of these Jews, whether they were immigrants or Arabs who had adopted Judaism. They were, in any case, strongly Arabized, living in tribal organizations and engaged in agriculture and handicraft. Their role in the emergence of Islam can hardly be overestimated. The same is true of Christianity, with its different denominations. Muhammad drew from both sources, whereby he learned to see Judaism from a Christian perspective. Opinions differ with regard to the part that each of these faiths played in the formation of Islam, but one can say without qualification that Islam would have been inconceivable without the preliminary work of these two religions on the Arabian Peninsula. Muhammad had definitely at least heard of Zoroastrianism, the state religion of Persia, but it hardly influenced emerging Islam. Manichaeism, by contrast, did leave its mark, as well as, perhaps, the flourishing Baptist sects in southern Mesopotamia. Finally it should not be overlooked that pagan traditions also live on in Islam, such as the hajj celebrated in Mecca, in which the ritual was retained in its original form and merely reinterpreted in a monotheistic sense.

The Arab world was in a period of religious upheaval when Muhammad began his work. He was born in 570 in Mecca into the Hashim family, an impoverished branch of the Quraysh. According to tradition it was the year of the elephant, named after Abraha, the Ethiopian governor of South Arabia, who in that year is said to have advanced toward Mecca with an army that included a war elephant. The undertaking, which from the later perspective of the Muslims was directed chiefly against the Kaʿba, failed. The episode has been eternalized in the Qurʾan, sura 105, The Elephant. God protected his shrine, although at that time it had not yet been purged of idolatry. The purification was to be reserved for Muhammad, not the Christian Abraha. It appears to be historically certain, however, that the Ethiopian advance actually took place about two decades earlier than assumed by Muslim tradition.

Muhammad’s father, according to tradition named ʿAbdallah, servant of Allah (it later became the preferred name of Muslim converts), died before the birth of the Prophet. The child was raised by his uncle Abu Talib. As a young man Muhammad worked in the service of the wealthy widow Khadija, owner of a commercial house that engaged in long-distance trade with Syria and Egypt. Khadija later became his first wife. From this marriage came Fatima, the only one of the Prophet’s children who survived him. Her marriage with ʿAli—Muhammad’s cousin and son of his foster father Abu Talib—produced two sons, Hasan and Husayn, progenitors of today’s numerous sayyids or sharifs (Arab. sing. sharif), whose genealogy traces back to the founder of Islam. After Khadija’s death in 619, Muhammad remarried several times, usually for political reasons. Khadija can lay claim to the honorary title of being the first Muslim woman. There are numerous traditional stories about how Muhammad first confided in Khadija and was encouraged by her in his conviction of having received revelations and was referred to her cousin Waraqa ibn Nawfal, who knew the scripture of the Christians and may even have been a Christian himself.

Muhammad was raised in a pagan environment. In the Qurʾan it says: Did He [Allah] not find thee wandering and direct (thee)? (sura 93:7, The Morning). From his early childhood on he was a God-seeker, open to all stimuli that rushed in on him from several directions. He is said to have traveled with a trading caravan to Egypt and Syria, but definitive information about that is lacking. In Bosra (near the southern border of present-day Syria) he allegedly met with the monk Bahira, who recognized in a vision that he would be the future prophet of the Arabs and taught him about faith in the one God. The call to prophethood is said to have come to him on Mount Hiraʾ, near Mecca, where he retreated each year to meditate and practice asceticism. As the Prophet and Messenger of Allah, as he later called himself, he saw himself in the succession of a long series of prophets, most of them also known in the Bible. His aim at first was less to found a new religion than to create a book that corresponded to the Scripture of the Jews and Christians and would bring the revelation to the Arabs in plain Arabic speech (sura 26:195), which had been withheld from them. In terms of content, the Qurʾan follows the Old Testament in many points with its untiring campaign against polytheism. Muhammad was beholden to the message of the New Testament and Christianity with his eschatological sermon on the Last Judgment, but he denied not only the doctrine of the divine nature of Jesus but also the fact that he died on the cross (see sura 4:157), which are central points of the Christian creed, as well as the dogma of original sin committed by our ancestors in paradise and inherited by humankind. This means that Islam rejects the Christian dogma of redemption: that God immolated his only son to remove the sins of the world. According to Islam, redemption occurred when God revealed himself to humankind, showing them the way to salvation. This is, by the way, much nearer to Judaism than to Christianity. The gulf between Islam and Christianity is irreconcilable. For Muhammad, Jesus was a human being, a servant and messenger of God like himself, and thus a Muslim in the strict sense of the word. Muslims believe that Christianity was distorted by the apostle Paul; some of them ascribe this distortion to Emperor Constantine I, who in truth did nothing more than issue the famous edict of toleration of Christianity in 313, and who did not receive baptism until he was on his deathbed. Similar charges of distorting Scripture were voiced against the Jews; as viewed by Muhammad, Abraham was in fact the first Muslim (sura 2:131). Islam shares with Judaism and Christianity the principles of social commitment, care for the needy, and the obligation to act ethically. The Qurʾan includes a list of commandments and prohibitions (sura17:22–39) that closely corresponds to the Ten Commandments promulgated in Exodus 20, which are holy to both Christians and Jews.

