by Sanderson Beck
The 'Abbasids began by taking power from the Syrian Arabs
as
'Abd Allah ibn 'Ali hunted down the Umayyad leaders.
In 750 eighty
nobles of the Umayyad house were invited to a banquet in Syria.
All were murdered except Rahman ibn Mu'awiya, who escaped and
made his way to Spain,
where he became an independent Umayyad
governor in 756 with his capital at Cordoba.
In the rest of the
Islamic empire under the 'Abbasids
many Persians gained prominent
positions.
The religious Shi'a, led in Iraq by Abu-Salamah,
reluctantly accepted the 'Abbasid chief as Caliph.
The 'Abbasids justified their claim to the caliphate
as the descendants of the prophet Muhammad's uncle al-'Abbas.
The first 'Abbasid Caliph's name al-Saffah means "the bloodshedder;"
he did not trust Kufa and built his palace at al-Anbar north of the Euphrates,
but he died in 754.
His brother Abu Ja'far succeeded him
taking the name al-Mansur, which means "the victorious."
He agreed to make his nephew 'Isa ibn Musa his heir
but later in 764 terrified him into retiring on a pension.
Al-Mansur persuaded Abu Muslim to lead his army against the rebelling forces
of 'Abd Allah, who was defeated at Nisibin in 754 and fled to Basra.
Then the Caliph invited Abu Muslim to his court and had him killed by his guards;
his followers in Khurasan also had to be quelled.
After two Chinese prisoners revealed the secret of making paper,
the first Muslim paper mill was founded at Samarkand in 751.
Ibn
al-Muqaffa' wrote in Basra while Sulayman governed there (751-757);
but he was executed soon after Sulayman was removed.
In his Risala
fi'l-sahaba (Epistle on the Companionage), ibn al-Muqaffa' advised
separating fiscal and military duties because
collecting the land tax (kharaj) was a corrupting occupation.
He recommended
religious and ethical education for officers and regular salaries.
Ibn al-Muqaffa' advised the Caliph to compile the laws so that
judges
would not be guided merely by their own opinions.
The common
people should also be educated by professional teachers.
Al-Mansur (r. 754-775) sent out armies against the Byzantines
that recaptured forts in Armenia and Cilicia and penetrated into
Tabaristan.
Further east Muslim troops captured Qandahar in Afghanistan
and went through the Khyber Pass into India, raiding Kashmir.
According to a Chinese history of 758, Arabs and Persians sacked
and burned Canton,
causing this port to be closed to foreign shipping
until 792.
'Alid revolts in Arabia and Basra were violently put
down by 763.
Al-Mansur also had other religious extremists killed,
including the Rawandiya,
who worshipped him as Caliph, and he
persecuted the Manichaeans.
Al-Mansur kept on the capable Khalid
ibn Barmak,
who had been the chief advisor of his predecessor.
Khalid's father was said to have been a Buddhist priest at Balkh,
and he was well educated.
In 762 the Caliph began building a new
capital at Baghdad near the sites of the
illustrious ancient cities
of Akkad, Babylon, Seleucia, and Ctesiphon, using 100,000 laborers.
To gain funds he appropriated 2,700,000 dirhams from his own brother Abbas
that he had gained as Governor of Mesopotamia,
and he took nine-tenths of the assets from the wealthy descendants of Abu Bakr at Basra.
Baghdad would soon become home to about 400,000 people,
the largest city outside of China.
Al-Mansur centralized power by appointing judges himself
and established a network of spies;
but he was fairly parsimonious and left a rich treasury to his son,
who took the presumptuous name of al-Mahdi, "the guided one."
When the Jewish Exilarch Solomon died in 761, the Geonim leaders,
Judah the Blind at Sora and Dudai at Pumbeditha,
prevented Anan
ben David from succeeding by choosing his younger brother Chananya.
Anan rejected the Judaism of the Talmud
and wanted to return
to a strict adherence to the Bible,
which had recently been made more available to non-scholars
by adding a system of vowel points.
The followers of Anan called themselves Karais and their adversaries Rabbanis,
meaning "partisans of authority."
Anan was put in prison; but he was released by the Caliph when he claimed that
he was not a rebel against Judaism but the founder of a new religion.
After the time of Anan the Exilarchate was no longer hereditary;
but the presidents of the academies directed the election of the Exilarch.
For many centuries the Arab conquerors ruled as an elite,
and conversion of Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians to Islam was gradual.
Muslims did not become a majority in their empire until the eleventh century.
In northern Mesopotamia and Syria,
Christians remained the majority until the late 13th century.
Muqatil ibn Sulayman (d. 767) suggested that the Qur'an
could be interpreted
historically and allegorically as well as
literally.
Ja'far al-Sadiq (d. 765) was the sixth imam
in the line of 'Ali.
He and others found four levels of meaning.
After Ja'far died, the Shi'i community divided
into followers
of his sons 'Abdallah and Isma'il.
In the 9th century the Isma'ilis
proselytized peasant tribes
in Arabia, Syria, Iraq, North Africa,
and Iran,
preaching reform and trying to organize them politically.
The Mazdakis formed the Shi'i sect Khurramiyya.
They also believed in reincarnation and embodiment of the divine in periodic prophets.
After the Umayyad caliphate collapsed, the Mazdakis supported Abu Muslim,
who was murdered by the 'Abbasid al-Mansur in 755.
His general Sunbad took up the revolt in Ray and was accused of being a libertine.
In 777 al-Muqanna was called "the veiled prophet of Khurasan"
and led the Mazdaki rebellion in Transoxiania for eight years before they were defeated.
After the Khurrami Javidan ibn Shahrak died about 816,
Babak claimed that Javidan's soul had passed into his body.
He revolted against the 'Abbasid Caliph Al-Ma'mun and his successor for twenty years
in Jibal and Azerbaijan; but his defeat and execution in 837
ended Mazdaki hopes to overcome the aristocratic 'Abbasids.
The Kaisani Shi'is changed their loyalty to the lineage of Isma'il
ibn Jafar,
and the Khurramis developed their theories of
esoteric
interpretation and became known as Batinis.
The city of Kufa became
a center for these ideas, and in the 9th century
Hamdan Qarmat
formed the first communistic villages there.
They formed a union
and chose one reliable person
to receive and distribute goods for the needs of all.
People worked hard for the honor of benefiting
the community.
The impoverished or indebted were helped to become
solvent,
and they only had to repay the capital.
Like the Manichaeans, the Mazdakis believed in
the two basic principles
of Light and Darkness.
They sought to practice the four divine
powers of
discernment, understanding, perseverance, and joy.
These
were analogous to the king, the chief priest or judge,
the army
commander, and the entertainment master.
The human who becomes
godly is no longer subject to religious rituals.
In the tenth
century Naubakhti and Maqdisi described the tenets of the Khurrami.
Maqdisi wrote they believed that souls return and that revelation
by prophets comes from one source and never ends.
They avoided
shedding blood except when revolting and expected heavenly rewards
if they did not injure community or religion.
Some of them engaged
in free sex and believed in enjoying all pleasures
as long as
they did not harm others.
Naubakhti explained that their interpretation
of the resurrection is that
souls transmigrate and thus receive
the rewards of heaven
and the punishments of hell in this world.
God can incarnate as imams, prophets, apostles, and angels.
The
writing of Shahristani also indicates that the Khurramis
replaced
the day of judgment with reincarnation.
Al-Mahdi (r. 775-785) made Khalid's son Yahya al-Barmaki his
vizier (prime minister),
and he also appointed him to tutor his
son Harun.
This Caliph patronized the arts and sciences
and built
Baghdad into a thriving commercial center.
Ibadi Khariji leader
'Abd al-Rahman ibn Rustam founded an independent state
in the
central Maghrib (Algeria) by 778; but al-Mahdi suppressed the
messianic movement
led by al-Muqanna (the Veiled One) in the east
in 778
and had the Persian prophet Salik ibn Abdul Quddus crucified
as a Zindiq (extremist) in 783.
Yet he tried to mollify
the 'Alids with gifts and positions at court.
In 782 al-Mahdi
left his son Musa as regent in Baghdad
while he led his army against
Constantinople.
His younger son Harun gained the name al-Rashid
(the upright) for advancing
to Chrysopolis and forcing Empress
Irene to pay an annual tribute of 90,000 dinars.
Al-Mahdi died while hunting and was succeeded by his oldest son Musa in 785.
Musa imprisoned Vizier Yahya ibn Khalid al-Barmaki for recommending Harun
as the next caliph, and he turned to military leaders to put down an 'Alid rebellion
at Medina led by al-Husayn ibn 'Ali; but when he plotted against his own younger
brother Harun, their mother apparently had Musa suffocated in 786.
Harun was proclaimed Caliph, and he had Musa's son Ja'far arrested
and Yahya al-Barmaki released from prison.
Hasan's grandson Idris ibn 'Abd Allah escaped from the Medina battle,
and in 788 he and his son Idris II founded the Idrisid dynasty in Morocco.
East of there in 793 the people of Tunis rebelled and marched on the
Ifriqiya capital at Qairawan, ending the government by the Hatim family.
Harun sent his General Harthama, who restored order but resigned as Governor in 797,
being replaced by Harun's foster brother Muhammad ibn Muqatil.
People rebelled against his rule,
and in 800 Ibrahim ibn al-Aghlab established his Aghlabid dynasty at Qairawan.
Harun al-Rashid (r. 786-809) ruled at the height of 'Abbasid
wealth and power in Baghdad,
and his court became the setting
of the popular Thousand and One Nights.
Government was even more centralized under the powerful viziers
Yahya al-Barmaki and his son Fadl.
Many governors were replaced, and Egypt was investigated
to make sure that revenues were sent to Baghdad.
Ja'far al-Barmaki sent 'Umar ibn Mahran to replace the Governor of Egypt,
and he only accepted gifts in bags.
Then later those saying they could not pay taxes
were given their bags back so that they could.
Yahya was appointed Governor of Khurasan, where he recruited
50,000 new men, and 20,000 of these were sent to North Africa.
Strife between two tribal groups broke out at Damascus in 792 and lasted two years.
In 794 a Khariji rebellion led by Walid ibn Tarif in Jazira prevented the collection of taxes
in that region until the Bedouin chief Yazid ibn Mazyad al-Shaybani
was able to defeat the rebellion and kill Walid.
The Barmaki family was dominant for sixteen years;
but after al-Fadl gave Yahya ibn 'Abd Allah safe conduct from his mountain refuge,
the Caliph had the 'Alid executed.
After that, Harun turned more to his military commanders such as Yazid ibn Mazyad.
Harun conferred generous gifts on the celebrated
musician Ibrahim
al-Mawsili and the poet Abu-Nuwas.
The Caliph sponsored the construction
of numerous academies and universities,
beginning the work of
translating the great books from Greek and Sanskrit.
In 791 Harun
ordered all provincial governors to encourage learning
by giving
prizes in state examinations.
An outstanding book on Arabic grammar
was written by al-Kisa'i,
and jurisprudence was advanced by discussions
with his chief judge Abu-Yusuf,
the most distinguished jurist
after the liberal Abu-Hanifa (700-767) of Iraq.
Harun asked Abu-Yusuf
to write a book defining religious tax collection
so that human
rights could be preserved.
At Medina the influential jurist Malik
ibn Anas (d. 795) formulated
a comprehensive collection of legal
precedents based on the traditions
of the prophet and his Medina
community.
Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafi'i (d. 820) studied with Malik at
Medina.
While an official in Yemen al-Shafi'i joined a moderate
Shi'i rebellion and was imprisoned
during the caliphate of Harun
al-Rashid.
After learning from Baghdad jurists, al-Shafi'i went
to Egypt to teach.
In his major work, Kitab al-Umm, he
tried to show that the entire Muslim law (Shari'a)
could
be derived from the Qur'an
in order to eliminate the arbitrary use
of personal judgment
(ra'y) by using reason ('aql) and analogies (qiyas)
from the accepted traditions.
For the ultimate authoritative principle
he suggested the consensus (ijma')
of the Muslim community
(umma).
Whatever all the accepted Muslim scholars ('ulama)
recognized became binding law.
Al-Shafi'i also sought to establish
the credibility of the traditions (hadith)
by authenticating
its transmitters (isnad).
As an alternative to Malik the
legal ethics of al-Shafi'i
became an established system of jurisprudence (fiqh).
The four sources of this jurisprudence are
the Qur'an, the
traditions, consensus, and analogy.
Although the Qur'an
forbade drinking wine, the Hanifi legal view allowed
alcoholic
drinks made from dates, honey, or figs.
Apparently Harun began
to drink more in the later years of his reign.
The Caliphate government
took ten percent of imported merchandise as customs dues,
but
most of the revenue came from the imperial land tax and the poll
tax on non-Muslims.
During Harun's reign the annual government
income has been estimated at
42,000,000 gold dinars, and
the historian Tabari stated that when Harun died,
the treasury
contained 900 trillion silver dirhams,
though 100,000,000 dinars is a more reasonable estimate.
Harun married his
cousin Zubayda, who like his mother (her aunt),
had extensive
estates to manage all over the empire.
Zubayda used her own resources
to build canals, mosques, hostelries, and monasteries;
she had
the pilgrims' 900-mile road from Kufa to Mecca improved.
As affluence
spread in Baghdad, more people wanted to borrow money,
which was
loaned by Jews not bound by the Qur'an's
injunction against usury.
Harun's two regular projects were attacking the Byzantines in the north
and leading the pilgrimage south to Mecca.
In 797 the Abbasids' first prisoner exchange with the Byzantines freed 3,700 captives.
Although Muslims could not be made slaves,
many were imported from outside the empire or were captured in war.
Slaves actually lived rather well among Muslims who followed the ethic
of making them part of their families.
This provided security, and religious merit was gained by freeing them.
Males were often adopted as sons, and females who bore a child became
respected mothers in the household run by the women.
Yet male slaves could be beaten for being disobedient or idle.
Besides his prominent wife Zubayda, Harun's closest
companion
was al-Fadl's brother Ja'far,
who was educated by the famous judge
Abu-Yusuf
and married Harun's favorite sister Abbasa.
So jealous
was the Caliph over Ja'far's companionship that he forbade him
from being alone with his own wife, and he was very upset when
he learned
that Abbasa had borne Ja'far two children.
The Barmakis
had their own palaces, and Ja'far's cost twenty million dirhams
to build
and an equal amount to furnish.
In 798 when 'Abd Allah
al-Ma'mun was 12, Harun made Ja'far his tutor,
and together they
began governing Khurasan.
Yahya's elder son al-Fadl became the
mentor of al-Amin.
In 802 Harun divided his empire in half between
his two 16-year-old sons,
giving al-Amin Iraq and the West, while
al-Ma'mun maintained Khurasan and Persia.
In Mecca that year Harun
gave away a million gold dinars in charity.
Harun had Musa
al-Barmaki and Ja'far arrested.
In 803 Harun had his best friend Ja'far suddenly killed, probably
because he suspected
that the powerful Barmaki family was fomenting
a Shi'i rebellion in Khurasan.
Yahya, his three other sons, and
their relatives were put in prison,
and the inventory of their
estates came to 36,676,000 dinars.
Believing his former Vizier was still holding out,
Harun had al-Fadl given 200 lashes, which nearly killed him.
Behind these arbitrary actions may have been a dispute over the succession.
