lecture 3 Umayyads civil strife emergence of Islam

hey everybody great class today as promised i'm posting this lecture this evening for you to review before thursday's class thursday's class then as usual we will spend the time discussing the points that i'm raising here and in the berkey wanted to wait until now to post this lecture because wanted to refer directly to some of the things that we did in class and i'll be doing that as you'll see in the lecture to come so our subject for thursday's class is the umayyad period so this is just short period less than century long and of course this is when some of the ends of the conquest important parts of the conquests happen want to focus on both the key caliphs but also some of their opposition some of what we call fitness in arabic the different kinds of civil stripes that we have during this period and then talk we talked in class about some of the coins i'll mention that again but want to focus here in this lecture on architecture again as another source for us to understand this history it might be helpful for us to put all of this into bit of schematic so to think about this early period this is entirely we've been talking about last week and this week ranging from 610 so that's roughly the time of muhammad's preaching when he first began to receive the revelations in mecca up until 7 50 which is at the end of the umayyad period so within this we have the life of muhammad we have the four medin kalis that had mentioned before abu bakr omar uthman and ali i'll be referring to them again as well as the umayyads in damascus now you'll note here that i'm dating neomyads in damascus from 6 40 up until 7 50. traditionally you'll see 661 to 750 but the fact is is that when ali was killed in 661 and maui took over as caliph of the muslims he had already been in damascus for 20 years so this important shift from medina as the capital to damascus happens but maui was already there i'll be talking more about this in just minute and then we'll be looking at the abbasid period for the final week of this overall review of history that then in terms of the conquest involves the umayyads over in spain so this very same dynasty that was in damascus escapes travels to spain and then establishes in fact much more successful dynasty over in spain during this period when their rivals the abbasids are on the throne in baghdad very quickly the ambassador empire falls apart the question was whether it was really complete empire to begin with but certainly we have north africa we've got spain peeling off north africa peeling off and then egypt in 969 with the rise this very important fortunate empire so again that's our agenda for next week we have already looked at these conquests but this map is helpful for you to see sort of how this all unfolds over time again this red section is bit of of generous way of looking at the islamic world during muhammad's time the conquest happened right away under omar the second caliph into iraq into syria into egypt so this fundamental fall of the sustained empire happens at this point as well as the loss of these major territories for the byzantine empire it's under the umayyads then that this expands farther east and farther west so east into afghanistan and kabul should be familiar sites to you by now as well as west then carowind and then across again maps lie virtually nobody lives in this part of what's really very dry desert area it's only the coast here in north africa that receives regular rainfall and that is where the population is the press into andalusia happens and then famously as i've mentioned before right here the battle of tour in 632 so that's the farthest extent of this muslim conquest into into france they stay in the southern part of france for quite some time and as mentioned before this area then becomes the site of the umayyad kingdom in and eventually caliphate in spain so these coins we addressed in class and talked quite bit about them thought it was an excellent discussion really well done well once again now that you have this so you can look at this it these in the middle are examples of byzantine on the top and then some standard on the bottom coins from before the conquests and then the ones on the side are the same issues after the conquest so you get an idea of what's happening to the iconography in these different places coins as we said are bit tricky because they represent really the central governmental view of what religion should look like to others so we have hard time arguing from coins to anything like popular religious practice nonetheless there are lot of very clear guideposts that we have through coins we certainly can be impressed by the fact that some semblance of the cross and very clear fire altars remain on these coins even during the full period of the four rightly guided caliphs and well into the umayyad period and then as said this reform of the coins you still have berkey focusing on the role of abdul malik in this reform and abdomen he's one of the three omaya caliphs that think you should know tremendously important figure for variety of things my argument is that what he's doing here on these coins is actually in response to these and i'll talk about them in just minute nonetheless this change in the coins is significant and we need to pay attention to it the words that are put on these coins for public consumption as some of you pointed out already in class this is kind of propaganda kind of public statement about what religion is and the relationship of the of the state with religion now have to pause for second be in mourn the loss of this coin what you're looking at here was actually coin that owned had it in my office somehow whether somebody took it or it's lost don't know but about six or seven years ago lost this coin so really sad but the fact is you can pick up coin just like this on the open market think paid about 200 bucks for it so see what you can find now this is the triumphal view right the first four rightly guided caliphs the extension of the islamic world into the former susanid and much of the byzantine empires but there's another story and this story is also told by the muslim sources and it's the story of fitna of these internal strifes that are happening alongside this triumphal story we begin back in the period of these four rightly guided kayla's the third of them of man is assassinated well omar is assassinated too but this one's different because uthman is killed actually by group of other