Notes

In the 7th century C.E., the Arab followers of Muhammad surged from the Arabian Peninsula to create the first global civilization. They quickly conquered an empire incorporating elements of the classical civilizations of Greece, Egypt, and Persia. Islamic merchants, mystics, and warriors continued their expansion in Europe, Asia, and Africa. The process provided links for exchange among civilized centers and forged a truly global civilization. Although united in the belief in Muhammad's message, the Islamic world was divided by cultural and political rivalries. The disputes did not undermine the strength of Muslim civilization until the 14th century.

Desert and Town:
The Pre-Islamic Arabian World. The inhospitable Arabian Peninsula was inhabited by bedouin societies. Some desert dwellers herded camels and goats. Others practiced agriculture in oasis towns. Important agricultural and commercial centers flourished in southern coastal regions. The towns were extensions of bedouin society, sharing its culture and ruled by its clans.

Clan Identity, Clan Rivalries, and the Cycle of Vengeance. Mobile kin-related clans were the basis of social organization. The clans clustered into larger tribal units that functioned only during crises. In the harsh environment, individual survival depended upon clan loyalty. Wealth and status varied within clans. Leaders, or shaykhs, although elected by councils, usually were wealthy men. Free warriors enforced their decisions. Slave families served the leaders or the clan as a whole. Clan cohesion was reinforced by interclan rivalry and by conflicts over water and pasturage. The resulting enmity might inaugurate feuds enduring for centuries. The strife weakened bedouin society against its rivals.

Towns and Long-Distance Trade. Cities had developed as entrep ts in the trading system linking the Mediterranean to east Asia. The most important, Mecca, in western Arabia, had been founded by the Umayyad clan of the Quraysh tribe. The city was the site of the Ka'ba, an important religious shrine that, during an obligatory annual truce in interclan feuds, attracted pilgrims and visitors. A second important town, Medina, an agricultural oasis and commercial center, lay to the northeast. Quarrels among Medina's two bedouin and three Jewish clans hampered its development and later opened a place for Muhammad.

Marriage and the Family in Pre-Islamic Arabia. Women might have enjoyed more freedom than in the Byzantine and Sassanid empires. They had key economic roles in clan life. The descent was traced through the female line, and men paid a bride price to the wife's family. Women did not wear veils and were not secluded. Both sexes had multiple marriage partners. Still, men, who carried on the honored warrior tradition, remained superior. Traditional practices of property control, inheritance, and divorce favored men. Women did drudge labor. Female status was even more restricted in urban centers.

Poets and Neglected Gods.
Arab material culture, because of isolation and the environment, was not highly developed. The main focus of creativity was in orally transmitted poetry. Bedouin religion was a blend of animism and polytheism. Some tribes recognized a supreme deity. Allah, but paid him little attention. They instead focused on spirits associated with nature.
Religion and ethics were not connected. In all, the bedouin did not take their religion seriously.

The Life of Muhammad and the Genesis of Islam.
In the 6th century C.E., camel nomads dominated Arabia. Cities were dependent upon alliances with surrounding tribes. Pressures for change came from the Byzantine and Sassanid empires and the presence of Judaism and Christianity. Muhammad, a member of the Banu Hasim clan of the Quraysh, was born about
570. Left an orphan, he was raised by his father's family and became a merchant. Muhammad resiled in Mecca, where he married a wealthy widow, Khadijah. Merchant travels allowed Muhammad to observe the forces undermining clan unity and to encounter the spread of monotheistic ideas. Muhammad became dissatisfied with a life focused on material gain and went to meditate in the hills. In 610, he began receiving revelations transmitted from God via the angel Gabriel. Later, written in Arabic and collected in the Quran, they formed the basis for Islam.

Persecution, Flight, and Victory.
As Muhammad's initially very small following grew, he was seen as a threat by Mecca's rulers. The new faith endangered the gods of the Ka'ba. With his life in danger, Muhammad was invited to come to Medina to mediate its clan quarrels. In 622, Muhammad left Mecca for Medina where his skilled leadership brought new followers. The Quraysh attacked Medina, but Muhammad's forces ultimately triumphed. A treaty in 628 allowed his followers permission to visit the Ka'ba. He returned to Mecca in 629 and converted most of its inhabitants to Islam.

Arabs and Islam.
The new religion initially was adopted by town dwellers and bedouins in the region where Muhammad lived. But Islam offered opportunities for uniting Arabs by providing a distinct indigenous monotheism supplanting clan divisions and allowing an end to clan feuding.
The "umma," the community of the faithful, transcended old tribal boundaries. Islam also offered an ethical system capable of healing social rifts within Arab society. All believers were equal before Allah; the strong and wealthy were responsible for the care of the weak and poor. The Prophet's teachings and the Quran became the basis for laws regulating the Muslim faithful. All faced the last judgment by a stern but compassionate God.