Harun favored his oldest son Muhammad, who later became al-Amin;
but the Barmakis and Khurasani soldiers wanted his other son 'Abd Allah (al-Ma'mun)
at least to rule over Khurasan as an independent province.
Harun sent an enemy of the Barmakis, 'Ali ibn 'Isa ibn Mahan, to govern Khurasan.
In 805 a rebellion broke out in Samarkand led by Rafi ibn Layth,
grandson of their last Umayyad Governor Nasr ibn Sayyar.
Harun's Governor 'Ali ibn Mahan had exploited the resources there
and had to be replaced by General Harthama ibn A'yan.
Mahan's son Isa had stolen 30,000,000 dirhams before he was killed
fighting Rafi,
and Mahan was found with another 80,000,000 dirhams himself.
In 806 Harun with about 135,000 men led the largest military expedition
against the Byzantine empire during the Abbasid era;
the raids captured Heraclea and Tyana
while the Muslim navy plundered Cyprus in 805 and Rhodes in 807.
Byzantine Emperor Nicephorus agreed to pay an additional
300,000 dinars tribute in exchange
for a truce.
With revolts in Syria and North Africa as well as
in Khurasan,
Harun became increasingly paranoid and even suspected
his two sons of plotting against him.
Harun marched east from
Baghdad with his army in 808.
He sent 10,000 men to suppress a
revolt by Khurramiya heretics in Azerbaijan;
all prisoners were
killed, and their property was sold at auction.
Harthama was besieging
Rafi at Samarkand;
when Rafi's brother was captured and sent to
Harun, the Caliph had him executed.
Harun was the only reigning
'Abbasid caliph to visit Khurasan,
and he died there of illness
in 809.
Harun's son by his wife Zubayda became Caliph with the name al-Amin
while Harun's son by a Persian slave named al-Ma'mun continued to govern Khurasan.
Al-Ma'mun proclaimed himself imam, the spiritual leader,
and in 811 al-Amin appointed 'Ali ibn 'Isa Governor of Khurasan
and sent him east with an army of 40,000;
but they were defeated at Ray by a much smaller force led by al-Ma'mun’s General Tahir.
Then the next year Tahir's forces were augmented by a large army commanded
by Harthama ibn A'yan, who defeated Shi'i rebellions in southern Iraq.
Rebellions against al-Amin also occurred in Egypt and Arabia.
Tahir's army besieged Baghdad for more than a year, and al-Amin was killed.
Al-Ma'mun (r. 813-833) tried to rule from Marv in Khurasan for several years.
Al-Fadl ibn Sahl's brother al-Hasan governed in Baghdad but was disliked.
When al-Fadl persuaded the Caliph to imprison Harthama,
al-Hasan was temporarily driven out of Baghdad.
After these rebellions al-Ma'mun proclaimed 'Ali ibn Musa,
an 'Alid descendant of Husain as his heir in 817.
That year the Caliph had his Vizier al-Fadl ibn Sahl put to death,
and his court arrived at Baghdad in 819.
Syria, Palestine, and Egypt still remained outside his control.
Al Ma'mun appointed Tahir governor of the West, then police chief at Baghdad in 820,
and Governor of Khurasan in 821; though Tahir died the next year,
he was succeeded by his son Talha.
The Caliph sent his brother 'Abd Allah ibn Tahir to force a reconciliation
on northern Syria in 824, and 'Abd Allah also brought Egypt back into the Caliph's empire
before returning to the capital in 827.
When his brother died the next year,
'Abd Allah ibn Tahir was appointed Governor of Khurasan
Ifriqiya was not regained and was controlled by the Aghlabid family,
though the Muslim navy dominated the Mediterranean Sea.
Muslims from Spain conquered Crete in 825 and ruled it until 961
while the Aghlabids occupied all of Sicily by 831.
At Baghdad al-Ma'mun established a hall of wisdom to promote
science and philosophy,
sponsoring translations from Greek, Syriac,
Persian, and Sanskrit.
He provided endowments for several colleges
and encouraged free discussion on theological and other issues.
Children of both sexes were taught the Qur'an
in mosque elementary schools,
but few girls had education beyond
that.
Aristocrats usually were educated by private tutors.
Al
Ma'mun appointed Jews, Christians, Zarathustrians, and Sabaeans
to his council in equality with Muslims.
His edict of 827, declaring
the Qur'an a
creation rather than the eternal word of God,
challenged the fundamentalists,
allowed for future change,
and acknowledged free will; thus he
favored the Mu'tazili.
However, in his last year he may have gone
too far in ordering an inquisition (mihna)
to hunt down
recalcitrant traditionalists.
Professionals had to acknowledge
that the Qur'an
is a creation or lose their jobs.
The jurist Ahmad ibn Hanbal
(780-855) was persecuted,
and he became imam for a dissident
legal school.
In the north the schismatic Babak had revived the
ideas of al-Muqanna
and allied with the Byzantine army of Theophilus,
beginning a major revolt in 816.
Al Ma'mun died on a campaign
against them after capturing Tarsus in 833.
Al-Mu'tasim's mother had been a Turkish slave and as Caliph
he fortified his rule (833-842) by acquiring an army of Turkish slaves.
Khurasan’s Governor 'Abd Allah ibn Tahir sent him 2,000 each year as tribute
Azerbaijan’s Governor Hatim ibn Harthama ibn A'yan had revolted
when he learned that his father had been imprisoned and killed by al-Ma'mun;
joining with Babak, they controlled most of Aberbaijan and some of Jibal by 833.
Al-Mu'tasim sent Ushrusana’s King al-Afshin, and Babak was finally defeated in 837.
Al-Afshin probably encouraged Tabaristan’s Governor Mazyar to revolt against
the Tahirids in 839 by refusing to pay the land tax,
and many peasants overthrew their village chiefs to plunder their goods.
Seeing the danger of this revolution, the Caliph helped 'Abd Allah ibn Tahir to defeat them.
Al-Mu'tasim accused al-Afshin of conspiring with this revolution,
and he was tried and executed in 841.
Al-Mu'tasim had built a new capital at Samarra in 836.
Salaries that had traditionally gone to Arab Muslim families now went to Turkish soldiers.
Government was even more centralized
as even fairly independent Khurasan sent funds to Iraq.
The rich merchant Muhammad ibn al-Zayyat became Vizier in 836
and held that important position also through the reign
of al-Mu'tasim's son al-Wathiq (842-847).
Both these caliphs continued the inquisition began by al-Ma'mun.
Al-Wathiq also tried to force his liberal views on the clergy
and even had the fundamentalist Ahmad ibn Nasr Khuzai beheaded; but his successor
al-Mutawakkil (r. 847-861) reasserted the orthodoxy of the Sunni majority.
He ended the inquisition in 848 but persecuted dissent and non-Muslims.
Professional schools of law developed, and no theology was considered legimitimate
if it was not associated with one of the four Sunni schools.
The Turkish Itakh became Governor of the West in 844,
but the Caliph and the Tahirids had him assassinated in 849.
When Khurasan’s Governor 'Abd Allah ibn Tahir died in 845,
he was succeeded by his son Tahir,
continuing that family's control of the east during al-Mutawakkil's reign.
Three caliphal armies were sent to defeat a rebellion in Azerbaijan,
and they were victorious in 849.
In his Book of Proof al-Jahiz (776-869) wrote that
Arabs could be preserved
from decline if they did not fall prey
to the fools' sense of honor,
which is to regard forgiving another
as wrong.
His "Merits of the Turks" and other essays
were written
for the sophisticated Arabs who feared the Turks.
When the Caliph confiscated the estates of Turkish leader Wasif
to give them to al-Fath,
Wasif and other Turks murdered al-Mutawakkil
and al-Fath in 861.
In the next nine years four different Caliphs attempted to rule from Samarra,
and three of them were murdered.
Utamish became the first Turkish Vizier; but he was assassinated in 863
by troops doing the bidding of his rivals Wasif and Bugha the Younger.
Caspian provinces rebelled and gained their independence in 864.
A vigilante leader named Ya'qub ibn Layth in 861 had seized the provincial capital of Zaranj,
and by 865 the coppersmith (saffar)
had defeated kharijis and controlled Sistan,
founding the Saffarid dynasty.
Two years later he invaded Taharid Khurasan; the Saffarids took Kirman and Fars,
and in 870 Ya'qub's forces invaded Ghazna, Kabul, and Bamyan.
Al-Muntasir (r. 861) had lasted only six months as Caliph;
but the Turks chose his brother al-Mu'tazz to challenge Caliph al-Musta'in,
who had been selected by Wasif, Bugha, and the Tahirids in 865.
They besieged Baghdad, forcing al-Musta'in into exile at Wasit, where he soon died.
In 867 Wasif was murdered by rivals, and the next year Bugha the Younger died in prison
while Bugha's elder son was exiled to Hamadhan.
As Tahirid power declined, al-Mu'tazz was murdered in 869.
His successor al-Muqtadi, son of al-Wathiq, was soon deposed by Turkish officers
led by Musa ibn Bugha, who appointed as Caliph al-Mutamid,
the eldest surviving son of al-Mutawakkil.
Although al-Mutamid was Caliph 870-892,
the real power was gained by his brother al-Muwaffaq.
A revolution of mostly African slaves called Zanj
(who had worked sugar cane in wretched conditions) began in 868
led by 'Ali ibn Muhammad, who claimed to be a descendant of the 'Alid family.
In 871 the ex-slaves aided by the Banu Tamim
and the Banu Asad destroyed the large city of Basra
slaughtering a reported quarter million inhabitants in one day.
'Ali founded a new capital called Mukhtara east of Basra.
In 873 Musa ibn Bugha fought the Zanj for a while
but had to resign as Governor of the East.
That year Ya'qub's forces took Nishapur, ending a half century of Taharid rule.
Al-Muwaffaq and a third party of rebels fought Ya'qub's army in 875,
and Ya'qub was defeated trying to take Baghdad the next year.
In 879 Ya'qub died and was succeeded by his brother 'Amr.
That year al-Muwaffaq and his son Abu'l-'Abbas led an army of 50,000 against the Zanj;
but Mukhtara was not taken until 883 when 'Ali ibn Muhammad was killed in the fighting.
After the eleventh Shi’i imam died in 874, the Banu Nawbakht family in Baghdad
suggested that the twelfth imam was hidden;
but after 941 this became an expectation for the future Islamic messiah called the mahdi,
and those hoping for this are called Twelvers.
During the decline of the ‘Abbasid Caliphate,
the Shi’i faction of the Banu Furat in Baghdad
was opposed by the Banu Jarrah,
which was mostly Nestorian Christians wanting freedom of religion.
Ahmad ibn Tulun, son of a Turkish slave, governed Egypt from
868
and hired a large army to take over Syria and attack the Byzantines.
When Tulun died in 884, al-Muwaffaq sent his son Abu'l-'Abbas
to challenge Tulun's son Khumarawayh ibn Ahmad and forced
the
Tulunids to pay 300,000 dinars in annual tribute to the caliphate.
Al-Muwaffaq now held the real power until he died in 891.
Then his son Abu'l-'Abbas took over, and as the next Caliph
he took the name al-Mu'tadid (r. 892-902).
He regained territories taken by the Tulunids,
increasing Egypt's tribute to 450,000 dinars per year.
Al-Mu'tadid also used his armies
to bring Jazira back under Abbasid control
by occupying Mosul
in 893; but Armenia and Azerbaijan remained independent.
In 898
the Caliph appointed the Saffarid 'Amr ibn Layth to replace
the
Samanid Isma'il ibn Ahmad in Transoxiana;
but Layth was defeated
and captured,
and Isma'il was acknowledged as the ruler of Khurasan.
Al-Mu'tadid died and was succeeded by his son al-Muktafi (r. 902-908),
who made peace in the east with Samanids in Ray and the Saffarids in Fars.
As soon as he arrived in Baghdad, the new Caliph ordered the prisoners
released and the underground dungeons demolished.
The Qarmatian sect was founded by Hamdan Qarmat with an eclectic philosophy
and secret initiations, and they appointed their own caliph.
Their "Lords of Purity" sent Abu Said ibn Bahram al-Tannabi to conquer Bahrayn
and Zikrawayh al-Dindani with Bedouin forces
that devastated Syria and even besieged Damascus.
In 903 an Abbasid army led by Muhammad ibn Sulayman was sent
against the Qarmatians in Syria and defeated them,
though the Qarmatians continued to raid cities in Syria and Iraq.
The Tulunid dynasty was ended in 905, and Egypt was finally subdued the following year.
Increased tribute from these regions enabled al-Muktafi to leave a treasury
of 15,000,000 dinars when he died in
908.
Officials chose al-Muktafi's 13-year-old son Al-Muktadir as the next Caliph.
He was challenged by Amir al-Husayn ibn Hamdan's appointment of ibn al-Mu'tazz;
but his supporters abandoned him, and he was executed after one day.
Al-Muktadir's Vizier al-'Abbas was also killed in the fighting,
and 'Ali ibn al-Furat became the powerful vizier of the young Caliph.
His General Mu'nis not only saved his throne but led the campaigns that regained Fars
from the Saffarids in 910 and defended Egypt against a Fatimid invasion,
though little revenue was now coming in from these provinces.
The Caliph took to confiscating estates of deposed viziers,
taking 2,300,000 dinars from ibn al-Furat.
Respect for law declined, and religious wars between the Sunnis and Shi'as increased.
Ibn-Jarir al-Tabari wrote an extensive commentary on the Qur'an,
and his comprehensive history left extraordinary details
of Arab
and Muslim history up to the year 913.
Sajids led by Yusuf ibn Abi'l-Saj had taken Ray
but after several attempts the army of Mu'nis finally defeated them in Azerbaijan in 918,
though the new governor Sabuk did not send funds to Baghdad either.
When Sabuk died in 922, the captured Yusuf was released
and returned to govern Azerbaijan, Ray, and other Iranian provinces.
Al-Muktadir was deposed twice temporarily,
and it became increasingly difficult to raise revenues from the provinces.
The Madhara'i brothers agreed to collect taxes and pay one million dinars
per year
to the treasury while paying the Syrian and Egyptian
armies themselves;
but after 918 the threat of a Fatimid invasion
diverted income from Egypt,
and by the end of al-Muktadir's reign
in 932
no revenue had come in from Egypt or Syria in four years.
In 923 the Qarmatians began to invade Iraq from Bahrayn,
and led by Abu Tahir al-Jamnabi only 1,700 men
were needed to sack the recovering city of Basra.
In 926 Vizier al-Khasibi could only offer revenues from western Iran
to Azerbaijan ruler Yusuf ibn Abi'l-Saj to add to his Armenia and Azerbaijan’
if he would fight the rebels threatening the Sawad fields.
General Mu'nis got help from Hamdanids in defending Baghdad in 927,
but that year his Caliph began plotting against him.
Already controlling Arabia, the Qarmatians attacked Mecca in 930,
smashed the black stone of the Ka'ba and took the fragments to their capital at al-Ahsa.
At the same time their allied Fatimids were occupying Alexandria and the Fayyum in Egypt,
and Hanbalis were rioting in Baghdad.
Abbasid rule over central Iran ended in 931.
After three years of struggles in the capital,
Mu'nis defeated and killed Caliph Al-Muktadir in 932.
He was succeeded by his brother al-Qahir,
who had ruled briefly after an earlier deposition.
His violent methods and negotiation with the defeated Muhammad ibn Yaqut
stimulated Mu'nis to revolt; but the General's throat was cut in 933.