In response to his sermon and his call for moral renewal, Muhammad encountered fierce resistance in Mecca from the wealthy merchant class, who feared that Islam would bring the downfall of the shrine that guaranteed the prosperity of the city. The new doctrine also questioned the traditional social order, and the new form of the community of believers (Arab. umma) displaced the tribal order, ultimately making it obsolete. The adherents of the Prophet were at first limited to his family and closest acquaintances. After that it was predominantly the poor and desperate who joined him. In view of the constantly growing antagonism in Mecca, Muhammad soon felt forced to seek help from outside the city. He dispatched a group of followers to Abyssinia, and he himself initiated negotiations with the residents of Taif (al-Taʾif), near Mecca. In the end negotiations were successful with a group of pilgrims from Yathrib (Medina) who had adopted Islam and were seeking an arbitrator to settle disputes that had broken out in the city between the different tribes and groups. In summer 622 Muhammad left his native city in fear for his life and settled in Medina. This resettlement was referred to by Muslims from then on as the hijra, or emigration, and was later declared the beginning of a new calendar. It marked a new stage of development for the Islamic community. Muhammad had changed from being the leader of a persecuted minority into a politician and then a statesman. The so-called Charter of Medina, the details of which are still disputed among scholars, was an instrument with which Muhammad ended the internal chaos and at first integrated non-Muslims, including the large Jewish community that had been living in Medina since time immemorial. The Jews were organized into several tribes, of which three played an important role. Soon after Muhammad’s arrival in Medina, conflicts were sparked that ended with the expulsion of some of the Jews from the city, while others were killed in a massacre that the Prophet had not ordered but had in fact condoned.

With the elimination of the Jews, the political community had been transformed into a purely religious one based on Islam. It was made up of participants of the hijra, the muhajirun, who had either accompanied Muhammad from Mecca to Medina or had followed him there over the course of time, and native Medinans, the helpers (ansar), some of whom had joined Islam prior to Muhammad’s arrival in the city. In addition to securing the internal situation, Muhammad also strove to win over the Meccans to his cause. He may have been motivated by thoughts of returning to his home, from which he had been expelled along with the believers. This could also be explained from a religious perspective by his conviction that the Kaʿba was originally a monotheistic shrine, founded or rebuilt by Abraham (see sura 2:125–127) and desecrated through the idolatry of the Meccans, and that it needed to be returned to its original purpose (see sura 9:17–18). Focus on the Kaʿba found symbolic expression in the changing of the direction of prayer (qibla). Instead of Jerusalem, which had been declared the direction of prayer in Medina in order to win over the Jews, the direction was changed to the Kaʿba in Mecca (see sura 2:142–145). This served to declare the city with its shrine to be the spiritual center of Islam.

Elevating Mecca, that is, the Kaʿba, to the qibla marked the final break from Judaism. But just as Judaism had been a religion with a militant component, now the Muslims took to fighting, first for the sheer necessity of securing the upkeep of the impoverished muhajirun, and then for the possession of the shrine in Mecca and the right to return to their former residences, whence they had been expelled by the heathens (see sura 22:38–41). A series of skirmishes and battles in the surroundings of Medina ensued, with varied outcomes. A siege of Medina by the Meccans ended with their withdrawal. Muhammad’s attempt a short time later to visit the shrine in Mecca led to the famous Treaty of al-Hudaibiyya, named after a tree on the outskirts of Mecca where the pact was made. In 630 Mecca fell to Islam without a struggle. Muhammad is said to have destroyed the idols in and around the Kaʿba with his own hands, reestablishing the monotheistic cult introduced by Abraham. He treated his enemies magnanimously, thereby facilitating their conversion to Islam. Soon the larger part of the Arabian Peninsula had been won over by Islam. Shortly before his death Muhammad led a campaign into Byzantine territory. Later conquests outside Arabia could then be interpreted as having been planned by the Prophet on divine orders. At the height of his success he allegedly sent letters to the rulers of the surrounding empires—the Byzantine emperor, the King of Kings of Persia, and the Negus of Abyssinia—demanding that they surrender and convert to Islam. Nothing illustrates how Islam aspired to world domination better than this legend.

