A Short History of Islamic Thought

By virtue of living alongside each other since the beginnings of Islam, Eastern Christians have unique insights into not just the Muslim-Christian relationship ab initio, but also to Islam as such. That does not mean everyone has such insights, or that they are always impeccable in their details. For those needing a refresher, or an introduction, a short new book from the world's leading academic publisher fits the ticket: A Short History of Islamic Thought by Fitzroy Morrissey (Oxford University Press, 2021), 178pp. About this 

About this new book the publisher tells us this:

For general readers, a compact and illuminating introduction to Islam, from its beginnings almost 1500 years ago to the present moment.

While much has been written about Islam, particularly over the twenty-five years, few books have explored the full range of the ideas that have defined the faith over a millennium and a half. Fitzroy Morrissey provides a clear and concise introduction to the origins and sources of Islamic thought, from its beginnings in the 7th century to the current moment. He explores the major ideas and introduces the major figures--those who over the centuries have broached life's major questions, from the nature of God and the existence of free will to gender relations and the ordering of society, and in the process defined Islam. Drawing on Arabic and Persian primary texts, as well as the latest scholarship, A Short History of Islamic Thought explains the key teachings of the Qur'an and Hadith, the great books of Islamic theology, philosophy, and law, as well as the mystical writings of the Sufis. It evaluates the impact of foreign cultures-Greek and Persian, Jewish and Christian-on early Islam, accounts for the crystallization of the Sunni and Shi'i forms of the faith, and accounts for the rise of such trends as Islamic modernism and Islamism. Above all, it reveals the fundamental principles of Islamic thought, both as a source of inspiration for Muslims today and as illuminating and rewarding in their own right.

A Prophet Has Arisen

I have previously been delighted to interview on here the author of this new book, Stephen J. Shoemaker, A Prophet Has Appeared: The Rise of Islam through Christian and Jewish Eyes, A Sourcebook (University of California Press, 2021), 322pp. 

About Shoemaker's latest, the publisher tells us this:

Early Islam has emerged as a lively site of historical investigation, and scholars have challenged the traditional accounts of Islamic origins by drawing attention to the wealth of non-Islamic sources that describe the rise of Islam. A Prophet Has Appeared brings this approach to the classroom. This collection provides students and scholars with carefully selected, introduced, and annotated materials from non-Islamic sources dating to the early years of Islam. These can be read alone or alongside the Qur'an and later Islamic materials. Applying historical-critical analysis, the volume moves these invaluable sources to more equal footing with later Islamic narratives about Muhammad and the formation of his new religious movement.

Included are new English translations of sources by twenty authors, originally written in not only Greek and Latin but also Syriac, Georgian, Armenian, Hebrew, and Arabic and spanning a geographic range from England to Egypt and Iran. Ideal for the classroom and personal library, this sourcebook provides readers with the tools to meaningfully approach a new, burgeoning area of Islamic studies.

The Ottoman Empire at Sunset and its Last Wars in Europe

I hope there are archives in heaven, and books too, for I do not think I will ever have the time in my remaining years on Earth to acquire the languages necessary to immerse myself in all the works both published on, and still hidden away in the archives of, the Ottoman Empire. In the meantime, I will have to content myself with benefiting from the work of living scholars, including this new book which sounds very fascinating indeed:The Last Muslim Conquest: The Ottoman Empire and Its Wars in Europe by Gábor Ágoston  (Princeton University Press, 2021), 688pp. 

This book is, the publisher tells us, 

A monumental work of history that reveals the Ottoman dynasty's important role in the emergence of early modern Europe

The Ottomans have long been viewed as despots who conquered through sheer military might, and whose dynasty was peripheral to those of Europe. The Last Muslim Conquest transforms our understanding of the Ottoman Empire, showing how Ottoman statecraft was far more pragmatic and sophisticated than previously acknowledged, and how the Ottoman dynasty was a crucial player in the power struggles of early modern Europe.

