Because of the Arab conquests, the early Muslims picked up many concepts and institutions of Roman and Persian law. Quran reciters and Muhammad's companions gradually gave way to arbiters and judges who knew the laws and procedures of more established empires. As the ummah grew and more arguments arose about people's rights and obligations within this hybrid system, the leaders and the public realized that the laws of Islam must be made clear, uniform, organized, acceptable to most Muslims, and thereby enforceable. By the time the Abbasids took power in 750, Muslims were starting to study the meaning of the Quran, the life of Muhammad and the sayings and actions ascribed to him by those who had known him. A specifically Islamic science of right versus wrong, or jurisprudence, thus evolved. Its Arabic name, fiqh, originally meant "learning," and even now a close relation exists in the Muslim mind between fuqaha (experts on the Shari'ah) and the ulama (the Muslim religious scholars, or literally "those who know").
The sunnah of the Prophet was broader than the Quran, but Muslims had to avoid certain pitfalls in order to use it as a source for the Shari'ah. How could they be sure that an act had been committed or enjoined by the Prophet? There had to be a hadith (which literally means "news"), that said he had done it or said it. The hadith had to be validated by a chain of reporters, an isnad. The recorder of the hadith would have to start by saying who had reported to him this news, and who had told his informant, and who had told him, and so on back to the person who had witnessed the action or saying in question. The isnad served the function of a source footnote in a term paper; it authenticated the information by linking it to an established authority. Since the hadiths were not written down until more than a century had gone by, the isnads were needed to weed out those falsely attributed to Muhammad. What if the isnad, too, were fabrications? To weed out hadiths with false isnads, the early ulama became quite expert on the lives of the Prophet, his family, and his companions. If it could be proved that one link in the chain of transmitters was weak because the person in question was a liar or could not have known the previous transmitter, then the hadith was suspect. After a century of dedicated labor by many scholars, there emerged several authoritative collections of hadiths, six for Sunni Muslims and several others for the Shi'i sects. They are still being used by Muslims today.
Meanwhile, various scholars helped to formulate the Shari'ah itself, which they did by writing books that compiled the laws of Islam for reference and guidance. Because of the numerous changes that had occurred in the ummah since the lifetime of the Prophet, the Quran and the hadith compilations could not, in the view of most ulama, cover every conceivable problem. They also adopted reasoning by analogy, comparing a new situation with one for which legislation already existed. The Quran forbids Muslims to drink wine; therefore, the ulama reasoned that all liquors having the same effect as wine should also be banned. In much of what they wrote, Muslim scholars looked to the consensus of the ummah to settle hard legal points. This did not mean polling every Muslim from Cordoba to Samarqand. Rather, consensus meant that which could be agreed upon by those who had studied the law. It was through this practice that many laws from older societies were incorporated into the Shari'ah. Thus the laws of Islam could cover lives far removed from conditions known to Muhammad: a sailor in the Indian Ocean, a rice farmer in the marshes of lower Iraq, or a Turkish horse nomad in Transoxiana. In addition, the early legists incorporated decisions that had been made by the wisest judges in difficult or contested cases, rather as legal precedents are used in the administration of Anglo-Saxon law. The inclusion of "judicial opinion" gave the Shari'ah added flexibility and relevance to changing needs and changing conditions. In time, however, this fifth source fell out of common use.
Various other judicial offices also evolved; the mufti ("jurisconsult"), who gives authoritative answers to technical questions about the law for a court or sometimes for individuals; the shahid ("witness"), who certifies that a certain act took place, such as the signing of a contract; and the muhtasib (market inspector), who enforces the Shari'ah in public places. It is interesting to note that the Muslim legal system had and still has no lawyers; that is, opposing parties are not represented by attorneys in court cases. Muslims felt that an advocate or attorney might well enrich himself at the expense of the litigant or the criminal defendant. There were also no prosecutors or district attorneys. In most cases the qadi had to decide on the basis of the evidence presented by the litigants and the witnesses, guided by relevant sections of the Shari'ah and sometimes by the advice of a mufti.