muslims these are muslims who are unhappy with uthman's caliphate for various reasons not going to go into all those details now we can certainly discuss that if you're curious but they came to medina and attacked him in his house the story goes that both man had his quran open on his lap and while he was reading several of them stabbed him together putting their hands on the single knife so that the blame will be spread among all of them visa as it may as may not surprise you there are copies of uthman's quran with blood stains in various locations around the muslim world most notably in the top copy palace in istanbul you can see that if you travel to istanbul today so uthman's assassination again is this real clear sign of internal strife 6 56 this is just 24 years after the death of the prophet muhammad but notably right after much of this territory has been taken there's great deal of wealth that's pouring into medina and this wealth is being distributed among people according to set formulae again this is something we can talk about bit the d1 if you're curious lots of interesting details there but the result is that some people are in and some people are out and it's these people who are on the outside are not part of the ruling class who are upset about this ali ibn is the son-in-law as well as the nephew of sorry cousin of the prophet muhammad abu talib is ali's father also the prophet's uncle so you have an idea of how they're related he by many accounts is one of the first believers in islam everybody agrees that khadija the prophet's wife was the first believer ali may have was certainly among this early group he was passed over many times for caliph was not named as caliph in the among the first three but now finally he agrees to be caleb he was not directly involved with the assassination there's no evidence to that but the very fact that he agreed to take on the caliphate after uthman's assassination was cause for the first fitna so in other words it's not just both man's assassination but everything that came afterwards that is the the strife we're talking about on the one hand we have important companions of the prophet aisha the prophet's wife as well as talha and zubair go out and and actually undertake an armed conflict against ali in what is called the battle of the camel because of the camo that aisha wrote upon and she was cheering on her side very colorful accounts of these things in the muslim sources that we have today and then there is maurya so again mahawya was uthman's cousin he had already been named 640 as the governor of damascus and he simply refused to accept ali's position until uthman's assassination had been investigated so ali was really clever character we've got lots of information about him but as result ali is is reigning over this this period with broken system where he has lot of opposition from uthman's relative in damascus from companions of the prophets as well as from his own followers so ali is assassinated in 661 five years later by these strategies who were part of the people who followed ali and went into battle against maui and his forces along with without now the headaches the reason the kharag giants were upset was because ali and mahalia agreed to go into diplomatic discussion to solve their differences the characters thought this was ridiculous and undertook campaign of assassination they killed ali they were successful in that one they tried to kill maui ended up killing one of maui's generals and then the important general amir ibn al-ass who is the ruler of egypt at this time very wealthy and important province also was attempted to be assassinated he was just wounded in that process so this group of the kharagids then are political group part of ali's retinue and then opposing this negotiation between ali and malia they turn into religious sect and so are sometimes thought as the first religious sect there are some interesting differences they have compared to either sunnis or shiites she's don't exist yet we'll come up to them in second but this relationship of politics and religion is not something new here this is part of this this hadith group actually still around today and and located there's group located in north africa and some other places so this is the beginning of that kharajit the beginning of shiaism in some ways then comes up in 680 and what happens here is that maui who is this first omaya caliph in damascus instead of doing the traditional arab thing of me bringing the elders together to name who the next leader is going to be he designates his son yazid to be the next caleb this is the claim of kingship that berkey is talking about because in the traditional arab mode the the notion was there weren't kings rather it was kind of democracy where the the big important men of the area would get together and determine who the leader was going to to be there were number of people who did not like this transfer but among them was the prophet's own grandson the prophet's grandson hussein this is the son of ali right so his his grandfather was the prophet his father had been assassinated nearly 20 years earlier and he opposes zed's naming to the throne and in iraq outside of kufa place called karbala is where he met with yazid's forces he had only about 70 followers we're told and was utterly slaughtered in the field so the killing of the prophet's grandson is as berkey said you know it's small issue in terms of warfare only 70 followers but in terms of the history of islam is tremendously important for shiites this event in 680 is still very much commemorated today and commemorated in spectacular fashion if you're curious about this just google little bit karbal law and and hussein maharam and and find out some of the events there are millions of people who come to southern iraq to karbala every year to to mourn the death of the prophet's grandson so hugely significant in terms of the religion of islam and then finally the revolt that think is so important in terms of the the politics of the umayyad state is the revolt of abdullah ibn zubair now note that ivan of zubair is the son of zubair who was one of the companions who resisted ali's being named caliph so he is of an old family in in mecca and medina and for over 10 years controls mecca and medina and him is and refers to himself as caliph it's not only mecca and medina that he's in control if he's actually in control of much of the eastern provinces up into iraq and modern-day iran and all of that these variants are at