On Early Islam

The Pride of Haroon

The first four Caliphs of Islam, the Rashidun, or 'the rightly guided ones', lived in Mecca. They were chosen by a closed-door deliberation of elders, not by hereditary right. Three were assassinated. The issue at heart was the basis of succession itself—Muhammad, who was not only the political leader of his community but also led the conquest of Arabia, didn't lay down any guiding principles or appoint a successor. 'While consultation was recommended [by the Qur'an ♣] and arbitrary rule deplored, the one was not enjoined, nor the other forbidden.'♣ Quite predictably, all hell broke loose. Over the centuries, any line of descent from Muhammad, no matter how tenuous, would be used to buttress claims of leadership of an Islamic community in some faraway land; it would become a basis of dynasties, and a cause of bitter strife. It was an inauspicious start for political Islam.

When Ali, the fourth Caliph, was murdered, the then powerful governor of Syria, Mu'awiya, threw his hat in the ring. He was a Quraysh of the house of Umayyad in Mecca, and was related to the second prophet.♣ He had disliked Muhammad when he was alive but here was the opportunity of a lifetime. His lust for power prevailed, and the locus of Arab rule shifted north —Damascus became the capital of the new Islamic empire. Despite the anti-monarchical bent of the Qur'an, which also placed ties of blood beneath those of belief, hereditary succession became normative in the Umayyad Caliphate. A ninth-century author relates Mu'awiya's appointment of his son Yazid as heir apparent —a precedent-setting event in Islam,

The people gathered in the presence of Mu'awiya, and the orators arose to proclaim Yazid as heir to the Caliphate. Some of the people showed disapproval, whereupon a man of the tribe of Udhra ... rose to his feet. Drawing his sword a hand span from the scabbard, he said, 'The Commander of the Faithful is that one!' and he pointed to Mu'awiya. 'And if he dies, then that one!' and he pointed to Yazid. 'And if anyone objects, then this one!' and he pointed to his sword. Mu'awiya said to him, 'You are the prince of orators'. 

The Umayyad Caliphate lasted over a century. Institutionally, they made few drastic changes in the lands they ruled: the basis was conquest for tribute, not assimilation. 'The Umayyad Caliphs ... were concerned primarily with the consolidation of their political power and the solution of the numerous economic and administrative problems.'♣ Islam often spread in spite of them. Later Sunni purists declared them worldly and irreligious usurpers. At the end of the 7th century, the Caliph Abdul al-Malik made Arabic the official state language—until then public records in Damascus were kept in Greek—and issued coins with only words on them, proclaiming la ilaha illa-'llah, Muhammadun rasulu-'llah (No god but Allah, Muhammad is the messenger of Allah). 

The Umayyads also commissioned the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, the first monumental religious complex in Islam.♣ It loudly proclaimed the arrival of the new faith and its Abrahamic lineage; inscriptions on its walls recognized Jesus as an apostle of God while casting a doubt upon his status as His Son and incarnation.♣ Next came the great Umayyad mosque in Damascus, replacing a Christian basilica, which had replaced a temple of Jupiter. Its novelty was a design from the Prophet's house in Medina—the mihrab, which indicated the direction of Mecca. Large mosques were built in Aleppo, Cordoba, and Qayrawan—they dazzled the man in the street and drove home the greatness of Allah and His messenger, backed by a powerful political establishment.

Many Arabs in positions of power in the frontiers cities of Islam amassed enormous fortunes and, like a newly rich untutored class, squandered it with abandon. They spent lavishly on fine textiles, royal palaces and opulent private homes, mosques and public buildings. The machinery of empire was in top gear but not everyone was happy. The pecking order seems to have placed the Arabs on top, followed by half-Arabs, the native converts and the non-Muslim, in that order. 'The state', says Albert Hourani in his History of the Arab Peoples, '... served the interests of small groups of rich and powerful men, who operated —in government and in other fields—by methods that to an increasing and disquieting extent resembled those of the ancient empires that Islam had overthrown and superseded.'♣