The caliph was supposed to assure that justice prevailed in the ummah not by interpreting the Shari'ah, but by appointing the wisest and best qadis to administer it. True, many of the Umayyad caliphs flouted the Shari'ah in their personal lives, but its rules remained valid for the ummah as a whole. We must always distinguish between what an individual can get away with doing in his home (or palace, or dormitory room) and what he can do in public, in the possible presence of a police officer. But no Umayyad or Abbasid caliph could abolish the Shari'ah or claim that it did not apply to him as to all other Muslims. When the caliphs could no longer appoint qadis and other legal officers, the various sultans and princes who took over his powers had to do so. When the caliphate could no longer serve as the symbol of Muslim unity, then everyone's common acceptance of the Shari'ah bridged the barriers of contending sects and dynasties to unite Islam. Even when the Crusaders or Mongols entered the lands of Islam and tried to enforce other codes of conduct, Muslims went on following the Shari'ah in their everyday lives. And, to a degree that may surprise some Westerners, they still do. You can go into a bazaar (covered market) in Morocco and feel that it is, in ways you can sense even if you cannot express them, like bazaars in Turkey, Pakistan, or thirty other Muslim countries. A Sudanese student greets me with the same salam alaykum ("peace to you") that I have heard from Iranians and Algerians. The common performance of worship, observance of the Ramadan fast, and of course the pilgrimage to Mecca are all factors unifying Muslims from every part of the world.
What parts of the Shari'ah are irrelevant? Are the marriages contracted by young people for themselves more stable than those arranged for them by their parents? Has the growing frequency of fornication and adultery in the West strengthened or weakened the institution of the family? If the family is not to be maintained, in what environment should children be nurtured and taught how to act like men or women? Has the blurring of sex roles in modern society increased or decreased the happiness and security of men and women? Should the drinking of intoxicating beverages be allowed, let alone encouraged, when alcoholism is a major public health problem in most industrialized countries today? Does lending money at interest encourage or inhibit capital formation? Do gambling and other games of chance enrich or impoverish most of the people who engage in them? If the appeal to jihad in defense of Islam seems aggressive, in the name of what beliefs have the most destructive wars of this century been fought? Would Muslims lead better lives if they ceased to pray, fast in Ramadan, pay zakat, and make the hajj to Mecca? These are just some of the questions that must be answered by people who claim that Islam and its laws are anachronistic.
The abuse of political power was often checked by the moral authority of the ulama. The rulers were to govern with the aid of classes commonly called the "men of the pen" and the "men of the sword." The men of the pen were the administrators who collected and disbursed the state revenues and carried out the rulers' orders, plus the ulama who provided justice, education, and various welfare services to Muslims. The Christian clergy and the Jewish rabbinate had functions in their religious communities similar to those of the ulama. The men of the sword expanded and defended the borders of Islam and also, especially after the ninth century, administered land grants and maintained local order.
Crossing these horizontal social divisions were vertical ones based on ancestry, race, religion, and sex. Although various hadiths showed that Muhammad and his companions wanted to play down distinctions based on family origins, early Islam did nonetheless give higher status to descendants of the earliest Muslims or of Arabs generally than to later converts to the religion. As you have seen in earlier chapters, Persians and then Turks gradually rose to the same status as Arabs. Other ethnic groups, such as Berbers, Indians, and Black Africans, kept a distinct identity and often a lower status even after their conversion to Islam. Racial discrimina- tion, however, was generally less acute than it has been in Christian countries in modern times.
The divisions based on religion, though, were deep and fundamental. Religion was a corporate experience, a community of believers bound together by adherence to a common set of laws and beliefs, rather than a private and personal relationship between each person and his maker. Religion and politics were inextricably intertwined. Christians and Jews did not have the same rights and obligations as Muslims; they were protected communities living within the realm of Islam where the Shari'ah prevailed. Exempted from military duties, Christians and Jews were also not allowed to bear arms. If they did not have to pay zakat, they did have to pay a head tax vfizyah) plus whatever levies were needed to maintain their own religious institutions. They could not testify in a Muslim court against a Muslim, or ring bells or blow shofars ("ram's horns") or have noisy processions that might interrupt Muslim worship. Sometimes the restrictions were more humiliating, and in a few cases their lives and property were threatened. But they were able to maintain their identity as Jews or Christians and follow their own laws and religious beliefs for hundreds of years. The treatment of religious minorities in Muslim countries that upheld the Shari'ah was better than in those that have recently watered the code down or abandoned it altogether, and much, much better than the treatment of Jews in medieval Christendom, tsarist Russia, or Nazi Germany.