However, the next year the previous Vizier ibn Muqla seized al-Qahir
while he was drunk and put out his eyes.
In 934 Al-Muktadir's son al-Radi became Caliph over a decaying and shrinking empire.
Egypt and Syria were controlled by the ikhshid Muhammad ibn Tughj
while the Hamdanids had Mosul and Jazira,
and western Iran was in the hands of Daulami soldiers.
In 935 some fanatical Hanbalis raided people's houses in Baghdad,
pouring out wine, breaking the instruments of singing girls,
and stopping men from going with girls or boys.
Badr al-Kharshani, the chief of police, prohibited the Hanbalis from congregating;
but their zealous rioting continued, and Caliph al-Radi had to denounce them.
The Caliph appointed ibn Ra'iq commander of commanders in 936,
but the next year he damaged the Nahrawan canal that watered the Sawad
in order to block the invasion of Bajkam's army, affecting future productivity.
The command passed from the Turk Bajkam (938-941)
to the Hamdanid Nair al-Daula (942-943) and then to the Turk Tuzun (943-945).
Al-Radi died in 940 and was succeeded as Caliph by his brother Al-Muttaqi;
but he declined to flee to Egypt and was blinded and deposed by Tuzun.
When Tuzun died in 945,
the Buyids took power even though he had appointed a new caliph.
The last remaining Umayyad leader 'Abd al-Rahman had won over
the Yemeni party
and taken control of Muslim Spain in 756.
An
Abbasid expedition led by al-Ala ibn Mughith sent to Spain was
defeated in 761,
and the heads of its leaders were sent to the
Caliph.
In 767 'Abd al-Rahman made a 20-year truce with the northern
kingdom of Asturias.
An attempt by Charlemagne in 778 to take
Zaragoza failed.
'Abd al-Rahman piously tolerated Christians and
allowed Jews to return;
but his son Hisha I (r. 788-796) attacked
and defeated Christians in Castile and Alava,
though he was not
victorious against Asturias in 791.
His succeeding son al-Hakam
I (r. 796-822) suppressed rising religious dissent with force,
using Mamluk slaves in his palace guard
to intimidate people and
to build up a permanent army.
Zaragoza, Toledo, and Mérida
had to be violently reconquered.
Many fled Spain to Morocco or
Alexandria, and refugees conquered Crete in 825.
While 'Abd al-Rahman II (r. 822-852) devoted himself to learning and poetry,
his wife and the Spanish renegade eunuch Nasar ruled Spain.
Famines were relieved by the distribution of wheat in 823 and again in 846.
Toledo revolted in 829, and it took eight years to subdue them.
Scandinavian pirates were fought off in 844 at Gijon, La Coruña, and Seville.
When the Christian priest Perfecto denounced the prophet Muhammad,
he was executed;
soon 44 others imitated his martyrdom until a
Christian council
condemned this behavior in 852.
During the reign
(852-886) of Muhammad I rebellions broke out in Toledo and Mérida,
and several Bani Qazi lords became independent on the northern
frontier.
Southern cities also gained independence during the
era of 'Abd Allah (r. 888-912).
Young 'Abd al-Rahman III (r. 912-961) began ruling only over the state of Cordoba.
He suppressed the rebellion in the south led by the apostate 'Umar ibn Hafsun
that had lasted more than thirty years.
Revolts in Seville, Badajoz, and Toledo were quelled,
and he defeated Christians in the north at Mentona in 918 and at Valdejunquera in 920.
Pamphona, the capital of Navarre, was destroyed in 924;
this region as well as most of Spain was now forced to pay tribute.
In 929 'Abd al-Rahman declared himself the Caliph al-Nasir (the Conqueror).
He was defeated by the combined armies of Navarre and Leon in 939;
but when Leon’s King Ramiro II died in 950,
discord between Leon, Castile, and Navarre caused the Christian kings to submit.
The Jew Chasdai assisted in the diplomacy and was minister of trade and finance.
'Abd al-Rahman III spent a third of the revenues on government,
deposited a third in the treasury, and used a third for building.
A fleet of 200 ships was built at Almeria.
The treasury had 20,000,000 dinars,
and 'Abd al-Rahman used 10,000 workers
for twenty years to build
the extravagant palace of al-Zalra.
Cordoba's thriving population
passed 500,000,
created many books with its paper industry, and
had 70 libraries and 3,000 mosques.
His son and successor al-Hakam II (r. 961-976) established free schools,
expanded the university at Cordoba his father had founded and increased its library
to 400,000 volumes, making Spain Europe's greatest center
of learning and attracting thousands of students.
Al-Hakam II attacked Castile in 963 and then negotiated truces with Christian kings,
and he ended his father's war with the Fatimids in Tunisia by 973.
Jews were tolerated and prospered in Spain,
and their traders provided the Slavonian slaves for the Caliph's bodyguard.
Hisham II (r. 976-1009) was only twelve when he succeeded his father,
and the government was dominated by his mother Subh
and her lover Muhammad ibn Abi 'Amir.
To please some religious leaders ibn Abi 'Amir
had all the books related to philosophy in the library burned.
He won spoils in victories over Christians, was made prefect of Cordoba,
and married general Galib's daughter.
When he and Galib quarreled,
ibn Abi' Amir seized his treasure and killed the General in battle.
Calling himself al-Mansur (Victorious), he attacked Christians, sacking Zamora in 981,
chasing them to Leon, burning Barcelona in 985, and razing Leon in 988.
Al-Mansur died in 1002 after fighting in fifty campaigns,
and in a chronicle a monk recorded that he was buried in hell.
The Spanish caliphate gradually broke up into independent states.
Al-Mansur's position was taken by his son 'Abd al-Malik,
who continued to fight the Christians until he died
and was succeeded by his brother 'Abd al-Rahman.
Turkish bodyguards came to dominate the Spanish caliphs too,
and Hisham II was forced to abdicate in 1009.
In the south 'Ali ibn Hammad governed Andalusia (1016-1018),
declared himself Caliph at Cordoba, and was succeeded by relatives until 1027.
That year the Umayyad Caliph Hisham III came out of his harem,
where he had been in retirement for thirty years;
but after four years he was defeated and imprisoned in a dungeon by nobles,
who set up a council of state in 1031.
Berbers from Africa established the kingdom of Granada,
where
Badis ruled 1038-1073, repulsing attacks from the powerful kingdom
of Seville,
where the son of its judge (qadi) proclaimed himself al-Mutadid in 1042.
His son al-Mutamid was King of Seville 1069-1091, and he ended the republican council.
Al-Mutamid formed an alliance with Alphonso VI, King of Leon and Castile.
When Alphonso did not aid him against the incursions of the Cid,
al-Mutamid turned to Morocco's Murabit ruler Yusuf ibn Tashufin in 1086,
and together they defeated the armies of Alphonso VI at Zalaca.
Four years later Yusuf returned to Spain, took al-Mutamid prisoner,
and annexed all of Muslim Spain except for Toledo and Zaragoza.
Granada’s King 'Abd Allah was also deposed by the Almoravid Yusuf in 1090.
In the East in 875 Caliph al-Mu'tamid recognized the Persian
Samanid state in Transoxiana rather than the Saffarids.
The Samanid ruler Isma'il (r. 892-907) defeated the Saffarids
and took over Khurasan, Gurgan, Tabaristan, and Ray.
He corrected his own government's cheating by systematizing weights and measures.
His son Ahmad conquered most of Sistan by 911;
but when Tabaristan and Gurgan revolted, Ahmad was assassinated by his slaves in 914.
His eight-year-old son Nasr ibn Ahmad relied on his
Prime Minister Abu 'Abd-Allah al-Jaihani until 922,
Abu'l-Fadl al Bal'ami 922-938, and al-Jaihani again 938-941.
Tabaristan was not reconquered until 940.
Nasr's court sponsored Persian Muslim culture in both Arabic and Persian.
A library was assembled at the capital Bukhara,
and even slaves through education could rise to positions of authority.
Such Turkish officials and generals imported
more slaves and came to dominate the administration.
The Samanids extended their power by vassal relationships.
Nasr was succeeded by his son Nuh ibn Nasr in 943.
Abu 'Ali was reappointed governor of Khurasan in 948,
and he, instigated by the Ziyarids of Tabaristan, attacked the Buyids;
but his compromise with the Buyids in Ray caused him to be deposed.
After Nuh’s death in 954 his son 'Abd al-Malik was dependent on the Turks,
and Alp-Tegin was appointed governor of Khurasan.
The death of 'Abd al-Malik in 961 split the Turks,
and Alp-Tegin left Khurasan's capital Nishapur for Ghazna, where his independence
enabled his son Sebuk-Tegin to found the Ghaznavid empire in 977.
The Khurasan army dominated the Samanid empire
and attacked the Buyids in 982, but it was defeated.
Khurasan’s Governor Tash was summoned to restore order in Bukhara.
When his governorship was taken away, Tash called in the Buyids;
but they were defeated in 987.
Struggles in the capital led to Qarakhanid ruler
Bughra Khan invading and taking Bukhara in 992.
Ghazna's Sebuk-Tegin was called in and defeated the rebels in Khurasan in 994;
his son Mahmud was appointed Governor of Khurasan.
Mahmud gained power in Ghazna by defeating his brother and others,
and in 999 he deposed and blinded the Samanid ruler Mansur II.
The last Samanid ruler Muntasir appealed to Oghuz Turks;
but after defeating the Muslim Turks, the Qarakhanids, his army deserted him.
The Qarakhanids came back to defeat Muntasir,
who fled to Marv and was killed by their chief in 1005.
Mahmud (r. 998-1030) expanded the militaristic Ghaznavid empire by conquering
Sind and the Punjab of India in the east,
Khwarazm in the north, and Khurasan as far as Ray in the west.
While he was in India in 1006, the Qarakhanids occupied Balkh;
but he returned and defeated them in 1008.
However, his campaign against 'Ali-Tegin in Transoxiana failed.
Mahmud invaded and annexed Khwarezm in 1017.
Mahmud’s forces sacked Ray in 1029,
deposing the Buyid Governor Majd al-Daula Rustam ibn ‘Ali (r. 997-1029)
and annexing the province of Ray and Jibal.
Ghaznavids practiced an aristocratic militarism that dominated the civilian population
while adhering to conservative Sunni orthodoxy.
The army was reported to have had as many as 54,000 cavalry
and 1,300 elephants near Ghazna in 1038.
Plunder from their conquests enabled them to pay their army with cash
while the Buyids and Seljuqs resorted mostly to granting revenues from land.
However, Ghaznavid tax collectors caused misery and depopulation in Khurasan,
supporting a standing army of 50,000.
Mahmud entertained at court and patronized the poet Firdausi,
the geographer al-Biruni, and historians.
Mahmud wanted to be succeeded by his son Muhammad,
but Muhammad was imprisoned after a few months
by Sebuk-Tegin's choice, the more capable Mas'ud.
The Seljuq Turks defeated the Ghaznavids at Dandanqan in 1040,
and Mas'ud retreated to India, where he was killed by rebels in 1041.
Muhammad came out of prison to rule again;
but the Seljuqs continued to fight the Ghaznavids,
and their kingdom was diminished to eastern Afghanistan and northern India.
There Ibrahim (r. 1059-1099) was able to exploit
the wealth of the Hindus to pay his mountain military men.
The mountain people south of the Caspian Sea called the Daulamis arose
between the Samanids and the declining Abbasid caliphate
to fight the Turkish General Yaqut from Baghdad
who was exploiting the revenues with his private army.
Three sons of Buyeh joined Mardavij and then headed their own forces in 933
when the wealthy landowner Zayd supported them in Fars;
Yaqut's larger army was defeated by them the next year,
enabling the Buyids to enter the Fars capital at Shiraz.
The Caliph recognized the Buyid 'Imad al-Daula's claim to Fars,
but he still gave Khuzistan to Yaqut.
Mardavij was murdered in Isfahan in 935,
and his officers Tuzun and Bajkam fled to Baghdad.
Internal disputes there facilitated a Buyid attack on that capital in 945,
and the last effective Abbasid Caliph they replaced named the three Buyid brothers
Mu'izz al-Daula, 'Imad al-Daula, and Rukn al-Daula.
The next year the Hamdanids failed to expel the Buyids from Baghdad,
and in 947 Mu'izz defeated the Baridis and governed in Iraq.
Rukn al-Daula had established control over central Iran, ruling from Ray and Isfahan,
while the oldest brother 'Imad ruled Fars from Shiraz.
'Imad died in 949 and was succeeded by 'Adud al-Daula.
Rukn had to agree to pay the Samanid Governor of Khurasan tribute in 955,
though this was decreased in 971.
Rukn was served by the Vizier Abu l-Fadl ibn al-'Amid for thirty years.
When 20,000 men from Khurasan wanted to pass through his realm to fight the Byzantines,
al-'Amid advised they be permitted to go only in groups of 2,000.
Rukn rejected this advice, and at Ray the Khurasanians
demanded money and attacked the city, defeating Rukn al-Daula.
Ibn al-'Amid died on an expedition to the Jabal
aimed at pacifying the Kurdish leader Hasanawayh in 974.
At Baghdad conflict arose between the Daulami infantry and the Turkish cavalry
because the infantry were paid only six dinars a month, while the cavalry received forty.
The Daulamis rebelled in 956; but Mu'izz favored the Turks,
and the Daulamis were dispersed to live on revenues
from poor farmers and merchants in southern Iraq.
The historian Miskawayh criticized Mu'izz al-Daula for allocating the Sawad land in grants,
which caused irrigation to be neglected and revenues to decline.
He also wrote that Mu'izz's gifts to the army made the demand
for greater emoluments grow uncontrollably into extortion.
Mu'izz died in 967 and was succeeded in Baghdad by his son 'Izz al-Daula Bakhtiyar,
who tried to attack Mosul in 973 and was beaten so badly
he had to retreat to Wasit as Sabuktakin's Turks occupied Baghdad.
Sabuktakin organized Baghdad's Sunnis into attacking the Buyid Shi'a as heretics in a jihad.
Bakhtiyar was helped by 'Adud, who took over Baghdad in 978
and ordered his cousin Bakhtiyar executed.
'Adud's army conquered
northern Mesopotamia,
and the Hamdanids left in Aleppo had to
pay tribute.
'Adud was crowned shahanshah (king of kings) in Baghdad and built an imperial palace,
as he had sponsored much building, trade,
and communications during his many years in Fars.
'Adud maintained good relations with the Caliph, favoring neither Sunni nor Shi'a,
and he banned inflammatory preaching.
'Adud tolerated the minority religions, and his Vizier Nasr ibn Harun was a Christian.
When Muslims plundered the homes of Mazdaeans in 979,
'Adud punished them severely, 'Adud al-Daula made his court at Shiraz
a center for the cultural activities of theologians, grammarians, and poets.
His library filled a palace of 360 rooms.
He founded a hospital in West Baghdad that was staffed by 24 physicians.
'Adud used force to drive out marauding tribes and replaced them with peaceful farmers.
Bedouins, Qufs, and Balach were attacked in 970,
and his army besieged the Banu Shayban,
the Kurds north of Mosul, and the Asad bands in 979.
When 'Adud died in 983, he was succeeded by his brother Fakhr,
whom he had sent into exile at Nishapur.
Some wealthy exiles from Iraq in 987 persuaded 'Adud's son Sharaf
to attack Iraq so they could regain their estates.