Resistance to Umayyad rule began brewing in the ranks and it came from multiple fronts: a) the formerly-privileged elites of Persia who resented their subordination to uncouth Arab bigwigs, b) those who opposed hereditary succession, and c) those who wanted hereditary succession but derived from the Prophet's family—the Shi'a. In 680, Husayn, a son of Ali and a grandson of the Prophet, led an insurrection in southern Iraq on the tenth day of Muharram at Karbala; they were defeated by Umayyad forces, marking the beginning of a schism within Islam.♣  

'... some seventy were killed ... the sole survivor being a sick child, Ali the son of Husayn, who was left lying in a tent ... The massacre of Karbala became central to the Shiite perception of Islamic history ... The doctrinal differences between Sunni and Shi'a Muslims are of minor importance, far less than those that divide the rival churches of Christendom. But the Shiite sense of martyrdom and persecution, reinforced by their long experience through the centuries as a minority group under rulers whom they regard as usurpers, raised a psychological barrier between them and the Sunni state and majority, a difference of experience and outlook, and therefore also of religious and political attitudes and behavior. Kerbala [in southern Iraq] was to become a major Shi'a shrine.' ♣

The Umayyad Caliphs of course had their own party of religious supporters, the Sunnis, who believed that doctrinal authority changed with the Caliphate, which itself was elective and any Quraysh—a member of the Prophet's tribe—was eligible. A few decades later, a full-fledged armed revolt, held together by a coalition of interests, arose in the former Persian heartland. It was led by Abu Muslim, a manumitted slave,♣ from the very towns founded a century earlier by the Arabs. They defeated the Umayyad army in 750 CE; the Caliph and his family were assassinated, except one of his grandsons who escaped, 

... disguised and accompanied by one servant, wandered across Palestine, Egypt, Barqa and into Atlas mountains. After five years as penniless vagabonds, they reached Ceuta, on the Straits of Gibralter. Andalus had been conquered at the time of the Umayyads and many Syrians had settled there. They welcomed the fugitive prince who, in May 756, occupied Cordova, the capital.♣ 

§

Power now shifted east to Baghdad for two centuries (nominally for four, until 1256, when the Mongols finished it off), reflecting the growing prominence of Persians in Islam. The historian al-Tabari (839-923 CE) recorded the announcement hailing the new Caliph by his brother in the mosque at Kufa (his sobriquet was al-Saffah, 'the blood-shedder'):  

Praise be to God, with gratitude, and yet more gratitude! Praise to him who has caused our enemies to perish and brought to us inheritance from Muhammad our Prophet, God's blessings and peace be upon him! O ye people, now as the dark nights of the world put to flight, its covering lifted, now light breaks in the earth and the heavens, and the sun rises from the springs of day while the moon ascends from its appointed place ... Right has come back to where it originated, among the people of the house of the Prophet, people of compassion and mercy for you ... God has let you behold what you were awaiting and looking forward to. He has made manifest among you a caliph of the clan of Hashim, brightening thereby your faces and making you to prevail over the army of Syria, and transferring the sovereignty and the glory of Islam to you ... Has any successor to God's messenger ascended this your minbar save the Commander of the Faithful 'Ali ibn Abi Talib and the Commander of the Faithful 'Abd Allah ibn Muhammad—and he gestured with his hand toward Abu'l-'Abbas.♣

The new Caliph lived up to his nickname, ruthlessly eradicating ex-allies, including Abu Muslim; henceforth, loyalty to the dynasty, rather than the brotherhood of Islam, would be the basis of empire. Religion would serve to legitimize the new Caliphate. Yet, the Abbasids patronized a more liberal school of theology—the Mu'tazilah—much to the resentment of the Shiites and the orthodox Sunnis; it led to more crushed Shiite rebellions.♣   

The Abbasid propaganda which had caused the fall of the Umayyads had made great play with their addiction to wine and women in Damascus. Now, however, that they were themselves in power, the dream of a return to true religion under the Prophet's own family seemed to have evaporated, while luxury continued to increase. The Umayyads had retained much of ancient Arab tradition and, when in need of relaxation, [the Abbasids] camped in the desert to hunt gazelle.♣ 

The Caliph presided over a loose collection of provinces, each with a governor and a bureaucracy similar to older Persian arrangements —power devolved increasingly to the local 'satraps'. Administration was divided into departments—divans—headed by the vizier. The Arab monopoly on power had passed—Islamized Persians began entering the higher echelons of leadership. In this time of peace, flourishing agriculture and trade led to unprecedented prosperity and a huge burst of intellectual and cultural activity, peaking in the reign of Haroon al-Rashid and al-Mamun. This was the golden age of Islam, Baghdad was the richest city in the world —only Constantinople came somewhat close. 