As for social divisions based on sex, Islam (like most religions that grew up in the agrarian age) is patriarchal and gives certain rights and responsibilities to men that it denies to women. Muslims believe that biology has dictated different roles for the two sexes. Men are expected to govern countries, wage war, and support their families; women to bear and rear children, take care of their households, and obey their husbands. There is little women's history in early Islam; a few women took part in wars and governments, wrote poetry, or had profound mystical experiences, but most played second fiddle to their husbands, fathers, brothers, or sons.
Another point worth making about family life is that parents expected (and received) the unquestioning obedience of their sons and daughters, even after they had grown up. Once a woman married, she had also to defer to her husband's parents. Women naturally wanted to bear sons, who would eventually give them daughters-in-law to boss around. Parents disciplined their children harshly; yet, they loved them deeply and took great pride in their achievements in later life. While a youth usually learned his father's trade, the gifted son of simple peasant or tradesman could get an education and move into the ranks of the ulama or the administrative elite. Of course, a vizir's son might also turn into a bum. Opportunities for a girl to receive an education were limited, but certain occupations were re- served for women, and wives often worked beside their husbands in the fields or in domestic industries, such as weaving. Relationships between brothers, sisters, and cousins had an intensity (usually love, sometimes hate) that is rare in Western families, perhaps because Muslim youths spent so much of their free time within the family circle.
Both men and women entertained their friends, segregated by sex, at home. Mutual visiting, at which food and drink were shared and news exchanged, was the most common pastime for every class in Islamic society. The usual time for this activity was in the late afternoon or early evening as the weather cooled off, or at night during the month of Ramadan. Large groups of men (or of women) liked to gather at someone's house to listen to poetry recitations or, less often, musical performances. Both sexes liked to go on picnics; Egypt and Iran even retained pre-Islamic holidays that required making an early spring trip into the countryside for a meal outdoors. The two great festivals of Islam, the Feast of (Abraham's) Sacrifice during the month of the hajj and the Feast of Fast-breaking following Ramadan, were major social occasions everywhere. People also gave lavish parties to celebrate births, circumcisions, and weddings. Funeral processions, burials, and postburial receptions also played a big part in the social life of Muslims. While a death was mourned, of course, the survivors consoled themselves with the certain belief that the deceased would soon be with God. Men also got together in mosques, bazaars, public baths, and restaurants. Women might also meet their friends at women's baths, at the public well where they drew their water, or at the streams where they did their laundry. Compared with our society, early Muslims had less freedom and privacy, but more security and less loneliness.
People's clothing had to meet stiff requirements for modesty and durability. Linen or cotton clothes were worn in hot weather and woolen ones in the winter -- and at all times of the year by some mystics and nomads. Loose-fitting robes were preferred to trousers, except by horseback riders who wore baggy pants. Muslim men covered their heads in all formal situations, either with turbans or various types of brimless caps. Different colored turbans might identify a man's status; for instance, green singled out one who had made the hajj to Mecca. Arab nomads wore flowing kuJyahs (headcloths) bound by headbands. Hats with brims and caps with visors were never worn by Muslims, because they would have interfered with prostrations during worship. Women always wore some type of long cloth to cover their hair, if not also to veil their faces. Christians, Jews, and other minorities wore distinctive articles of clothing and headgear. If what you wore showed your religion and status, as did the attire of a stranger you might meet in the bazaar, each of you would know how to act toward the other.
Houses were constructed from whatever type of building material was locally most plentiful: stone, mud brick, or sometimes wood. High ceilings and windows helped provide ventilation in hot weather; and in the winter, only warm clothing, hot food, and an occasional charcoal brazier made indoor life bearable. Many houses were built around courtyards containing gardens and fountains. Rooms were not filled with furniture; people were used to sitting cross-legged on carpets or very low platforms. Mattresses and other bedding would be unrolled when people were ready to sleep and put away after they got up. In houses of people who were reasonably well-off, cooking facilities were often in a separate enclosure. Privies always were.