Baghdad had been impoverished by frequent fighting and had difficulty paying soldiers,
while peaceful Fars had larger revenues;
so the Daulami troops mutinied and went over to Sharaf.
The next year Sharaf died at Baghdad when he was only 28.
His sons were too young to rule,
and the throne was passed to the last effective shahanshah, 'Adud's son Baha' al-Daula.
Samsam al-Daula, partially blinded, had escaped
and controlled Fars, Kirman, and Khuzistan.
Samsam agreed to give Ahwaz to Baha';
but the Daulamis in Fars would not relinquish the province,
and the Fars army took possession.
The Turks of Baghdad then drove out the Daulamis with great slaughter.
This caused the Daulamis to massacre the Turks in Fars.
By 995 Fars had a Daulami army while Baha' in Baghdad was dependent on Turks.
Yet when Fakhr tried to sever Baghdad from Shiraz by invading
Khuzistan,
Samsam and Baha' joined forces and made him withdraw.
Fakhr still ruled Iran for the Buyids and attacked the Ghaznavid
Sebuk-Tegin in Khurasan
but failed and died two years later in
997.
Baha' was aided by the Kurd Badr ibn Hasanwaih when he invaded
Fars in 998;
while Samsam was fleeing Shiraz, he was assassinated
by a son of 'Izz al-Daula,
who had escaped captivity.
Baha' took
Shiraz and subdued the opposition of 'Izz's sons;
Baha' remained
in that capital until his death in 1012.
Powerful Bedouin tribes
surrounded Buyid control in Baghdad,
and in 1002 Daulami leader
Abu 'Ali ibn Ustadh-hurmuz entered Baghdad,
punished its numerous
bandits, and abolished provocative religious activities.
After
1007 Fakhr's Kurdish widow Sayyida entrusted the government of
Isfahan
to the Kurdish prince Ja'far 'Ala' al-Daula.
The Kurds'
Marwani family established a dynasty in southeastern Anatolia
at Mayyafariqin, where Nasr al-Daula ruled from 1011 to 1061.
Although the Buyids were Shi'a, the absent Baha' allowed
the Hanbali Caliph al-Qadir (991-1031) to codify Sunni doctrine
and rituals in a way that conflicted with Shi'i ideas.
In 1003 the Caliph was able to block the appointment of an 'Alid as chief judge.
Caliph al-Qadir spoke for both Sunnis and the Shi'i Twelvers
when he challenged Fatimid theology and genealogy in 1010.
He condemned both Shi'i and the compromising Mu'tazili doctrines in 1018,
and in 1029 he denounced the doctrine that the Qur'an was created.
Muslims now tended to be either Sunni or Shi'a.
His Caliphate coincided with Sunni champion Mahmud's conquest of Iran.
After Baha' died in 1012, Buyid control deteriorated.
In 1016 Fakhr al-Mulik was executed by his son and successor Sultan al-Daula.
After sporadic warfare Sultan died of drink at age 32 in 1021.
While Abu Kalijar governed Fars,
the Turks in Baghdad appointed his uncle Jalal al-Daula,
who governed there 1025-1044.
Jalal was so poor that in 1031 he had to dismiss his servants
and free his horses because he could not afford to maintain them.
Baghdad was terrorized by the bandit al-Burjumi from 1030 to 1034
until the 'Uqaili Bedouin leader Qirwash finally drowned him.
When the Turkish General Barstoghan mutinied in 1036,
Abu Kalijar marched on Baghdad but failed to occupy it.
Instead the 'Uqailids and another Arab tribe reinstated Jalal.
After Jalal died, Abu Kalijar tried to sustain Baghdad with his resources from Shiraz;
but when he died in 1048, the Buyids had to give way to the advancing Seljuqs.
Al-Malik al-Rahim claimed to rule from Baghdad
while Abu Mansur Fulad Sutun succeeded Abu Kalijar;
but these two fought each other, and Abu Mansur turned to the Seljuq Tughril-Beg for help.
In 1055 Tughril-Beg entered Baghdad and founded the Seljuq regime,
and much of Fars was controlled by the Kurd leader Fadluya ibn 'Ali.
Al-Qadir was succeeded as Caliph by his son al-Qa'im,
who outlasted the Shi'i Buyids and welcomed the Sunni Seljuqs before he died in 1075.
Al-Mawardi (974-1058) wrote Principles of Power
for al-Qa'im about 1050,
and his Conduct in Religion and the
World was on courtly ethics.
He argued that in a religious society the Caliph should be in control,
but he can appoint a vizier to administer the government and a commander of the army.
If a sultan usurps power contrary to religion and justice,
then the Caliph may call for aid in ending his domination.
Thus he justified the Seljuq overthrow of the Buyids.
The Seljuqs are named after a chief of the Ghuzz Turks
who
led his tribe down from the steppes of Turkistan.
Seljuq's grandsons
Tughril-Beg and Chaghri-Beg led the conquest of Khurasan in 1037,
defeating the Ghaznavid Mas'ud in 1040.
They claimed power as
Sunni Muslims, and they respected Sufi pirs.
Ibn al-Muslima, acting as the declining Abbasid Caliph's Vizier,
invited Tughril-Beg into Baghdad in 1055,
and the next year Caliph al-Qa'im crowned Tughril-Beg King;
but ibn al-Muslima's attempts to gain money for his intrigues resulted
in his being killed by Tughril-Beg's rival al-Basasiri in 1059.
Al-Basasiri occupied Baghdad for forty weeks, favoring the Fatimids;
but Tughril-Beg brought the Abbasid Caliph back to Baghdad,
defeating and killing al-Basasiri near Kufa.
Chaghri-Beg governed Khurasan and was succeeded by his son Alp-Arslan about 1060.
Tughril-Beg appointed his nephew Sulayman as his heir,
and his Vizier al-Kunduri proclaimed Sulayman sultan in Ray;
but they were defeated by Alp-Arslan's forces, and al-Kunduri was put to death.
The other Seljuq cousin Qutlumush of Rum was defeated in 1063.
Other contenders for power then governed provinces
under the sovereignty of Alp-Arslan (r. 1063-1072),
who expanded the Seljuq empire by attacking
the Fatimids in Syria and the Byzantines in the north.
In 1071 at Manzikert the Seljuqs gave the Byzantine army its worst defeat ever.
Roman Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes was captured and promised a ransom
of a million gold pieces; but raising only 200,000, he died a captive.
Alp-Arslan now ruled over 1,200 princes and had an army of 200,000,
but he did not attempt to destroy the Byzantine empire.
Alp-Arslan’s daughter married Caliph al-Qa’im’s son al-Muqtadi,
who became Caliph in 1075.
Alp-Arslan crossed the Oxus River with his army in 1072 but was killed by a prisoner.
Qarakhanid ruler Shams al-Mulk Nasr (r. 1068-80) then invaded the Seljuq side
of the Oxus, capturing Tirmidh and pushing Ayaz ibn Alp-Arslan out of Balkh.
Alp-Arslan’s son Malik-Shah (r. 1072-92) became sultan
and forced the Qarakhanids to retreat.
Nizam al-Mulk got him recognized in Baghdad,
and Malik-Shah went to Nishapur to gain its treasure,
which Nizam used to win over the soldiers with 700,000 dinars.
Qavurt argued that he should succeed as Alp-Arslan’s oldest brother before a youthful son
but he was defeated, captured, and strangled with a bow-string at the insistence of Nizam.
Qavurt’s sons were partially blinded, but later they were allowed to govern Kirman.
Malik-Shah expanded the Seljuq empire.
His General Atsiz conquered Jerusalem in 1073 and Damascus in 1076;
but two years later Malik-Shah’s brother Tutush
was appointed Governor of Syria and killed Atsiz.
While the Byzantines were busy with a struggle for power
that made Alexius Emperor in 1081,
Malik-Shah’s sons Sulaiman and Mansur invaded Anatolia
The Sultan himself led the campaign that secured Syria by conquering
Mosul, Harran, Aleppo, and Antioch, and he campaigned in Arabia.
Malik-Shah visited Baghdad twice.
Malik-Shah’s daughter married Caliph al-Muqtadi.
In 1089 Malik-Shah invaded Transoxiana
and took Samarkand by force from the Qarakhanids.
Both Alp-Arslan and Malik-Shah were aided by the capable Vizier Nizam al-Mulk,
who was devoted to learning and was tutor (atabeg) to prince Malik-Shah.
He sponsored madrasas (religious law schools),
and the Nizamiyya he founded at Baghdad in 1067 was named after him.
He patronized both Hanifi and Shafi‘i legal schools by endowing madrasas
in every major city in the Seljuq empire,
providing free education with generous living allowances for the students.
Property dedicated to such schools, mosques, hospitals
or other public service called waqf could not be inherited nor seized by the government.
Nizam placed his many sons and grandsons in powerful positions
and collected as much as ten percent of the revenue for his own use.
He restored the barid, a central intelligence service,
though the real power lay with the Turk military that crushed any rebellions.
In 1079 two of Nizam al-Mulk’s enemies, the shahna of Baghdad
and the Governor of Fars and Khuzistan,
killed his Jewish tax collector in Basra and took his wealth.
After Malik-Shah dismissed 7,000 Armenian mercenaries against the advice of Nizam,
two rival parties emerged.
The court jester satirized Nizam, whose son Jamal al-Mulk, the Governor of Balkh,
cut out his tongue and killed him.
Malik-Shah then had his Khurasan Governor
secretly poison Jamal al-Mulk and grieved with Nizam.
During this era a nefarious group of secret Assassins arose from the Isma’ili sect
led by the Fatimid propagandist Hasan ibn Sabah,
operating from a fortress in the Elburz mountains.
He used hashish and pleasant gardens to persuade his followers to commit assassinations.
They were responsible for killing Nizam; when Malik-Shah attacked them in retribution,
he died too about a month later.
After these two were killed in 1092, the Seljuq empire broke up in a power struggle.
Malik-Shah’s brother Tutush proclaimed himself Sultan in Baghdad in 1093,
and he crushed the Arabs of Mosul.
Caliph al-Muqtadi crowned 12-year-old Berkyaruq Sultan in 1094 and died the next day.
The Caliph was succeeded by his son al-Mustazhir,
but the rivalry between the Seljuqs left him little control.
Partisans of the child Mahmud nearly blinded Berkyaruq but changed their minds
when the child Sultan died of small pox.
Tutush withdrew to Ray but was defeated and killed in 1095
after Berkyaruq raised 30,000 troops.
The sons of Malik-Shah became independent governors of Iraq, Anatolia, Azerbaijan,
Mesopotamia, Syria, Kuzistan, Fars, Kirman, and Khurasan.
Probably the first major Islamic work in the genre of advising
rulers was
Ibn al-Muqaffa's al-Adab al-kabir, which discussed
the conduct of government
by the ruler and his associates and
also friendship.
He was the private secretary to the uncle of
Caliph al-Mansur
but was murdered at the age of 36 in 759.
Al-Muqaffa
translated a Sasanid royal chronicle and other treatises from
Persian into Arabic
including the Testament of Ardashir,
which suggested the unity of religion and monarchy.
He argued
that knowledge was more important than justice,
and he attempted
to codify laws through the Caliph
so that judges in various provinces
would be applying the same laws.
Abu Yusuf (731-98) wrote Kitab al-kharaj for Caliph Harun
al-Rashid as a handbook
for juristic administration, emphasizing
that
the ruler must be pious and just as he is responsible to
God.
Al-Jahiz (776-868) was from Basra, and his writing
justified
the 'Abbasids' overthrowing of the Umayyad dynasty.
The duty of
subjects to obey their sovereign ends
if he neglects his duties
and abuses his power.
In those circumstances they have the right
and duty to depose and replace the ruler.
Al-Jahiz wrote that
the imam should have excellent intellectual and moral qualities
with deep and broad religious knowledge.
In 1070 Yusuf Khass Hajib, a Qarakhanid Turk from Balasaghun,
presented to Kashghar prince Tavghach Bughra Khan his book
Wisdom
of Royal Glory (Kutadgu Bilig),
and he was rewarded with the
title Privy Chamberlain (Khass Hajib).
The Qarakhanids were a
northern confederation of Turkish tribes
that had yielded to the
more powerful Seljuqs.
The Qarakhanids had become Muslims in the
middle of the tenth century
but continued to use the Turkish script
now called Uighur.
Yusuf's book begins by praising God, the creator
of all
and then the prophet Muhammad and the first four caliphs.
He valued the intellect and wisdom greatly and believed that the
main source of inequality
among people is the amount of wisdom.
He advised using wisdom to control criminals and civilian turmoil;
but if that failed, he approved the use of force to restrain fools.
Doing good will result in being praised; but doing wrong will
get one cursed.
Yusuf warned against anger and misuse of the tongue.
His book displays dialogs between four main characters—
the king
Rising Sun stands for Justice; his advisor Full Moon represents
Fortune;
after he dies, he is replaced by his son Highly Praised,
signifying Intellect;
his reclusive brother Wide Awake is described
as the Last End.
Full Moon comes to serve Rising Sun and with his skill
and patience helps the King to maintain justice.
Full Moon knows the value of speech,
and he recommends listening to the wise and speaking to the ignorant.
He teaches his son Highly Praised not to be heedless like he was in acquiring wealth.
Before he dies, Full Moon writes a testamentary letter to the King
advising him to avoid what is forbidden, not commit injustice, not shed blood,
not seek revenge, and not indulge in alcohol or sex.
After mourning for Full Moon, Rising Sun summons his son Highly Praised,
who also serves the King.
Highly Praised recommends good character, modesty, and uprightness
while avoiding stubbornness, telling lies, and miserliness.
He describes the intellect and suggests that the lovers' hearts
may be seen by looking at the eyes.
He agrees with his father that the prince needs wisdom to keep the people in check
and that by modesty he can avoid what is improper.
Justice and wakefulness are the root of government and hold the state together.
He also tells the prince that troops gain the treasure that pays them.
This wealth is maintained by prosperous people,
who must have justice in order to prosper.
Justice makes the people happy, and silver satisfies the soldiers.
Highly Praised summarizes the good qualities of a prince as follows:
The prince should be intelligent, wise, and just;
also cunning and courageous to gain good repute.
He must be generous and forbearing, modest and pure;
kindly and protective, full-eyed, patient, and humble;
sparing and forgiving, and quiet-mannered.
He must be a paragon of virtue among men,
and deal justly with people.1
Highly Praised says the vizier should be of good character, literate, intelligent, upright,
modest, compassionate, honest, alert, knowledgeable,
discerning, dutiful, devoted, self-effacing, and trustworthy.
He says the cavalry commander should be truthful,
generous, courageous, clever, and determined.
The chamberlain should not take bribes because that makes the prince a laughing-stock.
He should be humble, merciful to the poor, skillful and knowledgeable
about customs and etiquette, patient, self-restrained, alert, broad-minded,
even-tempered with his tongue and heart in accord,
with writing ability, and wise in executing duties.
A king should make sure that he does not give any offices to those who lie or are crooked.
Envoys need to be wise, intelligent, courageous, loyal, reliable, sincere,
upright, modest, discreet, knowing how to read, write, listen, and speak well.
The royal secretary must be able to keep secrets,
and the treasurer must be honest, upright, of sound character,
loyal, alert, vigilant, good at arithmetic, and wise.
Highly Praised also explains the qualifications of the chief cook,
cupbearer, and other servants.