'Their ships were by far the largest and the best appointed in Chinese waters or in the Indian ocean. Under their highly developed banking system, an Arab businessman could cash a cheque in Canton on his bank account in Baghdad. [Wealthy women wore] lavish jewels and pearls, silks and embroidered fabrics. Exquisite carpets and cushions, the sparkling fountains, the soft music and the exotic perfumes of private apartments ... musk, myrtle and jasmine ... [it was also] an age in which conversation and culture were considered an art. Intellectual, and even theological, discussions were among the recreations of the educated classes. Poetry was still, as it had been among the nomad tribes before Islam, the most typical Arab art form ... improvisation of verse in conversation was considered an essential accomplishment in polite society ... al-Mamun opened an institution which he called the House of Wisdom [Bayt al-Hikmah] ... for the translation of Greek works ... outstanding contributions ... in the field of mathematics ... [they] invented algebra, plane and spherical trigonometry ... logarithms ... astronomers measured the circumference of the earth with remarkable accuracy, six hundred years before Europe admitted that it was not flat ... Baghdad had its first paper mill ... opened public hospitals, medical schools ...' ♣ 

An anecdote relates that at the peak of Abbasid power, a Byzantine aristocrat, Nicephorus I, became emperor. He had just deposed Empress Irene in a coup on the grounds that she was too meek vis-à-vis the Caliph—the Byzantines had paid tribute for many years and it was time to stand up to the Abbasids. He promptly sent a letter to Haroon demanding the instant refund of all the tribute paid over the years, or else .... Haroon was furious and wrote on the back of the letter, 'From Haroon, the Prince of the Faithful, to Nicephorus, the Roman dog. I have read your letter, you son of a heathen mother. You will see and not hear my reply.' He mobilized a large army which swept across Asia Minor and reached within 150 miles from Constantinople when Nicephorus sued for peace and agreed to continue paying the tribute. Graciously consenting, Haroon withdrew his troops. 

The armies now were highly professional and 'moved with perfect drill and discipline' and it was the Turks who would dominate them. But the old expansionary phase was over—Andalus and the Maghreb were lost and Ifriqiya (greater Egypt) had 'dominion status'. The leading western Christian king of the time was Charlemagne—both rulers cultivated cordial ties to deter their main foes: Byzantium, hostile to Charlemagne, and Umayyad Spain, a bitter rival of the Abbasids. According to contemporaneous records of Christian writers, the envoys of Charlemagne returned from the east with rich gifts from 'the king of Persia'—exquisite fabrics, aromatics, an elephant, and more interestingly, an intricate water clock. The Muslims, it appears, maintained utter silence about the gifts they received from the Franks —no records or references have come down to us. 

'Alcoholic drinks were often indulged in both in company and in private. Judging by the countless stories of revelry in such works as the Aghani♣ and the Arabian Nights, and by the numerous songs and poems in praise of wine, prohibition, one of the distinctive features of the Moslem religion, prohibited no more than did the eighteenth amendment to the Constitution of the US. Even Caliphs, viziers, princes, and judges paid no heed to the religious injunction. Khamr, made of dates, was the favorite beverage.' ♣ The Jews and the Christians were the bootleggers of the time. 

§

The Thousand and One Nights (Alf Layla wa Layla in Arabic or The Arabian Nights), originally transmitted orally with material added somewhat haphazardly at different times and places, was now being formally recorded by scholars.♣ The tales of Aladdin, Ali Baba, and Sindbad the Sailor were to become part of the global folklore. The dominant Abbasid legal system—there were four, all proceeding from the Shari'ah but with significant variations nevertheless♣—was the Hanafi rite. It relied heavily on consensus and judicial reasoning. Soon after the reign of al-Mamun, Abbasid power began to wane. Local governors or amirs, responsible for tax collection, became the effective rulers of the empire especially when the governorships were held by army commanders—some of them were Turks. The ultimate humiliation came in 946, when the Caliph became a puppet to the Shiite Persian house of Buyeh which invaded and occupied the capital but didn't remove him from his palace because his religious title was useful to them. 