The Qurʾan (qurʾan), meaning recitation or reading, is the most significant legacy of the Prophet. It gives Islam a scripture comparable to the Bible. In sura 9:111 the Qurʾan is put on a par with the Torah and the Gospel. Of course it differs from the Gospel on an essential point: the Gospel reports on Jesus, while according to Islam, the Qurʾan contains the word of God in its purest form. As Jesus is the incarnation of God according to Christian belief, begotten, not made, according to the Nicene Creed, the Muslims consider the Qurʾan to be the verbalization of Allah, so to speak, the uncreated word of God according to Sunni belief. It developed in stages over the course of more than three decades; at the death of the Prophet it existed in a scattered form written down on papyrus, bone, and other writing materials. Muslims assume that it took on its present form under Caliph ʿUthman (r. 644–656), whereas recent Western research adduces arguments in favor of a much longer development. Divided into 114 suras that are arranged by decreasing length, it describes the decisive stages of the history of salvation from the creation of the world to the appearance of Islam, albeit not thematically ordered and fractured in many ways. Eschatology is a large focus, including judgment and reward and punishment in the hereafter. In addition to the narrative passages, there are prayers and especially rules that regulate the lives of believers down to many details. They became the foundation of the Islamic catalog of basic duties incumbent on the faithful. They are referred to as religious practice or worship (ʿibadat) and are listed in five categories, also called the pillars (arkan) of Islam: (1) profession of faith (shahada); (2) ritual prayer (salat), to be done five times per day; (3) fasting during the month of Ramadan (sawm); (4) alms tax (zakat); and (5) pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj), which should be made at least once in a lifetime. The dietary laws, including the prohibition on wine (sura 5:90) and pork (sura 2:173) which are characteristic of Islam, belong to the area of ritual purity. As to financial transactions, Muhammad definitively banned the charging of interest (see sura 2:275–277). Questions of family and inheritance law are dealt with in relative detail in the Qurʾan.

The Qurʾan is the most reliable evidence about Muhammad’s life and the substance of his doctrine. Just as Jews distinguish between written and oral Torah, in Islam as well, in addition to the Qurʾan, there is the hadith, referring to the sayings or tales (Arab. hadith) about the Prophet, his actions, his statements, and his behavior on certain occasions. The hadiths were initially passed on in oral tradition and later put into writing. Some of them are equated with Qurʾanic statements (hadith qudsi, divine sayings). Similar to the Christian apostles with respect to Jesus, the companions of the Prophet (ashab or sahaba) played an important role as eyewitnesses to Muhammad’s actions in establishing the early Islamic community and are included in the tradition of the hadiths as warrantors. This also applies to women, in particular the wives of the Prophet, as they would have been the ones who knew him best. The hadith has become a means of manifesting the Prophet beyond his death. Hadith recitation offers pious Muslims information about Muhammad and his doctrine, and keeps the Prophet as a person alive beyond his death. The Qurʾan, by contrast, is the word of God, which gained a worldly existence through the mouth of the Prophet. Its recitation makes God’s presence real for believers. Like reciting the Eucharist for Christians, recitation of the Qurʾan is a way for Muslims to be close to God.

The religious community in Medina became the nucleus of the Islamic state. As God is the legislator, customs and usages (ʿurf) that did not form part of the religious heritage were measured by the divine laws and declared forbidden if they contradicted them. In contrast to Christianity, which evolved outside the polity and grew into the state only secondarily—thus the independence of the two never disappeared from consciousness—Islam established a state around the religious nucleus. According to a strict interpretation the state is identical to the religious community (umma) and its institutions. In principle there is no dualism of church and state in Islam. Even if there are theorists in the Islamic world today who question Muhammad’s intention to found a state in the modern sense of the word and postulate such a dualism, one does better justice to the historical evidence by understanding the Islamic community of Medina as an entity in which religion and state were merged into an inextricable unity.

The prerequisites for Islamic international and martial law were also laid down in Medina. The Prophet eradicated paganism using the force of arms whenever he encountered resistance; pagans had a choice only between Islam and death. As to the people of the book, namely, Jews and Christians, who had divine scriptures, he felt sufficiently obliged to tolerate them, on the condition, however, that they submitted to Islamic rule. Muslims are called upon in the Qurʾan to fight against those who have the book. If they submitted, a peace treaty (sulh) was concluded with them. They were not expected to accept Islam, but had to pay tribute, that is, the poll tax (jizya) (sura 9:29). In addition, farmers had to pay the land tax (kharaj). Jews and Christians were granted freedom of worship provided that Muslims did not take offense; for example, Christians were not allowed to show the cross in public. Synagogues and churches remained in the possession of the Jews and Christians, who were allowed to do everything necessary for their repair and preservation but were forbidden to build new ones. If they offered any armed resistance, however, the Muslims were free to do as they pleased—kill them or enslave them and convert their synagogues and churches into mosques, use them for other purposes, or destroy them.