In this panoramic and multifaceted book, Gábor Ágoston captures the grand sweep of Ottoman history, from the dynasty's stunning rise to power at the turn of the fourteenth century to the Siege of Vienna in 1683, which brought an end to Ottoman incursions into central Europe. He discusses how the Ottoman wars of conquest gave rise to the imperial rivalry with the Habsburgs, and brings vividly to life the intrigues of sultans, kings, popes, and spies. Ágoston examines the subtler methods of Ottoman conquest, such as dynastic marriages and the incorporation of conquered peoples into the Ottoman administration, and argues that while the Ottoman Empire was shaped by Turkish, Iranian, and Islamic influences, it was also an integral part of Europe and was, in many ways, a European empire.

Rich in narrative detail, The Last Muslim Conquest looks at Ottoman military capabilities, frontier management, law, diplomacy, and intelligence, offering new perspectives on the gradual shift in power between the Ottomans and their European rivals and reframing the old story of Ottoman decline.

Memoirs and History of the Armenian Genocide

For a lecture I was to give in Europe in June (now postponed until next year for obvious reasons), I was asked to focus on the role of traumatic memory in the life of Eastern Christians, individually and ecclesially. As I had a chance to explore some of the clinical research, it fast became apparent, based on dozens of studies with diverse populations around the world, that trans-generational transmission of trauma is real, often affecting at least the third generation (ie., grandchildren of the original victims).

In this light, it is striking to read that the scholar Roderic Ai Camp, the grandson of an Armenian genocide survivor named John Minassian, has written a foreword to his grandfather's Surviving the Forgotten Genocide: An Armenian Memoir (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020), 288pp.

This book, published at the end of March is, the publisher tells us,

A rare and poignant testimony of a survivor of the Armenian genocide.

The twentieth century was an era of genocide, which started with the Turkish destruction of more than one million Armenian men, women, and children—a modern process of total, violent erasure that began in 1895 and exploded under the cover of the First World War. John Minassian lived through this as a young man, witnessing the murder of his kin, concealing his identity as an orphan and laborer in Syria, and eventually immigrating to the United States to start his life anew. A rare testimony of a survivor of the Armenian genocide, one of just a handful of accounts in English, Minassian’s memoir is breathtaking in its vivid portraits of Armenian life and culture and poignant in its sensitive recollections of the many people who harmed and helped him. As well as a searing testimony, his memoir documents the wartime policies and behavior of Ottoman officials and their collaborators; the roles played by foreign armies and American missionaries; and the ultimate collapse of the empire. The author’s journey, and his powerful story of perseverance, despair, and survival, will resonate with readers today.

Last month also saw the publication of another book on this topic: Marc Baer, Sultanic Saviors and Tolerant Turks: Writing Ottoman Jewish History, Denying the Armenian Genocide (Indiana University Press, 2020), 360pp.

About this new study the publisher tells us this:

What compels Jews in the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, and abroad to promote a positive image of Ottomans and Turks while they deny the Armenian genocide and the existence of antisemitism in Turkey? Based on historical narrative, the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 were embraced by the Ottoman Empire and then, later, protected from the Nazis during WWII. If we believe that Turks and Jews have lived in harmony for so long, then how can we believe that the Turks could have committed genocide against the Armenians? Marc David Baer confronts these convictions and circumstances to reflect on what moral responsibility the descendants of the victims of one genocide have to the descendants of victims of another. Baer delves into the history of Muslim-Jewish relations in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey to find the origin of these many tangled truths. He aims to bring about reconciliation between Jews, Muslims, and Christians, not only to face inconvenient historical facts but to confront it and come to terms. By looking at the complexities of interreligious relations, Holocaust denial, genocide and ethnic cleansing, and confronting some long-standing historical stereotypes, Baer sets out to tell a new history that goes against Turkish antisemitism and admits to the Armenian genocide.

Jews, Muslims, and Christians in the Twilight of the Ottoman Empire

It is a longstanding frustration of mine that suitable textbooks for my undergrads are hard to come by when studying the history of relations between Muslims and Eastern Christians. Thus I take a special interest in a new book by Heather Sharkey, published this spring, which I'm looking forward to reading: A History of Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Middle East (Cambridge UP, 2017), 394pp.