In return the prince is obligated to treat them with kindness and consideration.
When King Rising Sun learns that Highly Praised has a wise brother named Wide Awake,
he writes him a letter inviting him to serve in his court.
However, Highly Praised is unable to persuade him
to give up his ascetic life of religious devotion.
Wide Awake argues that the faults of the world are not worth the allure of the city
because the next life after death is all important.
The King sends Highly Praised to his brother a second time,
and he explains to him the proper way to serve the prince
and how to conduct himself with all sorts of people;
but Wide Awake has renounced the world and will not go there.
The third time Rising Sun asks Wide Awake to come only for a visit to give him advice
and Wide Awake consents to this Muslim duty.
Wide Awake advises the King to scatter his wealth in order to gain religious merit
while staying on the path of rectitude and justice.
He should keep his spiritual heart alive and not fall into carnal passion
but be compassionate to all his people.
By straightening his own conduct, their conduct will straighten itself.
The king should be like a physician, healing the poor, the hungry, the naked,
and those suffering various ills.
He should not make enemies nor spill blood.
He should be aware of what is going on in his realm
and let his compassion flow everywhere.
An evil king destroys the realm because no one will restrain him.
Wide Awake advises him to eat little and pray much,
taking care of the needy, widows, and orphans.
He should seek to benefit the people rather than himself
because his benefit comes from theirs.
Passion can be overcome with the intellect.
After Wide Awake leaves, the King is disheartened.
He still believes that a ruler cannot govern without troops
and that to hire troops he needs money.
So Highly Praised advises him to give his troops treasure
and ask them to spread Islamic law without fighting other Muslims.
He says the king has three basic duties to his people—
keeping the coinage pure, giving them just laws
and not allowing violence to each other, and maintaining secure roads.
His three claims upon his subjects are that they must carry out his commands,
pay their taxes on time, and bear arms against his enemies and love toward his friends.
Highly Praised regrets his past life and decides to repent by taking refuge in God.
He goes to Wide Awake for counsel.
Yet he advises Highly Praised to continue his benefits to the realm
because for him to leave his work would cause harm.
Wide Awake becomes ill and dies.
The King consoles Highly Praised.
Yet customs are decaying, and the world is becoming more corrupt.
The author Yusuf concludes that wisdom needs to be learned, and he prays to God.
Wisdom of Royal Glory has much sound practical
wisdom for monarchical government.
Yet it also contains the mystical
themes of the Sufis,
who transcend the sorrows of this world with
spiritual wisdom.
In 1082 Kai Ka'us ibn Iskandar wrote Qabus-nama (A
Mirror for Princes)
as advice for his son Gilanshah.
The author
was the prince of Gurgan and part of the Ziyarid dynasty
that
ruled provinces south of the Caspian Sea.
His grandfather Qabus
ibn Washmgir was a cruel warrior
but also a patron of poets and
knowledgeable in Arabic sciences and arts;
even the great Avicenna
had spent time at his court.
The prince Gilanshah was the last
of the Ziyarid line;
after ruling for seven years,
he was overthrown
in 1091 by Hasan ibn Sabah and his Assassins.
In the preface to Qabus-nama Kai Ka'us asks his son to
benefit from this book
he wrote even though the current fashion
is for sons to ignore the advice of their fathers.
In the first
chapter he observes that everything
can be known by humans except
the Creator of all.
Nothing can adequately describe the oneness
of God.
Everything else has duality, but God is free of association
and likeness.
As one increases in wealth, he should employ his
bounty to carry out the Lord's work.
He should help those worse
off than himself.
If he is poor in material things, he should
seek wisdom,
which is better than riches and helps one gain wealth.
In addition to the five physical senses, one can use the five
faculties of
thinking, memory, observation, imagination, and speech.
By studying the faults and merits of the virtuous
he can learn
from their successes and failures.
One can even convert an enemy
or rival into a friend
by helping to deliver one from difficulty.
Some things should not be understood nor spoken, such as those
that imperil the faith.
Those that benefit the faith should be
both understood and spoken.
The blunder of a friend or public
person may be understood but should not be spoken,
and fourthly
the traditions of Muhammad that are not comprehended may be spoken.
Do not utter unpleasant remarks which may produce enmity.
The
wise realize that they do not know, and the gates of instruction
open to them.
Chapter 8 recounts many proverbial sayings of the Sasanid Shah Nushirwan
that were inscribed on the wall of his tomb.
One advises not being friends to those without merit.
Do good on your own so that you will be free of the lawgiver.
Speak the truth even if it is bitter.
If you do not want your enemy to know your secret, do not tell your friend.
Do not rely on the untrustworthy.
Slaves bought and sold are freer than one enslaved by one's gullet.
To be happy, be free of envy.
To gain respect, be just.
Be generous if it is in your power.
Do not argue with fools.
The prince realizes that his son will act like a young man,
but
he urges him to practice self-restraint.
Be prudent when young
and compassionate to the aged.
Life ascends to the age of forty
and then declines.
He warned his son not to get drunk away from
home.
Hospitality is an important duty.
He warns him that romantic
passion is a kind of madness.
He discusses the etiquette of games
such as chess and polo, hunting, bathing, and sleeping.
He should
not be eager to shed blood,
and it is not lawful to kill Muslims
unless they are brigands or criminals.
He advises saving money
to acquire wealth
and gives his philosophy on how to purchase
slaves.
Be careful about loaning money to a friend, and do not
ask for it back.
No matter how much money one has,
if one has
a bad reputation and does not speak the truth, then one is poor.
Those who are trustworthy and honest have the wealth of the whole
world.
People receive the treatment they give to others.
A pretty
woman can be a mistress, but a wife should be chaste, of good
faith,
capable of managing the household, fond of her husband,
modest, laconic, and economical.
The prince discusses how to raise
children and the importance of friendship.
Punishment may be inflicted
for serious crimes, but pardoning is better.
Kai Ka'us describes the appropriate behavior for various occupations.
A religious judge should be self-controlled, pious, and able to
explain the law.
A merchant who is dishonest will not be trusted
again.
A physician must understand the body and the regimens of
health.
Astrology is complicated and requires detailed calculations.
Poets and musicians should develop their own talent, and telling
amusing tales is helpful.
To be the boon companion of a king requires
much knowledge and many abilities
A secretary must have excellent
literary skills and avoid forgery.
A vizier needs to maintain
his authority and appoint suitable people to offices.
Finally
Kai Ka'us advises his son on the conduct of a king.
He should
be wise, avoid haste, be circumspect, speak rarely and only the
truth,
be merciful except to those who are merciless, maintain
discipline,
and make sure his commands are effectual.
The six
most important qualities of a king are
awesomeness, justice, generosity,
respect for law, seriousness, and truthfulness.
In the last chapter of Qabus-nama Kai Ka'us emphasizes wisdom, truth, and virtue
as he discusses the errant knights, who benefit the poor at the expense of the rich,
and the poor Sufis, who seek God and virtue.
These noble knights are neither selfish nor obedient like soldiers.
The Sufi master al-Qushayri died in 1074
but left behind rules for the dervishes and their supporters.
Being free of possessions is the essence of Sufism.
The dervish should be trustworthy, polite, pious, clean, and pure in regard to sexuality.
He travels with only a staff, water-pot, loin-cloth, shoes, prayer-mat, cowl, comb,
tooth-brush, needle, and nail-clippers.
He should make no demands and be accommodating.
He understands five aspects of things:
quiddity (essence), quality, quantity, reason, and purpose.
The prince warns his son to control his eye, his tongue, and his hand;
never lie; do not avenge past injury nor plan treachery; be kind;
but if you cannot do good, at least do no harm;
and to be content, never be envious.
After giving his son all this advice, the prince realizes that
he can not make him wise and intelligent because they do not come by compulsion.
He must learn to the best of his ability,
and he hopes that he will apply his advice and thus avoid folly.
Nizam al-Mulk (1018-1092), whose name is a title meaning harmony of the kingdom,
governed the Seljuq empire as Vizier for thirty years.
His father had been a tax collector for the Ghaznavids.
The renowned Sufi Shaikh, Abu Sa'id ibn Abi'l-Khair, was Nizam al-Mulk's teacher,
and later the Vizier founded several hospices for the Sufis.
Nizam al-Mulk became an advisor to Alp-Arslan when he was Governor of Khurasan.
He may have been responsible for ordering the death of al-Kunduri
after Alp-Arslan won the succession struggle in 1063.
Nizam al-Mulk gained prestige in the military campaigns in Fars.
His influence as Vizier became especially important in 1072
when Malik-Shah came to the throne at the age of 18.
In 1086 the King commanded Nizam al-Mulk to consider the condition of the country
and make a digest of past and present principles and laws so that the duty of the king
could be correctly discharged, and all the wrong practices could be discontinued.
Within a few years Nizam al-Mulk had written the first 39 chapters of his
Siyar
al-Muluk (Rules for Kings), which is also known in Europe
as the Siyasat-nama (The Book of Government).
In 1090 Nizam al-Mulk quarreled with Sultan Malik-Shah
and may even have been replaced by Taj al-Mulk,
who was favored by Tarkan Khatun in her hopes to have
her son Mahmud succeed to the throne instead of the elder son Berk-yaruq.
Eleven additional chapters criticized current conditions more strongly
and were probably never read by Malik-Shah because the librarian recorded
that he did not reveal the book until the troubles ended,
probably in 1105 when Muhammad became the undisputed Sultan.
In the prolog Nizam al-Mulk described the purpose of the book
as requested by Sultan Malik-Shah.
Nizam al-Mulk began by suggesting
that in every age God chooses one person
endowed with virtues
to rule as king.
Disobedience or disregard of the divine laws
results in retribution for deeds,
and in the resulting calamities
innocent people may be killed
until again one human being acquires
power and employs subordinates according to merit.
A good king
has a pleasing appearance, is kind, has integrity, is manly, brave,
and skilled in arms and arts, is merciful, keeps promises,
has
sound faith and worships God with devotion, prays, fasts,
and
respects religious authorities, honors the devout, patronizes
the learned and wise,
gives to charity regularly, does good to
the poor,
is kind to subordinates, and relieves the people of
oppressors.
Justice is the most important virtue,
and Nizam al-Mulk recommended the king hold court on two days of the week
to hear complaints personally and redress wrongs so that oppressors
would curb their activities from fear of punishment.
Tax collectors should take only the amount due and with civility.
Any peasant in need of oxen or seed should be given a loan to keep him viable.
Even viziers should be investigated secretly
to make sure they are fulfilling their function properly.
If impropriety is found in the conduct of any officials,
they should be removed from office and chastised according to the crime.
A story is told of the just King Nushirvan (Khusrau I),
who complained that his doors were open to oppressors but not to the peasants.
The palace doors should be more open
to the givers (peasants) than to the takers (soldiers).
Judges should also be monitored, and those that are covetous and dishonest
should be replaced by the learned and pious.
In addition to the tax collectors and judges,
the conduct of the prefect of police and the censor should be investigated.
The mystic Abu 'Ali Daqqaq asked the Governor of Khurasan
if he loved gold more than his enemy and then pointed out that
he will leave gold behind him but will take his enemy into the next world.
Then the story is told of how Sultan Mahmud, afraid that he was not handsome,
was advised by Ahmad ibn Hasan to take gold as his enemy
so that men will regard him as their friend.
Mahmud then became generous and charitable, and the whole world adored him.
Nizam al-Mulk illustrated his points with numerous stories.
In one an amir (commander) borrows 600 dinars from
a man
and promises to pay back 700 in one year;
but the man is
not able to get any money back for many months
and finally goes
to a poor tailor, who sends a servant to the amir.
The
tailor is successful and tells how a previous amir took a woman by force;
he made the call to prayer during the night so that she could return,
and her husband would not divorce her.
Mu'tasim called in the tailor and asked why he made the call to prayer at the wrong time,
and he told him of the amir's
offense.
The amir was severely punished, and the tailor was told to make the call to prayer
at the wrong time whenever the Sultan's attention was needed.
Thus the new amir knew
that he had better pay back the money.
Luqman the Wise noted that knowledge is better than wealth
because you have to take care of wealth; but knowledge takes care of you.
Nizam al-Mulk believed that sound judgment
is better for a king than having a powerful army.
He quoted the Qur'an
to show that
God commanded even Muhammad
to seek advice and counsel.
Nizam recommended having different
races among the troops
so that they would compete with each other
to excel.
He described Alp-Tegin's rise to power from a slave
and page of the Samanids to a commander.
He punished a page for
taking hay and a chicken
from a peasant without paying for it
as he ordered.
This made other soldiers afraid, and the peasants
were safe.
His justice led the citizens of Ghaznain to take Alp-Tegin
as their king.
Because the Samanids tried to destroy the worthy
Alp-Tegin,
they declined and were overcome by Alp-Tegin and his
successor Sebuk-Tegin,
who founded the Ghaznavid empire.
Nizam al-Mulk believed it was the perfection of wisdom not
to become angry at all;
but if one does become angry, intelligence
should prevail over wrath.
The wise have said that patience is
good, but it is even better during success.
Knowledge is good,
but it is even better with skill.
Wealth is good, but it is even
better with gratitude and enjoyment.
Worship is good, but it is
even better with understanding and reverence for God.
Yet nothing
is better than generosity, and kindness, and hospitality.
In the second part (chapters 40-50) Nizam al-Mulk
seems to write from the bitterness of his retirement.
He wrote that two appointments should not be given to one man
nor should one position be given to more than one person.
He complained that many worthy people remain unemployed
when some persons are given several positions each.
He lamented that it used to be that those hired followed the Hanafi or Shafi'i teachings
and were from Khurasan or Transoxiana or a Sunni city, and Shi'as were refused;
but now someone (probably Taj al-Mulk) wants to economize by reducing 400,000 men
on the pay-roll to 70,000 in order to fill the treasury with gold.
Nizam argued that a larger empire required more employees
and that even more men would enable them to govern India too.
Nizam told stories from history to show that a good era replaces
a sick time
when a just king does away with evil-doers, has right
judgments,
and a vizier and officers of virtue; every task has
the proper worker;
heretics are put down, and the orthodox are
raised up; tyrants are repressed;
soldiers as well as peasants
fear the king; the uneducated and base are not given positions;
the inexperienced are not promoted; advice is sought from the
intelligent and mature;
men are selected for their skill, not
because of their money;
religion is not sold for worldly things;
everything is ordered according to merit;
thus all people have
work according to their capability;
and all things are regulated
by justice and government by the grace of God.
Those under the king should not be allowed to assume power.
Nizam was particularly critical of women, and his prejudice even went so far
as to assume that one should always do the opposite of what a woman recommends.
Nizam has Buzurjmihr complain that Khusrau gave power to his Queen Shirin.
He believed the Sasanians fell from power because they entrusted important affairs
to petty and ignorant officers and because they hated learning and learned people.
Thus instead of having wise officers, Buzurjmihr said he had to deal with women and boys.
Buzurjmihr Bakhtgan advised the King to banish the bad qualities from himself,
which he listed as "hatred, envy, pride, anger, lust, greed, desire, spite, mendacity,
avarice, ill temper, cruelty, selfishness, hastiness, ingratitude, and frivolity."2
The good qualities he should exercise are "modesty, good temper,
clemency, forgiveness, humility, generosity, truthfulness, patience,
gratitude, mercy, knowledge, intelligence, and justice."3
Nizam al-Mulk expressed his sharpest venom against the heretics by recounting
his version of history, showing how they have arisen
and have been destroyed.