In the course of later conquests, these privileges, so to speak, were extended to the Zoroastrians; when Islamic rule was established in India, it was expanded by necessity to the Hindus because of the sheer mass of subjects. With respect to civil rights, the people of the book remained outside the Islamic state. Because the Muslims were the constitutive people, the people of the book were not citizens—and thus not second-class citizens, as is often claimed. The communities had their own administrations and were, in a sense, independent states in a contractual relationship (dhimma) with the Islamic state. They were people of the covenant (ahl al-dhimma, a status that could be terminated if violated. They were exempt from military service because as nonbelievers they were considered unfit for service. From the perspective of Muslims, they enjoyed the protection of the Islamic state. The war (jihad) against nonbelievers outside the sway of Islam, to be fought according to rules laid down in the Qurʾan and hadith, is a strictly Islamic matter. Muslim theologians even expressed the opinion that jihad should be financed through taxes paid by the people of the book. From the perspective of Muslim theorists as it developed in the Middle Ages, the world was divided into the Territory (literally House) of Islam (dar al-islam), where Muslims rule, and the Territory of War (dar al-harb). War must be fought against the nonbelievers until they submit. If they are superior in strength, a truce can be agreed on, like the cease-fire (hudna, calm) the Prophet had agreed to with the Meccans at al-Hudaibiyya. The Muslims can break the truce, normally concluded for a period of ten years, without previous notice if they feel they are in a position to resume fighting.

The system outlined here was established in Medina and expanded and refined in the course of the conquests. Today it is still (or again) being propagated by Muslim fundamentalists (Islamists) as ideal. It would be inaccurate to characterize the attitude toward the people of the book as one of true tolerance. In reality it is a toleration or forbearance, granted in a consciousness of the absolute superiority of Islam and tied to hopes that the people of the book will ultimately accept Islam. The Muslims were not disappointed in their hopes. Anatolia, Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and other regions were once almost exclusively Christian, but now Christians have become a minority or disappeared entirely. The reasons for this development are manifold. Islamization was without a doubt fostered by the fact that Eastern Christianity was split into divergent denominations. Also, since Islamic legislation in matters of inheritance favored conversion, Islam was the religion of the victors, and little aid came from the West. Judaism held its ground incomparably better; Islam confronted the Jews’ own consciousness of superiority, which was stronger than that of the Muslims. Also Judaism, which is fostered within the bosom of the family, offered less of a target than the strictly organized Christian churches, with their tendency to show a public presence. Judaism is a matter of birth, an incomparably stronger bond than the character indelebilis (indelible mark) impressed on the soul of Christians when they are baptized. In addition, the Jews were accustomed to living as a minority in hostile surroundings, for more than a millennium already at the time Islam appeared on the scene. In India, Hinduism resisted Islam, particularly in the center and in the south, although the subcontinent had been under Islamic rule for several centuries. Obviously Mughal rule was more tolerant than the Islamic government had been in preceding periods and in other parts of the world.

2. The Four Rightly Guided Caliphs: The First Wave of Conquests

Muhammad died after a short illness on June 8, 632, at the age of sixty-three. Because he left no stipulations about his successor and his prophetic function could not be inherited, conflict soon arose, which escalated into fundamental disputes and finally to the schism of Islam. The Sunni majority, later on called ahl al-sunna wa-l-jamaʿa—that is, those who follow the practice introduced by Muhammad and decide on the basis of consent of the community when no precedent is known—spoke out for the selection of the caliph (khalifa, successor or deputy) from the Quraysh tribe, the Meccan nobility. According to the Shiʿa, the "party (shiʿa) of ʿAli, Muhammad was on the way from Mecca to Medina, returning from the farewell pilgrimage" in March 632, when at the pond of Khumm he appointed ʿAli, his cousin and son-in-law, Fatima’s husband, to be his successor. As the Shiʿa later taught, the blood descendants of Muhammad inherited his prophetic charisma and thus were particularly called upon to lead the community. Extremist Shiʿites even went so far as to deify ʿAli or one of his progeny.

Abu Bakr emerged as the victor from the rivalries that broke out after Muhammad’s death. He was a loyal follower of the Prophet from the very beginning, and he was Muhammad’s father-in-law through his daughter ʿAʾisha. He ruled for only two years (632–634), most of which time was spent defeating the Arab tribes which had risen up after Muhammad’s death. As it soon turned out, these campaigns were the prelude to widely expanding conquests, since Abu Bakr proved able to direct the forces northward, thereby initiating a movement that would profoundly change the political system around the world. Islam, on the one hand a religion of peace (salam), had possessed a strong militant element since the founding of the community in Medina, and the political situation was generally favorable for a move beyond Arabia. Byzantium and the Sassanid Empire had been weakened by prolonged fighting. The Sassanids had decisively defeated the Byzantines in 614 and advanced to the Mediterranean Sea. Not until a decade and a half later was Emperor Heraclius able to turn the tide of fate. In 629 he triumphantly returned the cross to Jerusalem that had been carried off by the Sassanids. On the way there, according to Arab tradition, he received the famous letter from Muhammad demanding that he surrender and accept Islam. In retrospect Muslim historiographers have declared that the conquests started when Abu Bakr dispatched four emirs (Arab. sing. amir). The number four expresses a claim to universal dominion. By the time Abu Bakr died in August 634, victorious battles had taken place in Iraq and Syria, and vast areas of Palestine had been occupied. Only the coastal cities and Jerusalem continued to resist.