various times in control of those territories as well and here is where we see the first change in the coins that had mentioned it's actually under the zubarits that that iconography of the sustained period with the fire altars and the visage of the emperor yes with the beer so he's an arab but still it's the emperor the face of the emperor and the fire altar that is taken away and replaced with now similar pious statements that we have in the coin reform few years later under abdomen so chase robinson professor at the city university of new york has argued and certainly agree that this change that's happening with the zubaritz was probably the impetus for the change that we see under the alliance and one of the the things that's interesting about this and berkey mentions this as well is that that date is 692 when abdullah ibn zubair his revolt are finally crushed by the umayyads of the malik of marwan is the very date of the building of the dome of the rock we'll talk about that in just second so the omaya dynasty of damascus yes 660 or 661 or 640 up until 7 50. first we have maui who is caleb then for these 20 years he is not only the cousin of uthman the third caleb he is also the brother-in-law of the prophet muhammad very interesting berkey talks about this continuation of arab tribal concepts into the early islamic period all of the first five caliphs are related to the prophet muhammad by marriage all the first five caliphs are related with prophet muhammad by marriage and so ma'alia is also he's companion of the prophet is is part of this story and yet he is the one who is seen as the establishment of this new dynasty damascus here is very important the reason why put this on the map on the quiz because the shift from medina to damascus is indicative of if you will byzantiation representation figure out your own word of the early islamic movement what mean by that is that lot of what we see and we saw this already in some of the correspondence we looked at the continuation of greek and in the diplomatic correspondence and tax receipts the adoption of these coins that's very similar to what byzantine coins looked like the whole turning if you will west toward byzantium one wonders whether the byzantine empire might have eventually absorbed the omaya dynasty into its fold because the fact is is that the differentiation between those local christians and these new muslims was not really that significant there's lot of things in the quran that speak very highly of jesus for example so maui is an interesting puzzle and very important figure of transitional figure for us to pay attention to abdomen definitely key figure in the umayyad dynasty he is the one who is given credit for reforming both arabic as well as the coinage my question as to whether this is really optimatic's work or whether he's simply smartly responding to things that are happening elsewhere in his world specifically mecca and medina and the revolt of abdullah ebenezer and then the third person that want you to know is omar ibn abdulaziz mentioned very briefly by berkey as the the pious kennel of omar and we've got two omars right there's omar ibn khattal the the second caliph and there's omar bin abdullah aziz this omaya caleb you can talk about them as omar 1 and omar 2 if that makes it easy for you omar not aziz lots to say about him but what we want to remember in terms of islamic history is that he was trying to address this question of these new converts to islam so we definitely see significant movement within the omaha period maui who was not reforming coinage was not building monuments who for all intents and purposes seemed to try to get along with his damascus arabs and the arabs around him who were mostly christian so from there we moved to abdomen this very significant break from christianity this establishment of kind of public face for islam and then omar of nagala aziz because of the success there were all these people converting to islam who were supposed to pay an extra tax and the the way that the taxation system went is that did not pay this tax non-muslims did but new converts were required to continue paying the tax that they paid when they were non-muslims obviously this continued on pace there would be lot less flowing into the treasury but omar because he was interested in the spread of islam wanted to give these new converts the same treatment as other muslims he's also credited with beginning collections of these hadith reports we talked about the hadith briefly in class these are the narrative accounts not just of the prophet muhammad also of the prophet's companions of many events that happened during the prophet's life and then things that happened afterwards so we've got hadith that are accounts of the reign of abu bakr an omar and uthman those are all passed down to us in these packets of story that we call hadith can talk more about that in class if you're curious but the actual collection of these really began under under omar when he set up secretary to begin this work so let's talk about this dome of the rock again abdomen there are variety of different possible interpretations for this here's the building itself as berkey points out it's not mosque it's not really possible to pray or you can pray anywhere but there's no qibla there's no clear designation of where what the direction of prayer is rather the architecture forces you to do something when you walk in this door and that's to circle around the large rock that's in the middle under the dome itself it's spectacularly beautiful building the exterior that you see those tiles those are later edition from the ottoman period but still really gorgeous and the inside the mosaics here this is typical byzantine work and this is the reason that architectural historians have said that there were byzantines who helped design this and who also worked on this so this is interesting to think about that this first significant muslim building is actually probably being built by christians the inscriptions on the inside are quotations from the quran and so in effect this becomes our first clearly dated representation of the quran we have manuscripts that are older but those are dated by other means things like carbon dating which has large range and and can be questioned whereas the dating of the dome of the rocks it's 91 or 6.92 apologize for that that's the difference in hadry versus milady dating the dating of the demo rock is quite clear there are so many possibilities here as to why of the medic