He goes back to the Mazdak revolution
in the last century of the Sasanian empire.
They offended him
not only by their sharing their property
but because they believed
in sharing their wives also.
Nizam would also accuse some Shi'i
heretics of practicing the same evils,
charging them with incest,
for example.
He described how the evil Qarmatis and Batinis arose
and were put down in various regions.
He noted that the Batinis
were called by different names in different places.
In Aleppo and Egypt they call them Isma'ilis;
in Qum, Kashan, Tabaristan and Sabzvar they are called Seveners;
in Baghdad, Transoxiana and Ghaznain they are known as Qarmatis,
in Kufa as Mubarakis, in Basra as Ravandis and Burqa'is, in Rayy as Khalafis,
in Gurgan as The Wearers of Red, in Syria as The Wearers of White
in the West as Sa'idis, in Lahsa and Bahrain as Jannabis,
and in Isfahan as Batinis; whereas they call themselves
The Didactics and other such names.
But their whole purpose is only to abolish Islam,
to mislead mankind and cast them into perdition.4
Nizam commended al-Mu'tasim for his three victories over the Byzantines,
Babak's revolt in Azerbaijan, and the Zarathustrian Mazyar in Tabaristan.
Nizam cited the early Caliph 'Umar's response to the last Sasanian King
Yazdijurd Shahryar to show that the latter's empire was declining because his court
was crowded with complainers; his treasury was full of ill-gotten wealth;
and his army was disobedient.
Nizam thus became a conservative voice for the Sunni tradition
and ruled by an absolute monarch.
Firdausi was born about 935 at Tus in Khurasan into a land-owning
family.
He spent 30 years writing the nearly 60,000 couplets of
his epic poem
on Persian monarchy entitled The Book of Kings
(Shah-nameh).
Based on chronicles, Firdausi took over and
incorporated about a thousand lines
that Daqiqi wrote before he
was murdered by a slave.
Firdausi's Shah-nameh was completed
about 1010.
He wrote the poem hoping that the patronage of the
Sultan Mahmud
would provide a dowry for his daughter;
but he was
so disappointed by the 20,000 dirhams he received that
he gave them to a bath-man and beer-seller.
Firdausi then wrote
a satire of Mahmud,
but his friend Shahreyar purchased this short
poem for 100,000 dirhams.
Later Mahmud granted the poet
60,000 dinars worth of indigo;
but when this arrived, Firdausi
was dead.
His daughter would not accept this gift, and it was
used to repair a rest-house near Tus.
After a prolog invoking God, praising wisdom and Muhammad,
acknowledging his use of Daqiqi's lines, and praising the Sultan Mahmud,
Firdausi began with the first King Kayumars, who establishes laws and battles demons.
His son Seyamak is killed by a demon, but Seyamak's son Hushang defeats the demons.
Hushang discovers fire and founds its worship,
and he teaches his people how to make bread.
Hushang's son Tahmuras is called the capturer of the demons
and is succeeded by his son Jamshid.
During his reign of seven hundred years a palace is constructed,
fields are plowed and reaped, garments of silk are worn,
and swords and armor are invented.
The Arab King Mirtas gives the milk of his animals to the poor,
and his son Zahhak has ten thousand horses.
Zahhak is seduced by an evil spirit Eblis, who invents the art of cooking.
After Zahhak lets Eblis kiss his naked body,
two serpents possess him and have to be fed daily on human brains.
Zahhak gathers into an army the nobility who resents Jamshid's arrogance,
and he executes Jamshid.
Jamshid's sisters Shahrnaz and Arnawaz are put in Zahhak's harem;
but they are later released by Faridun when he overthrows Zahhak
with the help of the blacksmith Kaveh.
Faridun rules wisely and divides his kingdom between his three sons,
giving the west to Salm, the north to Tur, and Iran to Iraj.
Salm and Tur plot against Iraj, and Faridun responds that if they do not fear him,
at least they should fear God; he counsels peace.
Iraj agrees with his father and would rather sacrifice his kingdom than go to war.
Iraj renounces his throne and retires; but Tur beheads him nonetheless.
Iraj's daughter gives birth to Manuchehr, who kills the two brothers Salm and Tur,
becoming King of Persia, which throughout its history
would be fighting Greeks and Romans in the west and Turks in the north.
Sam, the ruler of Sistan, pledges his loyalty to Manuchehr
and has a white-haired son named Zal,
who is left on a mountain but is saved by the fabulous simorg bird.
Zal persuades Manuchehr not to attack Kabul and marries the Kabul princess Rudabeh;
their son is the strong and heroic Rostam.
Manuchehr is succeeded on the Persian throne by his son Nowzar,
who misrules his people with such oppressive violence that they appeal to Sam.
He causes Nowzar to reform; but Turan’s King Afrasyab,
who kills his own brother, invades and pillages Persia, killing Nowzar.
Zal and Rostam fight for Persia,
and the nobles elect the just Qobad King, who makes peace.
Qobad is succeeded by his son Kavus.
He disregards Zal's advice, goes to war with Mazandaran, and is captured;
in Hamavaran Qobad is imprisoned by the father of the bride he seeks,
and his attempt to fly with eagles leaves him stranded in enemy territory.
From each of these three disasters Qobad is rescued by Rostam,
who performs seven heroic labors.
With the Persian King imprisoned, Afrasyab's army invades again;
but when Kavus returns, Afrasyab has to retreat to Turan.
While hunting in Turan, Rostam sires a son called Sohrab,
who is raised in Turan and becomes their army's champion.
Sohrab challenges the great Rostam in combat,
and only when he is dying does he realize that Rostam is his father.
The horrified Rostam ends the war.
Persian King Kavus has a son Seyavash, who is seduced by his step-mother,
Queen Sudabeh; but he declines.
After she accuses him of attempted rape, he proves his innocence in an ordeal of fire.
Bad dreams persuade the aggressive Afrasyab to give up a war
and make peace with the victorious Seyavash.
Kavus rejects the treaty and wants to kill the hostages;
so Seyavash goes over to the Turanians and marries Afrasyab's daughter Farangis.
The indignant Rostam retires to Sistan.
Seyavash is treacherously killed by Afrasyab's brother and commander, Garsivaz.
Turanian counselor Piran saves the pregnant Farangis from the cruel Afrasyab.
She gives birth to Khusrau,
who escapes to Iran and becomes the next king when Kavus retires.
To revenge his father Seyavash, Khusrau fights a long war against Turan
with the help of the mighty Rostam.
Farangis and Khusrau manage to save the life of Piran by persuading Giw not to kill him.
Eventually Piran advises Afrasyab to escape to remote Tartary.
The Persian warrior Bizhan falls in love with Afrasyab's daughter Manizheh;
but he is imprisoned by her father.
She cares for him, and he is rescued by Rostam,
who is stopped from killing Barzu, his grandson.
Finally Afrasyab is defeated and killed, and Kavus also dies.
Khusrau abdicates and retires to a religious life on a mountain-top,
where he disappears in a snowstorm.
Not having a son, Khusrau
had selected as king Lohrasp,
who is succeeded by his son Goshtasp.
The prophet Zarathustra preaches an advanced religion
that is
accepted by Goshtasp and his court.
(This section is the thousand
lines Firdausi took from Daqiqi.)
Goshtasp crowns his son Esfandyar
his successor.
Esfandyar spreads the Zarathustrian religion by
invading the Rum in the west,
Arabia in the south, and Hindustan
in the east;
but he quarrels with his father and is put in prison.
When Turan led by Arjasp attacks Persia, Goshtasp calls forth
Esfandyar to fight,
and he performs seven heroic deeds but kills
the simorg bird that had protected Rostam.
Esfandyar also defeats
and kills Arjasp.
Khusrau had appointed Rostam to rule Zabul,
Kabul, and Nim-ruz.
Goshtasp was so upset that Rostam had not
helped in the campaign against Arjasp
and the Turanians that he
sent his son Esfandyar to bring Rostam to him in chains.
Rostam
would go in loyalty but not as a prisoner.
Esfandyar's traps wound
Rostam and his horse;
but Rostam is healed by the Simorg bird
and then kills Esfandyar.
Rostam takes care of Esfandyar's son Bahman but is killed by a plot
of his own brother Shagad,
and Bahman takes revenge on Rostam's family, killing Rostam's father Zal.
Rostam's son Faramarz is also defeated and killed.
Bahman marries his daughter Homai and dies;
but she bears his son Darab, who is put in a basket on the Euphrates River.
Homai rules until she discovers the adult Darab and makes him king.
In Firdausi's story Darab marries the daughter of the Greek King Filqus (Philip),
making Darab the father of Eskandar (Alexander).
Darab is succeeded by his second son Dara.
Eskandar attacks Persia, defeats Dara, and becomes King.
After Eskandar dies, the kingdom is broken
into pieces for two centuries until Ardavan unites Persia.
Ardavan is killed by Ardeshir, the founder of the Sasanian dynasty.
The romantic adventures of the Sasanian kings are treated more than the political history.
During the reign of Shapur Du'l Aktaf the prophet Mani comes from China
as a painter, miracle-worker, and religious teacher.
The cruel Yazdegerd the Unjust is an example of how not to rule,
but he is succeeded by his romantic son, Bahram Gut.
During the reign of Kasra Anushirvan the communism of the reformer Mazdak
is squelched with the aid of the King’s Vizier Bozorjmehr.
The kings Hormozd and his son Khusrau Parviz have to contend
with the rebellion of their champion Bahram Chubineh.
Khusrau Parviz escapes from the dungeon his father put him in
and has two ministers blind and later kill Hormozd.
The fading old loyalty is represented by Chubineh's sister Gordyeh,
who eventually marries Parviz.
Bahram Chubineh is defeated and finally assassinated after fleeing to the Chinese court.
Khusrau Parviz has a romance with Shirin,
but he is eventually killed by a slave hired by discontented nobles.
The final heroism occurs when the astrologer and soldier Rostam, son of Hormozd,
predicts the defeat of Persia by the Muslims but fights loyally until his army is defeated,
and the last Sasanian King Yazdegerd is murdered by a miller.
Firdausi's great epic leaves out the great Achaemenian kings
Cyrus and Cambyses
as well as the massive invasions of Greece
led by Darius in 490 and Xerxes in 480,
and the Greek-Persian
wars of three kings named Artaxerxes.
Alexander is even portrayed
as the son of a Persian king.
Yet the violent struggles of hereditary
monarchy
versus leadership by the most able are heroically described.
The stark metaphor of a father killing his son or causing the
death of his son
as with Rostam and Sohrab, Kavus and Seyavash,
and Goshtasp and Esfandyar,
makes even more vivid the lament of
Herodotus that in war the fathers bury their sons.
The ambition
to rule over others by force causes numerous wars
and immense
human suffering; yet Firdausi shows that
the wiser kings are those
who are just and can make peace.
Mystics called Sufis, after their woolen robes they originally
wore
as a form of social protest, began as ascetics
who remained
aloof from the lower material life.
The movement seems to have
begun at Basra, where al-Hasan (d. 728)
lamented that the good
had departed.
He grieved because only the reprehensible seemed
to be left.
Al-Hasan preached to his companions,
The lower world is a house whose inmates labor for loss,
and only abstention from it makes one happy in it.
He who befriends it in desire and love
for it will be rendered wretched by it,
and his portion with God will be laid waste.5
Al-Hasan believed that piety is the essence of religion, and he outlined three grades.
First, a person should speak the truth even when excited by anger.
Second, one should control one's bodily organs and refrain from what God has forbidden.
Third, one should desire only those things that lead to God's pleasure.
A little piety is better than much praying and fasting;
but lust for the world and greed can destroy piety.
The ascetics and new converts to Islam were given equality
by the Caliph 'Umar II (r. 717-720) to whom al-Hasan wrote that
he should beware of the world because it is as deadly as a snake's venom;
its hopes are lies, and its expectations false;
its ease becomes harsh, and its pleasures end in pain.
The first man to be called a Sufi was Abu Hashim (d. 776) of Kufa.
Sufis were soon gathering at a monastery
established by a wealthy Christian at Ramlah in Syria.
Sufism also spread to Khurasan, where the influence of Buddhism was felt.
Ibrahim ibn Adham (d. 777) recommended other-worldliness, celibacy, and poverty.
He believed the true saint covets nothing in this world
or in the next but is devoted only to God.
He found that in adopting poverty one should not consider marriage
since one could not fulfill the needs of a wife.
Adham said that when a Sufi marries, he boards a ship;
but when he gets a child, his asceticism shipwrecks.
The most famous woman Sufi was Rabi'a al-'Adawiyya of Basra.
She was born in 713 or 717 into a very poor home.
After her mother
and father died, during a famine she was sold into slavery.
Even
when she broke her hand while fleeing and was re-captured,
she
still wanted only to please God.
When her owner perceived her
illumination while she was praying,
he freed her so that she could
pursue her spiritual path.
Rabi'a remained celibate, rejecting
several offers of marriage from prominent Sufis
because she was
essentially already married to God; she died in 801.
Stories and
sayings of hers were later written down by the 13th-century Sufi
'Attar
in his Memorial of the Friends of God.
He justified
including a woman by noting that God does not regard your forms
but is more concerned with right intention.
In the unity the mystics
seek there is no male or female.
It was said that Rabi'a prayed
a thousand times a day.
When someone said she was fit to be an
abbess, she replied,
I am abbess of myself.
Whatever is within me, I do not bring out.
Whatever is outside me, I do not let in.
If anyone enters and leaves, it has nothing to do with me.
I watch over my heart, not mud and clay.6
Rabi'a said that a servant of God is contented
when one is
as thankful for tribulation as for bliss.
She taught that God
should be worshipped without fear of punishment
or hope of reward
but for its own sake.
She said,
O Lord, if I worship you out of fear of hell, burn me in hell.
If I worship you in the hope of paradise, forbid it to me.
And if I worship you for your own sake,
do not deprive me of your eternal beauty.7
When she was asked why she carried fire and water, Rabi'a replied that
she was going to burn paradise and douse hell-fire so that
both veils might be lifted from the seekers;
then they will have sincere purpose.
At the present time she lamented that if hope for reward and fear of punishment
were taken away, no one would worship or obey.
When asked why she worshipped if she had no hope for paradise,
Rabi'a replied that she preferred the Neighbor to the neighbor's house.
Her goal was union with God.
Once when someone asked her to come outside and enjoy the flowers of spring,
she invited them to come inside and contemplate their Creator;
for her contemplation of the Creator had turned her from contemplation of the creation.
Harith Muhasibi (781-857) was a theologian of the Shafi'i school.
He was concerned about the many sects and sub-sects claiming the
way to salvation.
After studying the Qur'an
and the traditions of the prophet Muhammad,
he concluded that desires blind people and lead them astray from
the truth.
Muhasibi gained his name by turning to self-examination (muhasabah)
along with self-discipline and moral transformation.
He often conversed and answered the questions of his disciple Junayd (d. 910),
who became a prominent Sufi himself.
Muhasibi argued that wealth is better for the mystic than poverty
because it is more characteristic of God.
He found asceticism only valuable in order to purge the soul for companionship with God.
He urged those who wish to be near God
to abandon everything that alienates them from God.
His major work was The Book on the Observance
of the Rights of God,
which is on moral psychology.