The undertaking that Abu Bakr had begun was carried further by ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab (r. 634–644), whom Abu Bakr had designated to be his successor. He led the military operations from Medina and was able to reap what Abu Bakr had sown. Two crucial battles were fought under ʿUmar, first in Syria in August 636 at the Yarmuk River (which flows into the Jordan River south of the Sea of Galilee). After this defeat the Byzantines were forced to cede Syria and Palestine. The way to Egypt was thus opened up for the Arabs. The second decisive battle took place at al-Qadisiyya in Iraq, southwest of Hira. The Arabs were victorious in the face of Sassanid superiority in terms of numbers and equipment. The victory paved the way to the Iranian heartland. Yazdegerd III, the last significant Sassanid King of Kings, was defeated in the battle of Nahavand (south of Hamadan); he fled and was murdered by his own people around 640.

In Syria the conquests at the northern border came to a standstill, so Byzantium, now limited in Asia to a region that, generally speaking, was identical to present-day Turkey, was given a reprieve. Through the occupation of Syria and Palestine, Egypt was cut off from its land connection to Byzantium and, after back-and-forth fighting, became Muslim spoils.

ʿUmar’s achievements as a strategist corresponded to the skill he showed in organizing the new empire. He entrusted the most respected companions of the Prophet (ashab) with positions of leadership and took harsh disciplinary measures against arbitrary army generals. The conquered provinces were secured by setting up garrison towns (amsar). That is how the cities of Kufa (near present-day al-Najaf) and Basra in Mesopotamia developed, as well as al-Fustat (the tent) in Egypt, the precursor to present-day Cairo. The financial administration was organized in the diwan, which was responsible for paying stipends and pensions to Muslims, especially the soldiers. Regarding the administration of justice, the establishment of judges (qadi) is attributed to ʿUmar, who is also said to have expanded Islamic criminal law and supplemented the catalog of duties incumbent on Muslims in some points. By introducing a new calendar that started after the hijra, which is still used today in the Islamic world, he clearly demonstrated the continuity between the original community in Medina and the new Islamic empire. By taking on the title Prince of the Believers (amir al-muʾminin), he combined the authority of a traditionally elected Arab tribal chieftain with that of his position as leader of a community joined in faith.

After ruling for ten years, ʿUmar died in November 644 at the hand of a murderous discontented slave. Shortly before his death he allegedly appointed a panel of six electors to regulate his succession. The lot fell to ʿUthman (r. 644–656). A wealthy businessman and son-in-law of the Prophet he had participated in the emigration to Abyssinia. The campaign of conquest that Abu Bakr had started and ʿUmar continued on a large scale came to a standstill, although one cannot forget that Iran was conquered once and for all during ʿUthman’s reign, and movements got under way from Egypt that were to have far-reaching consequences. From here, two routes were open to the further advance of the Arabs: to move up the Nile or along the North African coast. On their way up the Nile they encountered the Christian kingdom of Nubia, with its center in Dongola. Battles ensued that went unfavorably for the Arabs and ended with a settlement, for which Muhammad’s cease-fire with Mecca served as a justification for the temporary halting of hostilities. The treaty with the Nubians is referred to in Arab historiography by the Latin term pactum (baqt). It remained in force until 1315, when the Mamluks of Egypt were able to expand their sphere of influence in the south beyond Aswan. The Christian kingdom of Alwa, bordering Dongola to the south, was conquered in 1504 by the Funj, herders from the south whose rulers had been converted to Islam.

After temporarily stopping in the south, the Arabs concentrated their efforts in Egypt on advancing along the Mediterranean coast. Here they were more successful, since Byzantine rule in North Africa had never really penetrated the country and found no resonance among the Berbers. After the first raids, which began in 647, it took almost until the end of the century before the Arabs managed to advance all the way to the Atlantic coast and defeat the Berbers once and for all. From a camp set up in Tunisia in 662 the conquerors developed the city of Kairouan (Qayrawan), which was to become a cultural center of Islam in North Africa.

The advance to North Africa and the defeat of Sassanian Iran marked the end of the first wave of conquests. ʿUthman was not adept at domestic policy. As an Umayyad he represented the interests of a widely branching and influential Meccan family whose members had adopted Islam very late and had only loose connections with the original community in Medina. As caliph he promoted members of his immediate family, giving them key positions in the provinces; apart from that he reserved a disproportionate share of the spoils for himself and his kin. In such a situation it was inevitable that the cohesiveness of the Islamic community would be put to the acid test. Malcontents set off from all directions for Medina, where they took up positions around the house of the caliph and presented their charges, especially that of nepotism and dissipating the state coffers. After prolonged negotiations, one group pushed its way into the house and murdered the caliph. Troops that Muʿawiya, the Umayyad governor of Syria, had allegedly sent to Medina to protect the caliph came too late and could not prevent the tragedy.