About this book we are told:

Across centuries, the Islamic Middle East hosted large populations of Christians and Jews in addition to Muslims. Today, this diversity is mostly absent. In this book, Heather J. Sharkey examines the history that Muslims, Christians, and Jews once shared against the shifting backdrop of state policies. Focusing on the Ottoman Middle East before World War I, Sharkey offers a vivid and lively analysis of everyday social contacts, dress, music, food, bathing, and more, as they brought people together or pushed them apart. Historically, Islamic traditions of statecraft and law, which the Ottoman Empire maintained and adapted, treated Christians and Jews as protected subordinates to Muslims while prescribing limits to social mixing. Sharkey shows how, amid the pivotal changes of the modern era, efforts to simultaneously preserve and dismantle these hierarchies heightened tensions along religious lines and set the stage for the twentieth-century Middle East.

Before and after Mohammad

The more we read about the origins of Islam, the less we can say we know with adamantine certainty. The historiographical issues surrounding its origins have been well known to scholars for some time and include things like the late dating of many texts, the fact that the earliest records are either unavailable or else notoriously unreliable because of their tendentious and triumphalist agendas, and the unwillingness to admit just how much Islam borrowed from surrounding cultures. A recent publication continues to help us understand this process of borrowing: Garth Fowden, Before and After Muhammad: The First Millennium Refocused (Princeton UP, 2015), 248pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

Islam emerged amid flourishing Christian and Jewish cultures, yet students of Antiquity and the Middle Ages mostly ignore it. Despite intensive study of late Antiquity over the last fifty years, even generous definitions of this period have reached only the eighth century, whereas Islam did not mature sufficiently to compare with Christianity or rabbinic Judaism until the tenth century. Before and After Muhammad suggests a new way of thinking about the historical relationship between the scriptural monotheisms, integrating Islam into European and West Asian history.

Garth Fowden identifies the whole of the First Millennium--from Augustus and Christ to the formation of a recognizably Islamic worldview by the time of the philosopher Avicenna--as the proper chronological unit of analysis for understanding the emergence and maturation of the three monotheistic faiths across Eurasia. Fowden proposes not just a chronological expansion of late Antiquity but also an eastward shift in the geographical frame to embrace Iran.

In Before and After Muhammad, Fowden looks at Judaism, Christianity, and Islam alongside other important developments in Greek philosophy and Roman law, to reveal how the First Millennium was bound together by diverse exegetical traditions that nurtured communities and often stimulated each other.

Dhimmis in the West

I have noted on here previously the question of dhimmitude which has so often entangled so many Eastern Christians following the Islamic conquest of their lands. A new study, just released, expands our understanding of this crucial, and often misunderstood, legal arrangement, this time in the West rather than the East: Maribel Fierro and John Tolan, eds., The Legal Status of Dimmis in the Islamic West (Second/Eighth-Ninth/Fifteenth Centuries) (Brepols, 2013), 370pp.

About this book we are told:

The studies brought together in this volume provide an important contribution to the history of ḏimmī-s in the medieval dār al-islām, and more generally to the legal history of religious minorities in medieval societies. The central question addressed is the legal status accorded to ḏimmī-s (Jews and Christians) in the Muslim law in the medieval Muslim west (the Maghreb and Muslim Spain).  The scholars whose work is brought together in these pages have dealt with a rich and complex variety of legal sources. Many of the texts are from the Mālikī legal tradition; they include fiqh, fatwā-s, ḥisba manuals. These texts function as the building blocks of the legal framework in which jurists and rulers of Maghrebi and Peninsular societies worked.  The very richness and complexity of these texts, as well as the variety of responses that they solicited, refute the textbook idea of a monolithic ḏimmī system, supposedly based on the Pact of ‘Umar, applied throughout the Muslim world.  In fact when one looks closely at the early legal texts or chronicles from both the Mashreq and the Maghreb, there is little evidence for a standard, uniform ḏimmī system, but rather a wide variety of local adaptations.  The articles in this volume provide numerous examples of the richness and complexity of interreligious relations in Medieval Islam and the reactions of jurists to those relations.

Another and related study has recently been published in paperback form: Joseph Montville, ed., History as Prelude: Muslims and Jews in the Medieval Mediterranean (Lexington Books, 2013), 208pp.

About this book we are told:

This collection of essays by seven highly respected scholars is a straightforward narrative of real world—intellectual, commercial, spiritual, philosophical, scientific, aesthetic—creative engagement among Jews, Muslims, and some Christians in daily life in Spain and around the Mediterranean. History as Prelude is a major contribution to the Israeli-Arab peace process because it undermines—in fact, blows away—the efforts of propagandists who serve governments or political movements to negate the reality of the Arab-Jewish relationship in the medieval Mediterranean. The contributors, in unassuming, well-researched scholarship have erected a wall protecting historical reality from distortion, providing irrefutable—and often delightful—examples of creative coexistence.