Further disintegration led to more independent dynasties, one of which, the Samanids (819-999) of Bukhara, reverted to Persian as the state language—written in Arabic script—and ushered in a cultural revival. Firdausi of Khurasan (b. c. 935--d. c. 1020-26), the 'Homer of Persia', wrote the Shahnameh—a history of the kings of Persia from ancient times to the coming of the Arabs in nearly 60,000 couplets. Seven times the length of the Iliad, it took him 35 years to complete. It was his attempt to keep alive in the hearts of his people their ancestral faith and the glories of their past, in a time when the Arabs had made deep inroads into Persian life. 

Two Turkish Sunni dynasties, the Ghaznavids of Ghazna (977-1186) and the Seljuks (1038-1157) of Khurasan, arose at this time, existing in effect apart from the Caliphate but nominally attached to it. They were founded on the military ethos of the ghazis—a dedicated warrior class raised to guard the northeastern boundaries against non-Muslim Turks.  While the rulers were of Turkish origin, they presided over a still creative Persian culture. The first significant intrusion of Islam into India was led by Mahmud of Ghazna who, quite justifiably, lives in Indian history as a cruel and bloodthirsty fanatic, a destroyer of temples, and plunderer of their wealth, but in his own dominion he was known as a patron of art, literature, and science. He 'brought' to his court and the university he established at Ghazna the greatest scholars and writers of the age. 

One of these scholars was al-Beruni (973-1048), whose 'patronage' by Mahmud of Ghazna yielded his monumental commentary on Indian philosophy and culture—Kitab fi tahqiq ma li'l-hind. 'In his search for pure knowledge he is undoubtedly one of the greatest minds in Islamic history.'♣ Born near modern Khiva in Central Asia, 'he was an outstanding intellectual figure ... possessing a profound and original mind of encyclopedic scope ... conversant with Turkish, Persian, Sanskrit, Hebrew, and Syriac (Armenian) in addition to the Arabic in which he wrote. He applied his talents in many fields of knowledge, excelling particularly in astronomy, mathematics, chronology, physics, medicine, mineralogy and history.'♣ 

Al-Beruni's objective in writing his work on India was to provide, in his own words, 'the essential facts for any Muslim who wanted to converse with Hindus and to discuss with them questions of religion, science, or literature'. He read the major Indian religious and astronomical texts; in his account he highlights choice parts of the Gita, the Upanishads, Patanjali, Puranas, the four Vedas, scientific texts (by Nagarjuna, Aryabhata, etc.), relating stories from Indian mythology to make his point. He also compares Indian thought to the Greek thought of Socrates, Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Galen and others, and at times with Sufi teaching.♣ He traveled in India for 13 years, observing, questioning, studying. The result is a comprehensive exposition of Indian thought and society. 'Not for nearly eight hundred years would any other writer match al-Beruni's profound understanding of almost all aspects of Indian life.'♣ 

'In his works on astronomy, he discussed with approval the theory of the Earth's rotation on its axis and made accurate calculations of latitude and longitude. In those on physics, he explained natural springs by the laws of hydrostatics and determined with remarkable accuracy the specific weight of 18 precious stones and metals. In his works on geography, he advanced the daring view that the valley of the Indus had once been a sea basin. In religion he was a Shi'ite Muslim, but with agnostic tendencies. His poetical works in the main seek to combine Greek wisdom and Islamic thought.'♣ He also corresponded with the famous philosopher Ibn Sina (Avicenna). 