The assassination of ʿUthman marked a turning point in the history of early Islam. The direct aftermath in the form of civil wars would long continue to occupy the Islamic state. In response to the murder of the caliph, voices calling for vengeance grew louder. But initially agreement was reached in Medina on the election of a successor. The caliphate was awarded to ʿAli (r. 656–661), who had already been a member of the electoral council installed by ʿUmar. His election was challenged by Muʿawiya because it came to pass by a minority vote without the participation of the notables in the provinces. ʿAli was closely tied to Muhammad in many ways, as has been noted repeatedly. Although Shiʿi tradition views some things about him through rose-colored glasses, it does appear certain that he was a talented and energetic man. He had been caught up in profound disputes with his three predecessors, in which theological problems played an important role. According to the Shiʿi interpretation—which was not declared until later, of course—the first three caliphs were usurpers who wrongfully kept ʿAli from attaining the caliphate to which he was entitled immediately following Muhammad’s death.

Right after ʿAli assumed his position, fronts formed with different goals. The main issue was how to assess the murder of ʿUthman and adequately punish the perpetrator. It was a decision of far-reaching consequences that ʿAli gave up Medina as the state seat and settled in Kufa, where he had strong support. Medina was thus no longer the center of the Islamic state, and as it turned out, this change was final. The first attempt to remove the caliph from his position by force of arms originated in Medina, where the old companions of the Prophet feared for their influence in the community. Under the pretext of taking vengeance for the murder of ʿUthman, which ʿAli supposedly was not pursuing strongly enough, the Medinans went to battle. Under the leadership of Talha and Zubayr, they were accompanied by ʿAʾisha, Muhammad’s influential widow. ʿAli emerged victorious from the fight that ensued in southern Mesopotamia, which came to be known as the Battle of the Camel owing to the camel on which ʿAʾisha observed the skirmish.

Muʿawiya also supported the call for vengeance for his murdered relative ʿUthman. ʿAli took the offensive in opposing him. In summer 657 he and his troops encountered Muʿawiya’s army near Siffin, on the upper Euphrates, east of Aleppo. After days of back-and-forth fighting, both sides agreed to decide the matter through arbitration. Although the arbitrators convened over several days in different places, they could not come to a conclusive decision; in the end, however, Muʿawiya emerged the victor because his power in Syria remained untouched.

Agreeing to arbitration brought nothing but disadvantages for ʿAli, who now was faced with a new enemy of threatening strength, the Kharijites. These were people from among his own followers who rejected the arbitration for theological reasons and thus seceded (or went out, Arab. kharaja) from his army, which explains their name. They fought many battles against the caliph and developed into a sect of their own with a puritanical orientation, which later splintered into several groups. The most significant of these, the Ibadis, continues today to live in Oman and North Africa. The fact has fallen virtually into oblivion that in their heyday the Kharijites formed the third major Islamic denomination, after the Shiʿa, who were able to assert themselves unchallenged, and the Sunna, who were always in the majority. From a political perspective, they differed from both the Sunna, which retained the caliphate of the Quraysh, and the Shiʿa, which viewed the caliphate as hereditary among the descendants of Muhammad, in their emphasis on the theological and moral qualities of the leader of the Islamic community. They felt that the best Muslim should become the caliph, even if he were an Abyssinian slave.

3. The Arabian Dynasty of the Umayyads: The Second Wave of Conquests

To achieve their objective the Kharijites did not shrink from murder. ʿAli was assassinated at the hand of a Kharijite at the gate to the mosque of Kufa in January 661, which cleared the way for Muʿawiya (r. 661–680) and the Umayyads. Now Syria became the nucleus of the empire that extended from the Atlantic to eastern Iran, connecting areas that had been separated as if by an iron curtain for centuries by the border between the Sassanid Empire and Byzantium. Syria was the natural center of this polity. The Arabian Peninsula, particularly the Hejaz, the cradle of Islam, fell back into the state of political uneventfulness in which it had existed prior to Muhammad’s activities. Medina became the sulking corner of the pious who could not come to terms with the changed situation and countered the political dynamism of the Umayyads in Syria with the ideal of conservative Islamic piety. As they saw it, Muʿawiya’s coming to power brought the series of rightly guided caliphs to an end. Instead of the closest companions of the Prophet, the new leaders of the Islamic community were men who had accepted Islam after the conquest of Mecca for opportunistic reasons, rather than out of inner conviction.

The Umayyad dynasty was Arab-dominated, and Muhammad’s original idea of Islam as a religion of the Arabs still had force. Whereas ʿUmar had purged the Hejaz of non-Muslims and advanced the principle that Christian Arabs should convert to Islam, the Umayyads made being an Arab a condition for conversion. In order to satisfy the requirement, non-Arabs had to join an Arab tribe, thereby acquiring the status of a client (Arab. mawla, pl. mawali). But even that was actually not desirable, since the Islamic state was to be supported by a people composed of true Arabs. Muslims were the only ones permitted to bear arms, and they were not to pursue any employment but would instead be supported as warriors by the tribute and taxes paid by the subjects. The goal of conquests was not conversion of the conquered but the establishment of Islamic rule.