Milka Levy-Rubin on Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire

The plight of non-Muslims (chiefly Eastern Christians and Jews) under Islam continues today often to be both ignored and manipulated for political reasons. It is therefore a happy and welcome development to have serious scholarly attention paid to this question of religious minorities under Islamic domination in a new book: Milka Levy-Rubin, Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire: From Surrender to Coexistence (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization, 2011), 288pp.

I asked the author for an interview, and here are her thoughts.

AD: Tell us a bit about your own background

I studied history and received all my degrees from the Hebrew University. During my MA studies I specialized in the history department in medieval studies. My MA thesis was on the medieval maps of Jerusalem (published in Hebrew in Sefer Yerusalayim, eds.  J. Prawer and H. Ben-Shammai, Jerusalem 1991; short version in English in N. Rosovsky, ed., City of the Great King). I also worked on travelers to the Holy Land in the Byzantine and medieval periods. My attraction to the history of the Near East stood at the basis of my decision to write my PhD on The Patriarchate of Jerusalem after the Arab Conquest (in Hebrew). This was possible because besides the knowledge of Greek and Latin which I acquired during my studies at the Hebrew University, I had already had good command of the Arabic language and some acquaintance with the history of  Islam, which I studied in high school. I have since then been writing mostly on issues related to the transition from Byzantine to Arab rule including issues of language, culture, conversion to Islam, changes in settlement pattern in Palestine, and relations between Christians and Muslims.

AD: What led you to focus on the Islamic rules governing the treatment of non-Muslim minorities?

My special interest in the legal status of the non-Muslims originated in the first chapter of my PhD, which dealt with the treatment of the non-Muslims (dhimmis) by the central as well as the local authorities. In this chapter I reported about new findings regarding the legal status of the dhimmis in Palestine upon which I came in an unpublished manuscript of a Samaritan chronicle from the Early Muslim period. After receiving my PhD I published an annotated translation with an introduction of this text (M. Levy-Rubin, Continuatio of the Samaritan Chronicle of Abu L'Fath Al Samiri Al Danafi (Darwin Press 2002).

AD: The so-called Pact of 'Umar is important in your narrative. Briefly tell us what that was and its significance.

The Pact of  'Umar is the canonic text defining the status of non-Muslims under Muslim rule throughout the Middle Ages and afterwards. This is why understanding the circumstances and process of its formation as well as its sources is essential for the understanding of the question of the status of the non-Muslims under Muslim rule.
  

AD: You begin by noting that a "key working assumption" is that Muslims did not derive ex nihilo the rules for Jews, Christians, and other minorities. Where, then, did those rules originate? What are some of the main pre-Islamic sources for them?

It is agreed by scholars that the text of Shurut 'Umar as we know it developed quite some time after the Muslim conquest, probably c. 800 CE. In the first chapter of my book I strive to demonstrate that the initial conquest agreements signed between the Muslim conquerors and the conquered population, which are preserved in the Muslim sources, reflect in general authentic agreements. These were based, in my opinion, on an ancient and longstanding tradition which existed throughout the Ancient Near East from antiquity. Following this tradition, it was, in my view,  the conquered population which asked to have these agreements signed. This was done in order to secure  in writing the rights promised them by the conquerors before they actually surrender. These agreements bear no hint of the rules which will appear later in Shurut 'Umar. About a century later, after Muslims and non-Muslims began to have more intensive daily contact as well as friction, the Muslim rulers felt a need to set down a new set of rules, which suited the changing circumstances.

Regarding the pre-Islamic sources: Shurut 'Umar are very specific regarding the status of prayer-houses of non-Muslims, as well as issues of dress, appearance, and public behaviour. It is quite obvious that the rule allowing the continuing existence and repair of prayer houses, yet prohibiting the building of new ones and the enlargement of existing ones, relies on an identical law regarding Jewish prayer houses under Byzantine rule; likewise the rules regarding the prohibition on owning Muslim slaves, and the rules regarding the preference given to Muslims in inheritance.