'By the end of the first millennium, Arab mathematician and physicist Alhazen had produced works on optical theory and planetary motion. His theories, translated into Latin in 1270, strongly influenced European thinkers. His publications deal with refraction, reflection, binocular vision, focusing with lenses, the rainbow, parabolic and spherical mirrors, spherical aberration, atmospheric refraction, and the apparent increase in size of planetary bodies near the Earth's horizon. He was first to give an accurate account of vision, correctly stating that light comes from the object seen to the eye.'♣ 

Of considerable stature too is another famous man, Omar Khayyam (1048-1131), who continued the mathematical work of al-Beruni—the Seljuq empire owed the reform of its calendar to him. The result was the Jalali era (named after Jalal-ud-din, one of the king's names)—'a computation of time,' says Gibbon, 'which surpasses the Julian, and approaches the accuracy of the Gregorian style.' He measured the length of the year as 365.24219858156 days, a number that was improved to 365.242196 days only in the 19th century and the current number is 365.242190 days.

He not only discovered a general method of extracting roots of arbitrary high degree, but his Algebra contains the first complete treatment of the solution of cubic equations which he did by means of conic sections. He was also part of the Islamic tradition of investigating Euclid and his parallel postulate. Another was the definition of ratios which he argued should be regarded as 'ideal numbers,' and so he conceived of a much broader system of numbers than that used since Greek antiquity, that of the positive real numbers. He was also commissioned to build an observatory in the city of Esfahan for which he led a team of astronomers. In his lifetime, he was recognized as a master of philosophy, jurisprudence, history, mathematics, medicine, and astronomy. Khayyam was attached to the court of the Seljuks—of Khorasan, later Baghdad, Samarkand and Esfahan as well—and lived amidst political turbulence interspersed with quiet periods. He also attracted flak from the growing religious conservatism of Sunni Turks. 

Omar Khayyam ('Tentmaker', possibly his father's profession) was not only a top-notch mathematician but also a major poet. The world today knows Omar Khayyam  for his quatrains—the Rubaiyat. Besides the social attitudes of the times, they reveal a sensitive, intelligent, humble, gently-mocking yet good-humored man, skeptical of divine providence and certainty of truth, wistful of an ever-present evanescence, mystical in one, lamenting man's ignorance in another. '... he chooses to put his faith in a joyful appreciation of the fleeting and sensuous beauties of the material world. The idyllic nature of the modest pleasures he celebrates, however, cannot dispel his honest and straightforward brooding over fundamental metaphysical questions.'♣ Many of his 500 or so quatrains celebrate wine, exhorting all those who take themselves too seriously to partake of it while time permits. Here are ten sample quatrains (from the translation of E. H. Whinfield).♣ 

O unenlightened race of humankind,
Ye are a nothing, built on empty wind!
Yea, a mere nothing, hovering in the abyss,
A void before you, and a void behind!

Some are thoughtful on their way
Some are doubtful, so they pray.
I hear the hidden voice that may
Shout, "Both  paths lead astray."

The secrets eternal neither you know nor I
And answers to the riddle neither you know nor I
Behind the veil there is much talk about us, why
When the veil falls, neither you remain nor I.

All my companions, one by one died
With Angel of Death they now reside
In the banquette of life same wine we tried
A few cups back, they fell to the side.

Drinking wine is my travail
Till my body is dead and stale
At my grave site all shall hail
Odor of wine shall prevail.

Heed not the Sunna, nor the law divine;
If to the poor his portion you assign,
And never injure one, nor yet abuse,
I guarantee you heaven, and now some wine!

Slaves of vain wisdom and philosophy,
Who toil at Being and Nonentity,
Parching your brains till they are like dry grapes,
Be wise in time, and drink grapejuice like me!

You, who in carnal lusts your time employ,
Wearing your precious spirit with annoy,
Know that these things you set your heart upon
Sooner or later must the soul destroy!

Never in this false world on friends rely,
(I give this counsel confidentially);
Put up with pain, and seek no antidote;
Endure your grief, and ask no sympathy!

You know all secrets of this earthly sphere,
Why then remain a prey to empty fear?
You can not bend things to your will, but yet
Cheer up for the few moments you are here!

(More Quatrains?) 