The "Philosopher of the Arabs" al-Kindi (d. 873) rated the search for truth above all other human occupations, exalted logic and mathematics and wrote or edited many works on science, psychology, medicine, and music. He was adept at taking complicated Greek concepts, paraphrasing them, and simplifying them for students, a skill any textbook writer can appreciate. Ibn Sina (d. 1037), originally from Transoxiana, also combined philosophy with medicine. His theological writings are unusually lucid and logical, although his devout contemporaries shunned them because he separated the body from the soul and conceded that the individual has free will. He argued that the highest form of human happiness was not physical, but spiritual, and that it aimed at communion with God. His scientific writings include what amounts to an encyclopedia of medical lore. Translated into Latin, his greatest book remained a text for European medical students until the seventeenth century. Like al-Kindi, he wrote on logic, mathematics, and music. The greatest Muslim writer of com- mentaries lived in twelfth-century Spain. Ibn Rushd (d. 1198) is best known for his works on the philosophy of Aristotle and on Muslim theologians. Because of his unorthodox religious views, many of his writings were burned, and some of his original contributions to knowledge may have been forever lost.
Who spearheaded the reaction of these Mu'tazilites? Ahmad ibn Hanbal, founder of the Sunni legal school that bears his name, broke with them over their application of rigid logic to the Quran and the laws of Islam. His writing influenced a major theologian named al-Ash'ari (d. 935). Trained as a Mu'tazilite, al-Ash'ari came to the conclusion that divine revelation was a better guide than human reason. The Quran, he maintained, was an attribute of God, eternally existent, yet somehow separate from God's essence. Faith was absolute. If the Quran mentioned God's hand (or other manlike features), this should be accepted as is "without specifying how" or even interpreting the words allegorically, which the Mu'tazilites and some of the later theologians tried to do. Finally, al-Ash'ari and his disciples accepted the complete omnipotence of God: everything people do is predestined, for God created all persons and all their actions; yet He assigned these actions to them in such a way that individuals remain accountable for their actions. Later theologians proved that Muhammad must have been God's messenger because the content and the style of the Quran could not be imitated. The capstone of early Muslim theology was the work of Abu-Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111). One of the greatest teachers of the Shari'ah in Baghdad, his main distinction as a theologian was his use of Aristotelian logic to prove the main tenets of Islam, but he also wrote a stinging refutation of Muslim philosophers. Among Muslims he will always be remembered for bringing together theology and Sufism.
There was always an element of Sufism in Islam, but it emerged as a distinct movement during the second century after the hijrah. At first it was a movement of ascetics, people who sought spiritual exaltation by denying themselves the comforts of the flesh. Their driving force was a strong fear of God, but this evolved toward a belief in the love of God. Sufism could cut through the intellectualism of theology and soften the rigid legalism of "straight" Sunni (or Shi'i) Islam. It was not -- s some modern writers suppose -- a negation of the Shari'ah itself. Sufism also permitted Islam to bring in some of the traditional practices of converts from other religions without damaging its own essential doctrines. This facilitated its spread to central Asia, Anatolia, southeastern Europe, India, Indonesia, and Black Africa. From the eleventh to the nineteenth century, Sufism dominated the spiritual life of most Muslims. Brotherhoods of mystic dervishes, also called Sufi orders, grew up throughout the ummah, providing a new basis for social cohesion. The Safavid dynasty, which ruled Iran between 1501 and 1736, began as a Sufi order. Sufism also held together the warrior ghazis who founded its better-known rival, the Ottoman Empire. The Safavids were Shi'is and the Ottomans Sunnis, which goes to show that both of the main branches of Islam could accommodate Sufism.
In medicine, the Muslims built on the work of the ancient Greeks, but they were especially indebted to Nestorian Christians. One of these was Hunayn ibn Ishaq (d. 873), who translated many Greek and Aramaic texts into Arabic but whose greatest work was in the science of optics. I have already mentioned the continuing use of Ibn Sina's work as a medical textbook in Europe. To give another example of the influence of Middle Eastern medicine, the illustrations in Vesalius's pioneering work on anatomy show many parts of the body labeled with Arabic and Hebrew terms. Physicians in early Islamic society studied both botany and chemistry in order to discover curative drugs and also antidotes to various poisons.