The central problem of the Umayyads was finding a balance between the particularistic tribal interests and the demands of a centralized state, as well as asserting the dynastic principle. Muʿawiya succeeded during his lifetime in having homage paid to his son Yazid (r. 680–683). Right after Yazid took power, resistance developed on the Arabian Peninsula and in other parts of the empire. The first to lay claim to the caliphate was ʿAli’s son Husayn. With a host of followers he advanced to Iraq, where ʿAli had already sought the support of his followers, and he fell at Karbala (near Kufa) following a short battle with the troops sent by Yazid. The circumstances of his death have been imaginatively conceived by Shiʿi propaganda, and the anniversary is celebrated, on the tenth of Muharram, as a holiday. In Iran, southern Iraq, and many other areas with a Shiʿi population, this event is traditionally commemorated with the taʿziya, a kind of passion play, combined with parades through the streets and self-flagellation by the participants as penitence for Husayn’s having been forsaken by his followers.

The martyr’s death of Husayn brought an end for the time being to the Shiʿa’s hopes of gaining power. His brother Hasan renounced all political activities and died in Medina as a pensioner of the Umayyads. After Husayn’s death ʿAbdallah ibn al-Zubayr appeared as a pretender to the throne. His claims were based on the same stance that his father, Zubayr, had endorsed on the side of Talha in the resistance against ʿAli. At the Battle of the Camel, ʿAbdallah had fought on the side of his father. Now he succeeded in gathering large sectors of the Islamic world behind him. In Mecca he ruled as a counter-caliph and managed to stay in power for twelve years, since the Umayyads had been weakened by internal strife. The unity of the dynasty could not be reestablished until the reign of Caliph ʿAbd al-Malik (685–705). He ended the civil war and instituted a number of administrative reforms. Arabic was made the official language in place of the national languages, the coinage was Arabized and Islamized, and magnificent buildings were erected in the main cities of the empire. In Jerusalem he followed in the footsteps of King David, adorning the Temple Mount with splendid buildings which were understood to be the restituted, albeit Islamized, Temple. When Muslim tradition subsequently made the Haram al-Sharif the destination of Muhammad’s nocturnal journey (israʾ) and the location of his ascension (miʿraj; see sura 17:1), Jerusalem was promoted to being the third holy city of Islam, after Mecca with the Kaʿba and Medina with the Prophet’s tomb.

The end of the civil wars and the continued consolidation of the dynasty under ʿAbd al-Malik’s son Walid (705–715) led to a new wave of conquests after the Arab expansion had come to a halt around the middle of the seventh century and the attempts by the early Umayyads to conquer the Byzantine heartland brought no results. Under Tariq ibn Ziyad the Arabs ventured across the Strait of Gibraltar (Jabal Tariq) to Spain in 711. The Visigoths had been weakened by internal turmoil, and they lacked strong allies. Consequently almost all of the Iberian Peninsula fell relatively quickly to the Arabs. Only in the north did Asturias remain, which became the point of departure of the Reconquest. It began practically at the same moment that the Arabs took possession of Spain, so their thrust toward southern France and the occupation of Narbonne and Toulouse could not hold for long. Reinforcement of the Carolingians brought the Arab advance in France to a halt (at the Battle of Tours and Poitiers in 732) and ushered in a countermovement, in the course of which the Franks crossed the Pyrenees and established the Spanish March, creating a base that served to intensify the Reconquest.

North Africa later became a base for Arab moves into southern Europe. Starting out from Tunis, the Aghlabids conquered Sicily (which was not regained from the Arabs until the Norman invasion) beginning in 827, and then invaded Italy. In Bari an Arab emirate was able to hold its own for three decades (841–871), and in 868 Malta was conquered. Marauding Arab bands established themselves in the Alps and became a threat along the routes connecting Italy with central Europe.

At about the same time that the Arabs crossed the Strait of Gibraltar in the west, they pressed forward from eastern Iran toward Transoxania and took Bukhara and Samarkand after prolonged battles. This laid the foundation for the conquest of Central Asia and the Islamization of the Turks. These successes were possible not least because China had been weakened by internal turmoil and could not assert its supremacy in the remote parts of Turkistan.

From southern Iran the Arabs pressed forward through Baluchistan as far as the Indus Valley and founded the emirate of Multan in 711, which was to become the nucleus of Islamic India. It would take a long time, however, before the Ghaznavids operating from Afghanistan set their sights in the first half of the eleventh century on India and, in the aftermath of a series of advances that started out as nothing more than raids, an Islamic state emerged that covered large parts of northern India and served as a foundation for the continued—mostly peaceful—expansion of Islam into southern and eastern Asia.