Then came the long haired Mongol hordes on horseback screaming war cries. 'For centuries these hardy nomads had lived on the windswept plateau north of the Gobi desert, occasionally swooping down on China or on the caravans that plied the Great Silk Route. Most Mongols had kept aloof from the civilizations and religions surrounding them, worshipping their own deity, Tengri ('eternal blue sky'). But in the late 12th century, a warrior chieftain called Genghis Khan united the eastern Mongol tribes into a great confederation.'♣ They were soon drawn into conflict with frontier Muslim states and left a trail of debauchery and mayhem wherever they went. In 1256, Hulegu, a grandson of Genghis, approached Baghdad. Although a pagan, his wife was a Nestorian Christian who is said to have influenced his hatred of Islam. Here is an account of the encounter, ♣

The Caliph's army resisted bravely until the Mongols flooded its camp, drowning thousands. Hulegu's forces proceeded to bombard Baghdad with heavy rocks flung from catapults until the caliph surrendered. Then the Mongols pillaged the city, burned its schools and libraries, destroyed its mosques and palaces, murdered possibly a million Muslims, and finally executed all the Abbasids by wrapping them in carpets and trampling them beneath their horses' hooves. Until the stench of the dead forced Hulegu and his men out of Baghdad, they loaded their horses, packed the scabbards of their discarded swords, and even stuffed some gutted corpses with gold, pearls, and precious stones, to be hauled back to the Mongol capital [Shang-tu or the Xanadu of Samuel Taylor Coleridge]. It was a melancholy end to the independent Abbasid caliphate, to the prosperity and intellectual glory of Baghdad, and, according to some historians, to Arabic civilization itself. ♣

A few years later, Marco Polo would visit the court of the next Mongol ruler —Kublai Khan, Hulegu's brother. In the coming centuries, it would be the Mongols who would fight the Turks for territorial control in western and central Asia and Egypt (the Mamluks were of Turkish origin). Eventually, they would all absorb Islam and contribute to its expansion into new lands including the Indian subcontinent. 

§

The Islamic state was conceived as a theocracy with no separation of 'church' and state—the Caliphs though had substantial leeway in interpreting the law. Thereafter, in most cases, a ruler was head of the community only, not of faith—the Khans, Sultans, and Shahs. His job was to fulfill the many administrative functions of the state not covered by the Qur'an, to ensure the authority of the law and by extension, preserve the fabric of civilized life. He issued secular laws, or qanuns, and a strong ruler could dodge the Shar'ia. The guardians of the faith were the ulema but with no enforcing power.♣ There were periods with both liberal rulers and jurists, as in Abbasid Baghdad and in some later Persian dynasties. Their dynamism, tolerance and vitality of culture were well in excess of contemporaneous civilizations. Here are two modern historians on the Islamic golden age in Baghdad,      

Islamic civilization in the Arab lands reached its peak under the Abbasids. Paradoxically, one reason was the movement of its center of gravity away from Arabia and the Levant. Islam provided a political organization which, by holding together a huge area, cradled a culture which was essentially synthetic, mingling ... Hellenistic, Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian and Hindu ideas. Arabic culture under the Abbasids had a closer access to the Persian tradition and closer contact with India which brought to it renewed vigor and new creative elements.♣

What we now call 'Arab civilization' was Arabian neither in its origin and fundamental structure nor in its principal ethnic aspects. The purely Arabian contribution was linguistic and to a certain extent in the religious fields. Throughout the whole period of the Caliphate the Syrians, the Persians, the Egyptians and others, as Moslem converts or as Christians and Jews, were the foremost bearers of the torch of enlightenment and learning ... In art and architecture, in philosophy, in medicine, in science and literature, in government the original Arabians had nothing to teach and everything to learn. ♣

The turning point indeed was the coming of illiberal and destructive forces with the new converts on the fringes of Islam—the Turks and the Mongols, who extracted from the Qur'an what their cultural deficiencies had prepared them for. Monotheistic scriptures, besides explicit injunctions, have also lent themselves to a spectrum of interpretation—one only need remember the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition, sanctioned by the Catholic Church itself (more on this later). Islam too has its fair share. Below is a flagrant and oft-cited passage from the Qur'an♣ followed by a modern opinion by the American Orientalist Bernard Lewis.♣ 

And fight for the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not be aggressive. Surely Allah does not like the aggressors. / Kill them wherever you find them and drive them out from wherever they drove you out. Sedition is worse than slaughter. Do not fight them at the Sacred Mosque until they fight you at it. If they fight you there, kill them. Such is the reward of the unbelievers. / But if they desist Allah is truly All-forgiving, Merciful. / Fight them until there is no sedition and the religion becomes that of Allah. But if they desist, there will be no aggression except against the evil-doers. (Qur'an 2:189-192.) ♣ 