He described
four kinds of egotism as conceit, pride, vanity, and self-delusion.
Each of these may also express as
competitiveness, rivalry, acquisitiveness,
and self-vaunting.
In self-delusion one becomes blind to one's sins and over-rates
one's actions,
thus decreasing the fear of doing wrong.
In his Book of Counsels, Muhasibi suggested warding off vanity
by realizing that
God sets you into action by granting you grace.
Sincere action is completely rooted in God without any praise
or blame of humans.
The conceited person is zealous in front of
others
but lazy when no one is watching, wanting to be praised
in one's actions.
In The Book on the Observance of the Rights of God Muhasibi wrote that
inclinations come from three sources—
the ego-self, the enemy Iblis (Satan), and God.
The ego-self tends to operate from desire while illumination by God uses reason.
Holding the ego-self back from rushing into action is called patience.
To see where one is going, one must have eyesight, light, and look at the path.
Healthy sight is like reason; a lamp is like knowledge;
and watching where one is going is like confirmation (by the religious teachings).
Muhasibi described how preparation for death can focus awareness
on what is fundamentally important.
One must also be wary of the enemy.
Arrogance comes from pride out of fear of being lorded over
or from love of lording it over others.
Love of aggrandizement and lust for power look down on others
and want always to be above others or put before them.
Muhasibi advised not entering into an action until one knows that God wills it.
Dhu al-Nun Misri (796-859) practiced extreme asceticism
and believed that temptations of the self were the greatest veil.
He found seclusion indispensable for the Sufi.
He said that the lesser path is to avoid sin, leave the world, and control passion;
but the greater path is to leave everything but God and to empty one's heart.
Dhu al-Nun emphasized trust in God,
and he suggested that even the elect need to repent of their negligence.
He found a certainty in intuition that was beyond the knowledge of sense perception.
He defined three kinds of religious knowledge.
First is knowing the unity of God that is common to all believers;
second is knowledge based on proof and demonstration
that belongs to the wise and learned;
and third is knowing the attributes of God
which comes to the saints who contemplate God in their hearts.
Yahya ibn Mu'adh ar-Razi (d. 871) was from Ray and expressed his message
with such enthusiasm that he was called "the preacher."
Yahya taught divine love, saying,
"Real love does not diminish by the cruelty of the beloved,
nor does it grow by His grace, but is always the same."8
He also preached forgiveness, and he believed that
death is beautiful because it joins the friend with the Friend.
Bayazid Bistami (d. 874) was a Persian who wandered in the
deserts of Syria
for thirty years living ascetically in search
of God.
Bayazid was the first to write about the annihilation
of the self (fana)
which became a cardinal doctrine of Sufism.
He became controversial for exclaiming his own greatness when he came out of his self
and experienced the oneness of the lover and the beloved in God.
He held that paradise is of no concern to the people of love
because they are loved through their love.
He described how he passed through the unseen worlds
and met angels and the souls of prophets.
In 885 Ghulam Khalil accused the Sufis in Baghdad of heresy,
which could bring capital punishment.
Abu'l-Husayn an-Nuri (d. 907) offered his life to save his companions;
but when the Caliph investigated,
he found the Sufis were good Muslims and released them.
Thus Nuri demonstrated his brotherly love
as the genuine spiritual poverty of preferring others to oneself.
Some theologians called him a heretic because he referred to himself as a lover of God.
He described the psychological stages of love in his The
Stations of the Hearts.
He likened the heart to a garden nourished
by the rain of God's mercy.
Junayd criticized Nuri's exuberance
and startling miracles.
For example, to conquer his fear of lions,
Nuri lived in the lion-infested forests along the Tigris.
He was
said to have died after cutting his feet on sharp reeds
when he
ran into a reed-bed after being enraptured by the recitation of
a verse.
Junayd of Baghdad (d. 910) studied law under abu Thaur and Sufism with Muhasibi.
As a theologian he advocated sobriety rather than the mystical state of intoxication
that can lead to loss of sanity and self-control.
It was for this reason that he refused to accept al-Hallaj as his disciple,
arguing that sobriety means one's spiritual relation with God is sound
while intoxication indicates excess of longing.
Junayd wore the dress of the 'ulama'
scholars rather than the woolen garb of the mystics,
and his prudent
behavior as well as his ideas made him more acceptable to the
theologians.
His writings became so widely accepted that he was
considered the master of the Sufi sect.
He reprimanded the devil
for not obeying the commands of the one God,
thus emphasizing
that moral behavior is the basis of the religious life.
Junayd
believed that trust was neither acquisition
nor non-acquisition
but faith in God's promise.
He described three stages of repentance
as expressing regret at the wrong done,
resolving to avoid that
wrong in the future, and purifying oneself of evils and impurities.
He wrote extensively on the affirmation of unity, cautioning the
reader,
"Know that you are veiled from yourself by yourself."9
One does not attain God through oneself but through God.
Al-Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj (858-922)
was the Persian son
of a wool or cotton carder.
He became a disciple of Sahl ibn 'Abd
Allah of Tustar
but received his Sufi gown from 'Amr ibn 'Uthman
Makki at Basra.
He married a woman who already had a daughter
by another Sufi,
who belonged to a family that had supported the
'Alid slave rebellion of Zaidi
against the 'Abbasid Caliphate;
she bore al-Hallaj three sons.
Al-Hallaj himself remained a Sunni
and studied with Junayd for about six years
but left him to go
on a pilgrimage to Mecca,
where he spent a year praying and meditating
by the Ka'ba.
Then al-Hallaj traveled through Persia to Kashmir
and India,
eventually reaching the frontier of China.
He returned
with paper from the Chinese
on which his disciples later inscribed
his sermons with gold ink.
He would weep and give sermons in the
marketplace.
In one he explained that God sometimes shines forth
to people
and sometimes is veiled from them;
God is revealed so
that humans can be helped
but is hidden lest they all become spellbound.
Al-Hallaj was about fifty when he announced in the mosque of al-Mansur at Baghdad
to his friend, the Turkish poet Shibli, "I am the truth (or the real)."
Believing he needed to die in God, al-Hallaj told people in that mosque that
God had made his blood lawful to them and that they should kill him
so that they will be holy fighters, and he will be a martyr.
However, the only ones who were really hostile to him were the fundamentalist Hanbalis.
Al-Hallaj continued to preach that his death would be a coming to life and an awakening.
He noted the miracle that he had become a father to his mother
and that his daughters had become his sisters.
He was ordered arrested in 908 for being involved in the Sunni plot
of the Caliph ibn al-Mu'tazz, but he escaped to Susa.
Some of his followers were arrested,
but al-Hallaj was not found and taken to Baghdad in chains until 911,
though no charges were brought then.
Two years later the Vizier 'Ali ibn Isa tried him;
but his case was suspended by the influence of ibn Suraij.
Instead of being charged with the serious crime of heresy,
he was convicted of being a charlatan and was humiliated and imprisoned.
Al-Hallaj was kept a prisoner in the royal palace for eight years
and was much appreciated by the Queen Mother.
Fear of a Hanbali revolution caused the Vizier Hamid bin al-'Abbas
and the Greek eunuch army commander Munis to put al-Hallaj on trial again.
Al-Hallaj had written to a friend advising him to destroy his Ka'ba,
meaning sacrifice his life,
and the mystic was convicted of advocating the destruction of Mecca.
Al-Hallaj had also recommended that those unable to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca
celebrate it at home with prayers and by giving a feast and clothes to thirty orphans.
A drunk Caliph Muqtadir signed his execution order.
When his servant Ibrahim asked for a keepsake word, al-Hallaj said, "Yourself,"
because unless you enslave it, it will enslave you.
Al-Hallaj spent half the night before execution repeating the word "illusion,"
and then near dawn he began shouting, "The truth."
He was taken to the execution ground while ecstatically dancing and laughing.
He asked God to pardon those who were punishing him.
Al-Hallaj received a thousand lashes; his hand and foot were amputated,
and he was hanged in a noose until morning, when he was decapitated.
All booksellers were summoned and had to swear not to sell any work by al-Hallaj.
The sayings of al-Hallaj were collected together,
but the only
complete text is The Tasin of Before-Time and Ambiguity,
which defends the position of Iblis for having refused to worship
Adam on the ground
that he should not worship anyone but God.
Al-Hallaj wrote that things are known by their opposites,
and
so whoever does not know vice will not know virtue.
He spoke to
those who might not be able to recognize
the real directly to
recognize him as the trace of the real.
Even though his hands
and feet were cut off, and he was killed,
al-Hallaj did not go
back on his proclamation.
Many Sufis influenced by al-Hallaj moved to Khurasan and Transoxiana,
where the Samanids were more tolerant of mystics.
Abu Nasr as-Sarraj
(d. 988) was from the city of Tus in Khurasan
and described the
Sufi way of life in his Book of Flashes.
In that work he outlined seven stations of repentance, watchfulness,
renunciation, poverty, patience, trust, and acceptance.
He quoted numerous Sufi teachers as he defined each of these qualities
on three different levels of experience—
the novice seekers, the select, and those with mystical knowledge.
Repentance is returning from what knowledge condemns to what knowledge praises.
For the knowers it is turning away from everything except God.
Seekers are watchful of the uncertain things between the prohibited and the permitted;
knowers are watchful of everything that distracts one from God.
Renunciation goes beyond the prohibited which is
obligatory to what is permitted and at hand.
Junayd said that in renunciation the hands are free of possessing
and the hearts are free of craving.
For novices poverty means not owning anything and refusing anything offered.
Junayd said that the truly poor do not ask and do not argue
while Sahl ibn 'Abdullah said that one does not ask nor refuse nor hoard.
The highest reality of poverty is described by al-Jariri as refraining from requesting
what is not lest one lose what is.
Junayd said that patience is bearing a burden for God's sake during the time of hardship;
but the truly patient in God does not weaken or waver in all trials.
Trusting in God is sufficient,
and Junayd said that the best trust is the heart's relying on God in all its conditions.
Ibn 'Ata' said that acceptance is letting God choose for the servant,
who accepts it gladly knowing that God knows best.
Al-Kalabadhi, who died in Bukhara about 990,
tried to find
a balance between orthodox Islam and Sufism.
He summarized the
ten principal elements of Sufism he heard
from Abu 'l-Hasan Muhammad
ibn Ahmad al-Farisi as the following:
1) isolation of unification (believing in one God),
2) understanding of audition (listening to mystical experience),
3) good fellowship,
4) preference of preferring (preferring what another prefers),
5) yielding up of personal choice,
6) swiftness of ecstasy (clearing conscience from what would prevent experiencing God),
7) revelation of the thoughts (examining every thought and following only what is God's),
8) abundant journeying (seeing warnings in heaven and earth),
9) yielding up of earning (trusting God),
10) and refusal to hoard.
Abu Sa'id ibn Abi Khayr (d. 1049) was the abbot of a large
Sufi monastery in Khurasan
and upheld the idea of human divinization.
He encouraged Sufis to dance and feast, and he wrote poetic quatrains
called ruba'iyat.
He urged people to shine like the sun
on the face of all
and suggested that bringing joy to a single
heart is better than many religious shrines,
and enslaving one
soul with kindness is better than freeing a thousand slaves.
Al-Qushayri
(d. 1074) was also from Khurasan
and wrote a comprehensive treatise
on Sufism that combined many views.
Abu'l-Qasim al-Qushayri was born in July 986 near Nishapur in Khurasan.
After his father died, he inherited a village while quite young.
He studied mathematics at Nishapur and worked in the Ghaznavid financial administration.
Qushayri was won over to Sufism by Abu Ali al-Duqqaq,
who came from a line of teachers influenced by Junayd and al-Hallaj.
Qushayri married Duqqaq's daughter Fatima, and she also became a Sufi scholar.
After Duqqaq died, he sat with 85-year-old Abu Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami (d. 1021).
Sulami wrote a two-volume history of Sufis.
After the Seljuqs took over Nishapur from the Ghaznavids,
Shafi'i jurists persuaded Tughril Beg's vizier Amid al-Mulk al-Kunduri to order Shi'as
and fundamentalist Abu'l Hasan al-Ashari (873-935) cursed in the mosques.
In 1044 Qushayri issued a decree (fatwa) that Ashari was
a faithful leader
of Sunni teachings and that he and his followers
should not be cursed.
A decade later Qushayri wrote an open letter
to the 'ulama of the Muslim world,
and Tughril-Beg ordered
Kunduri to arrest and deport the dissidents.
However, Abu Sahl,
the Shafi'i ra'is (chief) gathered armed men
and forced the soldiers to release the prisoners in order to free Qushayri,
who fled to Baghdad on pilgrimage.
Caliph al-Qaim bi-Amrilla (1031-75) had approved the stopping
of an official procession at the site of al-Hallaj's martyrdom
when his Vizier Ali ibn al-Muslima was appointed in 1046.
Qaim had a school built for Qushayri.
After Tughril-Beg died in 1063, Qushayri returned to Nishapur, where he died in 1072.
Qushayri wrote a commentary on the Qur'an
and was very
influential in spreading the traditions (hadith).
He wrote
many treatises, and his major book Risala,
which he wrote
in 1046, spread the teachings of Sufism.
In this long letter to
the Sufis he often quotes from the Qur'an
and the conversations
of Muhammad and his companions
as well as from numerous Sufi teachers
to reveal through actual
conversations and anecdotes the Sufi
message.
He emphasized that the moral character of the inner nature
is the most important part
of a person and the essence of Sufism.
A good moral character does not cause harm to others and bears
the injuries they cause.
The people with the worst characters
have the most worries.
He recommended accepting harsh treatment
from others as the will of God
without sorrow or anxiety.
Muhammad
said that an angry person should sit down until the anger subsides.
A good-natured spirit bears adversity.
A sign of a bad character
is one who focuses on the bad character of others.
The prophet Muhammad described three stages of repentance—
remorse
for past violations, immediate abandonment of the moral lapse,
and a firm resolve not to repeat the error.
Renunciation combines
trusting God and loving poverty.
Qushayri wrote that the root
of chivalry is being attentive to the cares of others.
Sulami
reported that Junayd found chivalry in Syria,
eloquence in Iraq,
and honesty in Khurasan.
Duqqaq's teacher Nasrabadhi observed
that every person is selfish;
but the chivalrous oppose their
passions, and Muhasibi suggested that chivalry
is being fair to
others while not demanding fairness for yourself.
Junayd observed
that chivalry is restraining yourself from causing trouble while
giving freely.
Poverty is what distinguishes the saints and adorns
the pure,
whom God chooses to be prophets.
Junayd said that a
Sufi is like the earth—
every ugly thing is thrown upon it, but
everything that grows out of it is beautiful.
Qushayri also wrote
about striving, seclusion, being wary of God,
abstaining from
wrong acts, silence, fear of God's punishment, hope, sorrow,
abandoning
passion, humility, opposing the ego's faults, envy, gossip, contentment,
trusting God, gratitude, certainty, patience, vigilance, satisfaction,
service,
desire for God, persistence, sincerity, honesty, shame,
freedom, remembering God,
insight, generosity, jealousy, prayer,
correct behavior, knowing God,
love, and longing for beloved God.
'Abdullah Ansari (1006-1088) taught Sufis in Herat,
and his lectures in Persian were recorded by his students,
who for a long time did not know that he was indigent
because he wore fine clothes while teaching.
Ansari was imprisoned in irons for five months in 1046 because of a petition by theologians.