built this building one suggestion is that it was an alternative pilgrimage site since of the since had control of mecca there was no hajj no pilgrimage to mecca so did abdumalik build this in jerusalem to provide an alternative another place to go on pilgrimage it is in the very site of the holy of holies is this some kind of celebration of judaism or is it supplanting of judaism the statements inside the dome are clearly and they're quoted in the berkey book they're clearly opposed to christianity clarifying if you will the christian perspective on jesus so there's great deal to learn from this monument and we can talk more about this in class the omaya mosque in damascus was built little bit later after abdomenic's death and it's very important structure that was built in the foundation of saint john's cathedral so saint john the baptist we're talking about his head is apparently still there and this cathedral in the middle of damascus was where muslims also worshipped so now this is interesting right because again maui is in damascus from 640 on we've got from there until 7 15 so that's 75 years when muslims are worshiping with christians at the umayyad sorry at the saint john's church until the mosque itself is built and the structure of the mosque you can see still mimics that old byzantine basilica style of the cathedral that used to be there to begin with in the courtyard you have this gorgeous structure on the left that's the treasury again covered with beautiful byzantine mosaics which are also found on the interior of the mosque and these two enormous wings that separate right to left because muslims pray in rows and long rows now they do not face the the pulpit or the altar they pray all in these long rows all facing the one direction which is mecca so the structure is purpose built for muslim prayer again very different from the dome of the rock lots to talk about in terms of the fascinating umayyad mosque of damascus and then the third piece just want to show you in contrast is the city akba mosque in carowind tunisia supposedly its foundation goes all the way back to 661. we have no evidence of that whatsoever what we do have is the 10th century structure almost utterly intact from that period really hardly has changed at all many many interesting things to talk about this first of all look at the prominent minaret which was part of mosque structure at this point now the umayyad mosque has little corner minarets which are very even hard to discern whereas this is structurally very very clear and you will see this unique kind of box minaret as part of the architectural expression of western muslims all the way out into morocco and then up into spain many examples of this and then you can also make out in the arcade perhaps that there are columns here double columns and those are all spolia those were all taken from old roman structures which were found throughout north africa in fact in the big stones here at the bottom at the base of the minaret you also see stones with latin inscription on them some of them upside down which is an interesting choice mean they surely knew which way was up and and incorporating it in upside down is sort of claim of authority it seems to me anyway so let's reflect just bit on on what islam was like under the umayyads remember our difficulties understanding these sources the literary sources tell us all about these different rivalries and and of course none of these she is if it was none of those one right the the umayyads won so that's what we consider to be islam today but we should consider what it would have been like if catachism was the defining element of islam if the kharagids had won and they were the ones who determined what this new religion would look like in terms of shiism we in fact have many examples of shiites in control and shiite dynasties the thoughtsman being the largest and most spectacular of these but many other examples as well so don't want you to think of shiism as sect of islam as if islam is this thing and she isn't is just heresy right but rather as these is different possible expressions of islam one of which was very successful the sunni version another which she is still 10 percent of muslims today are shiites and then the role of religion as justifying the political dynasty the the way that religion did that in in the byzantine empire the way it did it in the susana empire and the continuation of this concept under the omids and as we'll see under the assets as well the evidence then we look at architecture and papyri we have many questions but certainly we do see this move toward repeating some of the themes that were previously there not complete erasure of the past in many ways but an incorporation of this past in unique ways and want to bring to light something that i'll be talking about in my book and we can focus on it this is tombstone found in swan egypt that's upper egypt near where the s1 dam is about almost 100 years ago and this tombstone is really important for variety of reasons but precisely because it does not represent the state it is not an attempt to justify dynasty it is rather private expression of grief over the death of someone who dies right about the same time that abdul malik marwan is reforming the coins and so we have some really interesting expressions in this that we'll be talking about suffice it to say that if we're looking for non-public expressions of islam we can also find those the question is we what do we as historians think is valuable what do we think the story is that we need to tell and finally to think about this difference between the hadith that is to say these these packets of story and what's called sunnah so sunnah is understood as an authoritative aspect of the islamic tradition authoritative in the way that the quran is authoritative but frankly which sunnah are muslims supposed to follow is the sunnah of the caliph is the sunnah of the prophet's family is the sunnah of the town of medina there were various people who who argued for these the shift that we see in the ninth century as i'll talk about next week is the shift to more textual authority and this is the rise of the religious experts otherwise known as the ole man who take all of this and and weave it into tradition that in many ways puts them in the the position of determining what is and what is not is long so again that's quite bit of material there is lot more to unpack and look forward to discussing this with all all with you in class on thursday see you then