Rational and nonrational methods of observation were often closely tied together. For example, chemistry would be mixed with alchemy and astronomy with astrology. Knowledge of the movements of stars and planets aided navigation and overland travel by night. But Muslims, like most other peoples, thought that heavenly bodies affected the lives of people, cities, and states, and so many of the caliphs kept court astrologers as advisers. Muslims also used astrolabes (devices for measuring the height q of stars in the sky) and built primitive versions of the telescope. One astronomer is said to have erected a planetarium that reproduced not only the movements of the stars but also peals of thunder and flashes of lightning. Muslim scientists, if not the public, knew that the earth was round and that it revolved around the sun, long before Copernicus or Galileo.
To come closer to earth, descriptive geography was a favorite subject. Thanks to the Arab conquests and the expansion of trade throughout the eastern hemisphere, Muslims liked to read books describing distant places and their inhabitants, especially if they were potential trading partners or converts to Islam. Much of what we know about Black Africa from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries comes from the writings of Arab travelers and geographers. History was a major discipline, too. Nearly every Muslim scientist had to write about the previous development of his specialty. Rulers demanded chronicles, either to publicize their own accomplishments, or to learn from their precursors' successes and failures. The ulama could never have developed the Shari'ah without first having biographies of Muhammad and his companions. Muslims also liked to read accounts of the early caliphs and conquests for amusement as well as instruction. Muslim historians were the first to try to structure history by looking for patterns in the rise and fall of dynasties, peoples, and civilizations. These efforts culminated in the monumental Muqaddimah of Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406), which linked the rise of states with the existence of a strong group feeling (asabiyah) between the leaders and their supporters.
Prose works were written to guide Muslims in the performance of worship, instruct princes in the art of governing, refute the claims of rival political and theological movements, or teach any of the 1001 aspects of living from cooking to lovemaking. Animal fables scored points against despotic rulers, ambitious courtiers, naive ulama, and greedy merchants. You probably know the popular stories that we call he Arabian Nights, set in Harun al-Rashid's Baghdad, but actually composed by many ancient peoples, passed down by word of mouth to the Arabs, and probably set to paper only in the fourteenth century. You may not have heard of a literary figure equally beloved of the peoples of the Middle East. The Egyptians call him Goha, the Persians say he is named Mollah, and the Turks refer to him as Nasruddin Hoja. One brief story will have to suffice. A man once complained to Goha that there was no sunlight in his house. "Is there sunlight in your garden?" asked Goha. "Yes," the other replied. "Well," said Goha, "then put your house in your garden."
Muslims do not neglect the visual arts. Some of the best proportioned and most lavishly decorated buildings ever erected were the great congregational mosques in Islam's largest cities. They had to be monumental to accommodate all their adult male worshippers on Fridays. Some have not survived the ravages of time or the Mongols, but the congregational mosques of Qayrawan, Cairo, Damascus, and Isfahan are impressive enough. Muslim architects also devoted some of their time and talents to palaces, schools, hospitals, caravansaries, and other buildings. Artists worked in many different media. While painting and sculpture were rare until modern times, early Muslim artists did illustrate manuscripts with abstract designs, beautiful pictures of plants and animals, and depictions of the everyday and ceremonial activities of men and women. Calligraphy (handwriting) was also an important art form, used for walls of public buildings as well as manuscripts. Many artistic creations were in areas we usually regard as crafts: glazed pottery and tile work; enameled glass; objects carved from wood or ivory; incised metal trays; elaborate jeweled rings, pendants, and daggers; embroidered silk cloths, and tooled leather bookbindings. You doubtless have seen "oriental" carpets. Most of the genuine ones were woven -- or, more correctly, knotted -- in Middle Eastern countries.
Over many centuries and under many dynasties, the peoples of the Middle East continued to develop and to enrich this many-faceted civilization. Even the destruction of Baghdad and other great cities during the Mongol invasions did not stop these processes. Nor did centuries of Muslim-Christian warfare stop Europe from learning the arts and sciences of Islam at the beginning of the Renaissance. Indeed, I maintain that the .high point of Muslim power and artistic expression was not reached until the sixteenth century, the era of the "gunpowder empires" that will be the subject of my next chapter.