In my research I discovered, however, that the rules regarding the appearance of non-Muslims seem to have originated in Sasanian society (the Sasanian dynasty ruled Iran from 226 until the Mulsim conquest). The Sasanians strove to preserve  a strict social hierarchy, a hierarchy expressed first and foremost through appearance and public behaviour. In chapter 5 of my book Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire: From Surrender to Coexistence, I try to demonstrate that it was this principal which stands at the basis of the demand that non-Muslims not ride horses, wear special robes, carry weapons, have seals or hold public office, and that they make way for the Muslims, hit the clapper (naqus) during the call to prayer only softly and do not hold public processions. The demand that they wear special distinguishing signs and not resemble the Muslims in their dress is based on the Sasanian concept that the lower class is to dress humbly, according to their social status.

AD: How widely and consistently were the rules enforced, and by whom?

 

Chapter 4 discusses this question. To judge by some of the evidence found in the Samaritan chronicle as well as in several other sources, by the ninth century Shurut 'Umar was conceived as the rule to be enforced on non-Muslims, and was indeed enforced quite effectively not only in Baghdad but in the rural areas of Palestine. There are also mentions of such enforcement in the tenth century. However, this does not mean that this was consistent, and there is no doubt that there were times and places in which these rules were conveniently ignored, and then again times in which the rulers insisted on strict enforcement of the Shurut. The latter became more common during the Mameluk period when the Shurut were strictly and consistently enforced.

AD: What are some of the most outstanding features of the Islamic treatment of minorities? Were there any surprises as you were undertaking your research?

The outstanding features include the authenticity of the surrender agreements which are characterized most of the time by freedom of religion and preservation of both private and communal property in return for the acceptance of Muslim rule and payment of the jizya; another surprising discovery was the finding that Iranian social concepts were adopted by the Muslims and were applied now on a religious basis, meaning that the upper strata of Iranian, as well as Christian and Jewish society which was until then privileged, was to lose its higher social standing and status symbols if it did not convert to Islam. I was also surprised by the evidence of the wide enforcement of the Shurut already during the second half of the ninth century.  

AD: As you are no doubt aware, much of the recent discourse surrounding the treatment of Jews and Eastern Christians in the early Islamic empire has been heavily politicized, indeed polarized: often this treatment is either glorified as evidence of pre-modern "tolerance" or condemned as "dhimmitude." What, in your estimation, is the best way to characterize the treatment of minorities in the early Islamic imperial period covered by your book--or is such treatment too broad and too varied, across time and the region, to permit generalizations?

No doubt the last statement is true, and such generalizations are bound, at the least, to be inaccurate. However, I must add a word of warning. I believe that trying to apply the values of modern Western society is bound to fail. Societies in antiquity in the East, and in fact Western society up until the 18th century, were hierarchichal. Formal social hierarchy represented the right social order. Equality and tolerance are modern values. The Muslims, as ruling conquerors, naturally saw themselves as the ruling class who set the rules for the conquered lower classes. The latter were therefore naturally humiliated, yet they had certain rights and were officialy protected by the Muslim ruler. The rest depended on the specific circumstances. In comparison to the West, the  non-Muslims were much better off, as Mark Cohen has shown in his well-known book Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages.

AD: If we were to move from the early imperial period to the later Ottoman period and its so-called millet system, would we see any continuities in the treatment of Jews and Christians under the Ottomans?

Shrut 'Umar continue to be the binding rules regarding the non-Muslims.

AD: the publisher sums up Milka Levy-Rubin's book for us thus: 

The Muslim conquest of the East in the seventh century entailed the subjugation of Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, and others. Although much has been written about the status of non-Muslims in the Islamic empire, no previous works have examined how the rules applying to minorities were formulated. Milka Levy-Rubin's remarkable book traces the emergence of these regulations from the first surrender agreements in the immediate aftermath of conquest to the formation of the canonic document called the Pact of 'Umar, which was formalized under the early 'Abbasids, in the first half of the ninth century. What the study reveals is that the conquered peoples themselves played a major role in the creation of these policies, and that these were based on long-standing traditions, customs, and institutions from earlier pre-Islamic cultures that originated in the worlds of both the conquerors and the conquered. In its connections to Roman, Byzantine, and Sasanian traditions, the book will appeal to historians of Europe as well as Arabia and Persia.