[Jihad♣] is a recurring and at times a dominant theme in Islamic history. It retained its potency on the frontiers of the Islamic world, where the frontier peoples, often themselves recent converts to Islam, tried to carry their new faith, by war and by preaching, to their unconverted kinsfolk in the lands beyond the frontier ... notably in central Asia and Africa. In the central lands of Islam, among peoples of more advanced culture and greater political sophistication, the notion of jihad underwent a number of changes ... By the ninth century ... [they] were becoming reconciled to the fact of a more or less permanent frontier subject to only minor variations and a more or less permanent non-Muslim state beyond that frontier, with which it was possible to have commercial, diplomatic, and at times even cultural relations. 

Towards the end of the first millennium CE, with the waning of Abbasid power, the gates of ijtihad—independent reasoning or interpretation of scripture—were declared closed for good in Sunni Islam.♣ This significant event is believed to have contributed much to the fossilization of a hitherto creative society, the breaking out from which state perhaps made harder by the absence of a 'mother church' as a focal point for later reform. Power struggles at the top continued, the dynamics of which were first explained by the asabiya construct of the 14th century Islamic historian Ibn Khaldûn.♣ 

Golden ages coincided with the reign of enlightened monarchs in periods of economic abundance. The relative failure of political Islam in modern times lies ultimately in its inability to develop secular institutions built around the individual. As we'll see, the triumph of mysticism in medieval Islam, indirectly and unintentionally, contributed to this outcome. But neither is any other major religion, including Christianity—Islam's historical rival—to be credited with a more articulate political philosophy. That was the unique achievement of the Greeks. (More on this later.)

The Turks and Mongols would rule southwest Asia long enough to permanently impair older spiritual traditions.♣ In lending an aggressive and militant character to political Islam, they would be akin to the original Arabs—the common poverty of their pre-Islamic thought and culture is notable. In the 18th century, a fresh wave of religious conservatism would arrive from Arabia (Wahhabism) with more to come in the 20th—backed with petrodollars and the ultra-orthodox Hanbali legal system.♣ The experience of Christian colonialism and the opposing cultural values of individualism (modernism), when coupled with certain harsh constructs of the Qur'an, would fuel reactionaries. However, those in the modern West who cite jihad as evidence for Islam's innate, uniform and perennial decadence—to contrast it with their own superior civilization—must de rigueur be asked to judge it in a wider perspective. In the name of what beliefs have the most brutal wars of 20th century been fought? ♣   

§

Against the backdrop of early political Islam arose two significant currents in Islamic thought, both opposed to orthodoxy. The first would elevate the self,  the second would seek its annihilation. The first was a spirit of intellectual inquiry derived from the Classical Greeks. In the words of a leading scholar of Islamic philosophy, Majid Fakhry, ♣ 

Interest in science and philosophy [and theology] grew during [the Abbasid] period to such an extent that ... [it] was no longer a matter of individual effort or initiative. Before long, the state took an active part in its promotion ... theological divisions ... racked the whole of the Muslim community. Caliphs upheld one theological view against another and demanded adherence to it on political grounds, with the inevitable result that theology soon became the handmaid of politics ... A fundamental cause of this development is, of course, the close correlation in Islam between principle and law, the realm of the temporal and the realm of the spiritual ... Greek ideas and the Greek spirit of intellectual curiosity generated a bipolar reaction of the utmost importance for the understanding of Islam. The most radical division caused ... was between the progressive element, which sought earnestly to subject the data of revelation to the scrutiny of philosophical thought, and the conservative element, which dissociated itself altogether from philosophy on the ground that it was impious or suspiciously foreign. This division continued to reappear throughout Islamic history as a kind of geological fault, sundering the whole of Islam.

The second would later be described as "Eastern mysticism". Both currents, in their highest philosophical expression, invoked complex metaphysics. Their trajectories in the formative centuries shed light on the path Islam was to take in the ensuing ones.

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Abu al-Nasr al-Farabi       

Islamic rational philosopher