Universal Elements in Islam.
Islam, by nature, contained beliefs appealing to individuals in many different world cultures. They included monotheism, legal codes, egalitarianism, and a strong sense of community. Islam, while regarding Muhammad's message as the culmination of divine revelation, accepted the validity of similar components previously incorporated in Judaism and Christianity. Islam's five pillars provide a basis for underlying unity: (1) acceptance of Islam; (2) prayer five times daily: (3) the fast month of Ramadan; (4) payment of a tithe (zakat) for charity; and (5) the hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca.

The Arab Empire of the Umayyads.
Muhammad's defeat of Mecca had won the allegiance of many bedouin tribes, but the unity was threatened when he died in 632. Tribes broke away and his followers quarreled about the succession. The community managed to select new leaders who reunited Islam by 633 and then began campaigns beyond Arabia. Arab religious zeal and the weaknesses of opponents resulted in victories in Mesopotamia, north Africa, and Persia. The new empire was governed by a warrior elite under the Umayyad clan that had little interest in conversion.

Consolidation and Division in the Islamic Community.
Muhammad, the last of the prophets, could not have a successor possessing his attributes. He had not established a procedure for selecting a new leader. After a troubled process, Abu Bakr was chosen as caliph, the leader of the Islamic community. Breakaway tribes and rival prophets were defeated during the Ridda wars to restore Islamic unity. Arab armies invaded the weak Byzantine and Sassanid empires where they were joined by bedouins who had migrated earlier.

Motives for Arab Conquest.
Islam provided the Arabs with a sense of common cause and a way of releasing martial energies against neighboring opponents. The rich booty and tribute gained often were more of a motivation than spreading Islam since converts were exempted from taxes and shared the spoils of victory.

Weaknesses of the Adversary Empires.
The weak Sassanian Empire was ruled by an emperor manipulated by a landed, aristocratic class that exploited the agricultural masses. Official Zoroastrianism lacked popular roots and the more popular creed of Mazdak had been brutally suppressed. The Arabs defeated the poorly prepared Sassanid military and ended the dynasty in 651. The Byzantines were more resilient adversaries. The empire had been weakened by the defection of frontier Arabs and persecuted Christian sects and by long wars with the Sassanids.
The Arabs quickly seized western Iraq, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. From the 640s, the Arabs had gained naval supremacy in the eastern Mediterranean and extended conquests westward into north Africa and southern Europe. The weakened Byzantines held off attacks in their core Asia Minor and Balkan territories.

The Problem of Succession and the Sunni-Shi'a Split.
Arab victories for a time covered old tribal internal divisions. The murder of Uthman, the third caliph, caused a succession struggle. Muhammad's earliest followers supported Ali, but he was rejected by the Umayyads. In the ensuing hostilities, Ali won the advantage until he accepted a plea for mediation at Siffin in 657.
Ali lost the support of his most radical adherents, and the Umayyads won the renewed hostilities. The Umayyad leader, Mu'awiya, was proclaimed caliph in 660. Ali was assassinated in 661; his son, Husayn, was killed at Karbala in 680. The dispute left a permanent division within Islam.
The Shia, eventually dividing into many sects, continued to uphold the rights of Ali's descendants to be caliphs.

The Umayyad Imperium.
With internal disputes resolved, the Muslims during the 7th and Sth centuries pushed forward into central Asia, northwest India, and southwestern Europe. The Franks checked the advance at Poitiers in 732, but Muslims ruled much of Iberia for centuries.
By the 9th century, they dominated the Mediterranean. The Umayyad political capital was at Damascus. The caliphs built an imperial administration with both bureaucracy and military dominated by a Muslim Arab elite. The warriors remained concentrated in garrison towns to prevent assimilation by the conquered.

Converts and "People of the Book."
Umayyad policy did not prevent interaction, intermarriage, and conversion between Arabs and their subjects. Muslim converts still paid taxes and did not receive a share of booty; they were blocked from important positions in the army or bureaucracy. Most of the conquered peoples were Dhimmis, or people of the book. The first were Jews and Christians; later the term also included Zoroastrians and Hindus. The Dhimmis had to pay taxes but were allowed to retain their own religious and social organization.

Family and Gender Roles in the Umayyad Age.
Gender relationships altered as the Muslim community expanded. Initially, the more favorable status of women among the Arabs prevailed over the seclusion and male domination common in the Middle East. Muhammad and the Quran stressed the moral and ethical dimensions of marriage. The adultery of both partners was denounced; female infanticide was forbidden. Although women could have only one husband, men were allowed four wives, but all had to be treated equally. Muhammad strengthened women's legal rights in inheritance and divorce. Both sexes were equal before Allah.

In Depth:
Civilization and Gender Relationships. The strong position gained by women through Muhammad's teachings did not endure. Long-established Middle Eastern and Mediterranean male-dominated traditions of the conquered societies eventually prevailed. The historical record in China, India, Greece, and the Middle East appears to make a connection among political centralization, urbanization, and decline in the position of women. But in the Islamic world, religion and law left women of all classes in better conditions than in other civilized cultures. In cultural areas with decentralized authority and unstratified social organization, women retained a stronger position.