The new beginning in the early eighth century culminated in the caliphate of ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAziz (717–720), ʿAbd al-Malik’s nephew, also called ʿUmar II to distinguish him from ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab. His name is connected to the regulations that affected the legal status of non-Muslims living in the Islamic state. These statutes, which are theoretically still valid today and can be put back in force at any time, are attributed to ʿUmar I, the second of the rightly guided caliphs, because of their fundamental significance. ʿAbd al-Malik’s son Hisham (724–743) was one last energetic Umayyad ruler. He led annual campaigns against Byzantium and continued the struggle against the Turks in Central Asia. But internal unrest announced that the end of Umayyad rule was in the offing. The Shiʿa rose up again in Iraq, the Kharijites were fomenting unrest, a Berber uprising in North Africa could hardly be suppressed, and the Abbasid propaganda in Khurasan found resonance among the Arab tribes settled there. In November 749 homage was paid to the Abbasid Abu l-ʿAbbas as caliph in Kufa. He persecuted the Umayyads without mercy. Marwan II, the last Umayyad caliph (744–750), was defeated by Abbasid troops in January 750 in northern Mesopotamia; he fled and was murdered in Egypt. ʿAbd al-Rahman, a grandson of Hisham, escaped to Spain and founded a successor kingdom that reached its peak in the caliphate of Córdoba and survived into the eleventh century.

4. The Abbasid Empire and Islam as a World Religion: Political Divisions Based on Religious Dissent

The movement that brought Umayyad rule to an end had emerged in Iraq and was initially very successful in eastern Iran under the propagandist Abu Muslim. It took advantage of the discontent that could be felt throughout the empire and gave especially the Shiʿa reason to be hopeful. The caliphate was passed on, however, not to a descendant of ʿAli, as the Shiʿa had hoped, but to the family of the Abbasids, descendants of ʿAbbas, an uncle of the Prophet. The Abbasids observed strict Sunni practices, and the Umayyads were systematically denigrated. With the exception of ʿUmar II they were now considered nonbelievers and were referred to not as caliphs but as kings, that is, as wrongful rulers who governed autonomously, not according to divine law. In contrast to them, the Abbasids claimed to continue the politics of the four rightly guided caliphs. Moreover, they raised chiliastic expectations, as can be inferred from their selection of throne names. Here, too, demands were later scaled down a notch, and they were content to have the throne names express their close ties to the divine mission.

The new rulers transferred the center of the empire to Iraq, which caused bitter resentment in Syria. Caliph Mansur (754–775) founded Baghdad as the new capital, which he gave a name rich in associations: city of peace (Madinat al-salam). In the center of the city, which lay west of the Tigris, stood the mosque with the caliph’s palace. The almost circular form of the city, with its gates pointing in the four cardinal directions, symbolized a cosmic reference and the claim to universal rule. Its position at the junction of important trade routes helped Baghdad quickly grow to a notable size and become the economic and cultural center of the empire. River navigation on the Tigris linked it with the Persian Gulf, whence it had trade relations with East Africa and India and further connections to the South Seas and East Asia. Goods and cultural assets were brought from these distant regions to the center of the empire, and Islam pressed forward along the trade routes into areas that lay beyond the political and military sphere of influence of the Abbasids. Whereas the path to Europe through the Christian states was obstructed for Islam, it encountered cultures in Africa and South and Southeast Asia that were less dismissive of foreign ideas. Islam had a particularly easy time in places where its acceptance brought links to a culture that was higher or thought to be higher.

By granting full equality to the mawali, non-Arabs who had converted to Islam and who played an important role in the victory of the Abbasids, Islam stepped beyond its ethnic fetters and became a real world religion. Islamization of the conquered regions now progressed rapidly, especially in Persia, where Zoroastrianism had lost strength and disappeared entirely by the end of the tenth century, except in some limitrophe areas. By contrast, the exclusively Christian regions—Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt—continued to offer strong resistance to Islamization. Arabic, however, the language of the victors, rapidly gained ground in the conquered territory with a largely Aramaic-speaking population. It was asserted as the colloquial language, and it gained a foothold in Christian liturgy as well. The Copts in Egypt were also affected by the Arabization, while the Berbers in North Africa were able to hold their own to a large extent, though after considerable resistance most of them accepted Islam, albeit without being totally Arabized in terms of language. The Arabic alphabet, however, had a greater influence than Arabic as the language of the Qurʾan, and older alphabets were pushed out wherever a majority of the population professed their faith in Islam. The alphabet spread from the Persians to the Turks of Central Asia, although it was even less suited for the Turkish language than for Persian. With the acceptance of Islam and adoption of the Arabic alphabet, the vocabulary of Persian and Turkish became greatly influenced by Arabic, especially in the areas of religion and material culture. Persian also had considerable impact on Turkish, since it was from Iran that Islam reached the Turks.

As it is important for Muslims to profess the right faith and act in compliance with the religious prescriptions covering nearly all spheres of life, the development of religious law, the shariʿa, was particularly significant. In principal the caliph was the highest authority in all legal matters. Eventually four sources of law were recognized: the Qurʾan, the Sunna (the mode of conduct of the Prophet as it was passed down in the hadith), consensus (ijmaʿ, the joint opinion of the