As his fame spread, his students provided him with gifts.
Ansari was banished briefly in 1066, but four years later
Vizier Nizam al-Mulk sent him a robe of honor.
In the last eight years of his life Ansari continued to teach
even though he was physically blind.
Ansari was one of the Sufis who supported the more conservative Hanbalis.
He described one hundred spiritual stations in groups of ten, which are listed as follows:
1. Beginnings: awakening, repentance, appraisal, turning (to God), reflection,
self-admonition, holding fast, escape, austerity, listening.
2. Doors: sorrow, fear, apprehension, humility, serenity, renunciation, abstaining,
devotion, hope, aspiration.
3. Behaviors: watchfulness, heedfulness, respect, sincerity, correction,
perseverance, trust, reliance, confidence, submission.
4 and 5. Virtues: endurance, contentment, thankfulness, decency, truthfulness,
preference, character, modesty, generosity, expansion, aspiration, resolution, will,
seemliness, certitude, intimacy, remembrance, poverty, wealth, stage of being erect.
6: Valleys: excellence, knowledge, wisdom, insight, perspicacity, veneration,
inspiration, soothing, appeasing, endeavor.
7. Spiritual states: love, jealousy, longing, anxiety, thirst, ecstasy, alarm,
bewilderment, lightning, taste.
8. Guardianships: glance, instant, purity, delight, secret, breath, exile,
submersion, absence, establishment.
9. Realities: unveiling, contemplation, observation, life, grasping, stretching,
intoxication, lucidity, association, dissociation.
10. Fulfillments: knowing, annihilation, subsisting, realization, covering,
finding, casting aside, isolating, concentration, and unification.
Although Christians, Syriacs, and physicians had spread Greek
philosophy
into Islamic culture, Abu Ya'qub al-Kindi (c. 801-c.
873) was the first major Muslim
philosopher to be influenced by
Greek thought.
Most of his many treatises are lost, but he defined
the philosopher's goal in theoretical
knowledge as gaining the
truth and in practical knowledge
as behaving in accordance with
truth.
Al-Kindi found harmony between religion and philosophy.
He wrote that the purpose of every useful science is to get away
from anything harmful
by taking care against it and in acquiring
what the prophets have proclaimed,
which is the unity of God and
the practice of virtues acceptable to God
while avoiding the contrary
vices.
In the extant Art of Dispelling Sorrows al-Kindi
explained that sorrow is caused
by the loss of what is cherished
or the failure to attain what one desires.
Wishing to hold onto
material possessions, which are perishable, is in vain.
Unnecessary
sorrow can be avoided by cultivating moral courage and detachment.
The reasonable person is content to enjoy temporary things
but
does not grieve over what is lost.
Socrates said he never grieved.
Al-Kindi suggested the Stoic method of discerning what is in our
power from what is not.
What we can do is our duty, but what happens
beyond our control
we can accept with fortitude.
To fear death
is irrational, because it is natural and inevitable.
Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (865-925) was born at Ray
and
injured his eyes practicing alchemy.
Al-Razi then studied to become
a doctor and directed the hospital at Ray;
he directed a hospital
at Baghdad during the reign of Muktafi (902-908)
but returned
to Ray, where he gathered many students in circles.
If all the
circles failed to answer a question about science, then al-Razi
answered it.
He assisted students needing stipends and treated
the poor for free.
He wrote an influential medical text.
Much
of what is known about al-Razi comes from writings that opposed
him.
He admired Plato and believed that Aristotle had corrupted
philosophy.
Al-Razi held that the five eternals are God, soul,
matter, space, and time.
God has perfect wisdom and is pure intelligence.
Life flows from souls attaching themselves to matter.
Souls remain
in this unreal world until they are awakened by philosophy to
the real world.
He described matter as the creation of the Creator
in absolute space and eternal time.
In a major book on the philosophical
life, al-Razi wrote that the supreme purpose
for which humans
were created was not for physical pleasures
but to acquire knowledge
and practice justice.
Al-Razi emphasized reason as God's greatest gift to humans.
He did not believe that religion and philosophy could be reconciled,
and he considered prophecy and revelation unnecessary because reason is sufficient.
Al-Razi opposed authority and considered all people equal;
differences are only caused by development and education.
He found that prophets contradict each other.
People become attached to religion because they imitate tradition;
they are influenced by clergy serving the state,
and their imaginations succumb to ceremonies and rituals.
Al-Razi showed the contradictions between Judaism, Manichaeism, Christianity, and Islam.
He denied that the Qur'an was miraculous and believed a better book could be written.
Al-Razi preferred scientific books to all sacred books
because they are more useful to people.
Prophets even do much harm by causing religions to war against each other.
In ethics al-Razi believed that a philosopher should follow a moderate life
between excessive asceticism and too much indulgence in pleasures.
He himself lived so, not serving a monarch;
he was a doctor and counselor and quite generous and tolerant of others.
Al-Razi used Plato's psychology of the rational, pugnacious, and appetitive
aspects of the soul, and he believed that people should control their passions
and appetites by using their rational faculty.
Because people do not usually see their own defects,
he suggested asking a reasonable friend or neighbor.
When told about them, one should not be sad but joyful
and encourage the person to describe more of one's faults.
He was influenced by Galen's treatise "How Good People Benefit from Their Enemies."
Al-Razi described pleasure as a return to nature.
He criticized vanity as preventing one from learning more or doing better.
Anger is a natural emotion for self-defense, but in excess it does much harm.
He considered lying a bad habit; but when it's purpose was good, he praised it.
Too much worry is harmful.
Desire brings pain and harm, and drunkenness leads to calamity.
Al-Razi felt that no more wealth should be acquired than was needed and spent,
except for a small emergency fund.
Ambition that leads to dangers should be renounced.
Other vices he warned against are arrogance, envy, miserliness, gluttony, erotic passion,
frivolity, avarice, and fear of death.
Like Socrates, he argued that death is not to be feared
because it is either another life in a better world or nothing.
Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi (870-950) was born of Turkish descent
in Transoxiana;
he studied in Khurasan and at Baghdad,
and one
of his teachers was the Syriac Christian Yuhanna ibn Haylan.
Al-Farabi
gave philosophical support to the revolutionary Isma'ili movement
of his era.
He argued that a virtuous person should not remain
in a corrupt state but should migrate,
as Muhammad did to Medina.
Al-Farabi went from Baghdad to the court of Sayf al-Daula at Aleppo
in 942
but continued to wear his Sufi garb.
Al-Farabi was honored
by the presence of this emir
and his entourage at his funeral
in Damascus.
Unlike al-Razi, al-Farabi believed that human natures
are different,
and so he recommended esoteric teachings for the
elite,
who should govern social and political hierarchies.
He
also combined religion with philosophy and suggested that the
best philosopher king
should also be a religious prophet.
He found
that every revealed religion is based on revelation and inspiration;
a prophet is endowed with a special gift from God to express the
divine will.
Al-Farabi believed that miracles validate prophecy
but that they do not contradict natural laws.
The prophet has
a spiritual power by associating
with what al-Farabi called the
active intelligence.
Happiness is found by using this highest
part of the intelligence
to commune with the celestial world.
What emanates from the active intelligence to the passive intellect
is revelation.
Those governed by this are happy.
Al-Farabi wrote numerous philosophical works
and applied his ethical theories to political philosophy.
His views were much influenced by the writings of Plato.
Society depends on mutual cooperation; but he went beyond the city-state
to the nation or world-state, and he believed that a religious state founded by a prophet
was more enlightened than a pagan or purely philosophical state, which he called ignorant.
His three grades of souls are celestial (angels),
rational animals (humans), and irrational animals.
He suggested that happiness depends on combining the four virtues that are speculative,
theoretical, moral, and practical.
The speculative virtue enables humans to receive knowledge that they cannot reach
by their own efforts while theoretical knowledge can be gained by logic.
The practical side of the rational faculty decides moral issues and is skilled in arts and crafts.
The appetitive faculty inclines humans to desire or avoid and expresses emotions
such as affection, hatred, fear, and anger.
Al-Farabi's imaginative faculty combines these impressions to perceive
what is useful and harmful, pleasant and unpleasant.
The faculty of sense perception uses the five senses without distinguishing good from evil.
When one does not use the rational faculty to obtain true happiness,
the appetites and imagination pursue pleasures.
The latter al-Farabi called voluntary evil.
Al-Farabi believed that these natural dispositions require
a teacher to prepare people for the highest perfection.
Teaching creates the speculative virtue in individuals and nations
while upbringing develops the moral virtues and scientific arts.
The higher method of teaching is by certain demonstration, and the lower is by persuasion.
Practical arts need to become habits,
and al-Farabi even recommended
the use of force against disobedient and revolutionary citizens
if they do not behave voluntarily or by persuasion.
The first chief excels in virtue and enables the state to achieve the highest happiness.
This chief or Imam
of the ideal state should have the following twelve characteristics:
sound health, intelligence, good memory, prudence, eloquence,
devotion to learning,
dislike of sensual pleasures, love of truth,
magnanimity, indifference to wealth,
devotion to justice, and
courage.
The second chief who succeeds the first should be philosophical,
learned in the laws and customs, expert at deriving principles,
far-sighted, persuasive, and skilled in warfare.
Laws may be changed
to fit new conditions;
but generally one should govern by the
written laws received by past chiefs.
When citizens do not direct their activities to true happiness,
there are bad results, making the souls sick.
The function of
the governor is to manage affairs
so that people can eliminate
the evils and acquire the goods.
In the virtuous state everyone
knows the higher principles and acts on them.
When the state is
not virtuous, it can be either ignorant, immoral, or erring.
Al-Farabi
described six kinds of ignorant states.
The indispensable state
is governed by one who enables the people
to acquire their indispensable
necessities.
The vile state concentrates on acquiring wealth.
The base state is preoccupied with sensual pleasures.
The timocratic
state seeks honors.
When this becomes too extreme, it results
in the despotic state
that is dominated by a tyrant.
In the democratic
state freedom is the greatest value,
and the people rule so as
to maximize their variety of expression.
Authority is only given
to those who favor the people or give them money.
A virtuous person
who tries to direct them toward happiness
is either neglected
or may be deposed or killed.
The immoral states are like ignorant
states, but they hold differing beliefs.
Those in erring states
are given imitations and thus hold false beliefs.
Saadia ben Joseph (882-942) was born in Egypt
but moved to
Palestine when he was about 23.
He has been called the founder
of scientific Judaism.
Saadia compiled a Hebrew-Arabic dictionary,
and he translated the Bible into Arabic.
He moved to Babylon
and refuted the ideas of the Karais,
who did not accept the teachings
of the rabbis.
Saadia defended the traditional Jewish calendar.
In 928 he was appointed the Gaon of Sora,
where he used philosophy
to systematize the Talmud
When he refused to sign a decree
of Exilarch David ben Zacchai
regarding a large inheritance, Saadia
was removed from his position.
Saadia proposed Josiah Hassan as
a new prince of the captivity;
but the resulting conflict in 933
caused the Caliph to depose Saadia
and banish the rival Exilarch
Hassan to Khurasan.
Saadia lived in retirement at Baghdad writing.
His major philosophical work, The Book of Doctrines and
Beliefs
had one part on divine unity and another on divine justice.
He agreed with the Mu'tazilis in believing in human freedom
as
the basis for moral responsibility.
Saadia explained the good
reasons for the laws against
killing, stealing, adultery, false
testimony, and other trespasses,
and he distinguished these from
the religious laws and traditions
that he considered rationally
neutral.
Saadia was reconciled with David and restored to his office
in 937.
Three years later David died, and Saadia helped his son
Judah be appointed Exilarch;
but he died and left his 12-year-old
son with Saadia.
Because of his age a relative filled the office,
but he was executed for having disparaged Muhammad.
The next Exilarch was the last, as he was assassinated by fanatical
Muslims
while riding in his carriage even though the Caliph tried
to prevent his murder.
The Sora school was closed about 948 after
seven hundred years,
but copies of the Talmud were sent
to Spain.
The school at Pumbeditha went on for another century
until the last Gaon Chiskiya
was imprisoned and then executed
in 1040.
Chiskiya's two sons escaped to Spain.
Yahya ibn 'Adi (893-974) was a Jacobite Christian.
Influenced
by al-Farabi, ibn 'Adi studied Pythagorean metaphysics.
He believed
that the Greeks were superior in wisdom
and in propagating the
arts and sciences
but that this inequality between peoples could
be eliminated by education.
The unity of humanity implies the
imperative to love all people.
Those seeking perfection are friends
to all and compassionate.
The divine power is in every rational
soul, which is what makes people human.
Ultimately all people
are a single entity in many individual souls.
When humans restrain
their irascible soul and are guided by the rational soul,
then
all people become friends.
One should love the virtuous for their
virtue and feel compassion for the base.
Even the king is only
a king so long as he loves and pities his subjects.
Abu 'Ali 'Isa ibn Zur'a (943-1008) was also a Christian and
studied with ibn 'Adi.
He translated Aristotle and other Greek
works from Syriac versions.
Ibn Zur'a asserted that the blameworthy
ethical qualities are
anger, mendacity, ignorance, injustice,
and vileness;
but Abu Sulayman al-Sijistani argued that
anger
and lying are suitable in some circumstances.
Al-Hasan ibn Suwar
ibn al-Khammar was a Christian physician,
who also made translations
and wrote philosophical treatises.
Ibn Suwar recommended a balance
between the contemplative life and civic virtue;
the true philosopher
loves the real essence of all things
and is not tempted by material
concerns, being temperate and generous.
Although Abu 'Ali ibn al-Samh (d. 1027) was also in ibn 'Adi's school,
he believed that natural dispositions were strong and free will weak.
The Melchite Christian physician Nazif al-Rumi believed that the three pleasures of
eating, drinking, and sex become tedious;
but the pleasures of perfume, clothing, and music do not.
The family of 'Isa ibn 'Ali (d. 946) had converted from Christianity to Islam.
Inclining toward Sufism, 'Isa ibn 'Ali believed that dispensing with something
is better than acquiring it, that a rough life in company with the intelligent
is better than an easy life with fools, that one should spare no effort
in improving one's soul, and that since deceit is used to catch birds, fish, and beasts,
one can also use it to guide and purify humans.
The poet Abu l-Hasan al-Badihi was also associated with the school of Yahya ibn 'Adi,
and ibn al-Nadim (d. 990) compiled an encyclopedic
catalog of literature available at Baghdad for that circle.
Another prominent circle of philosophers was led by Abu Sulayman
al-Sijistani,
who died at Baghdad about 985 after teaching there
for fifty years.
His group commented on a saying of Alexander,
each agreeing in different ways
that while a father is a cause
of life, one's teacher is a cause of improving one's life.
Like
the Neo-Platonists, the Sijistani circle considered philosophy
a way of life
and the path to happiness and perfection, and the
teacher is the guide to their goal.
When 'Adud al-Daula died in
983, those in Sijistani's circle agreed that
he had succumbed
to the world's deceit and questioned what he had accomplished
with his wealth, slaves, retainers, and armies just as sages had
commented
upon the death of the "great" Alexander.
They
also discussed the usefulness and validity of astrology,
and Sijistani
concluded that it may be pursued to advantage only by those
with
the needed intellectual and moral virtues.
The Sincere Brothers were led by Abu Sulayman al-Maqdisi,
who wrote their philosophy in fifty letters.
Souls are saved from the defilement of matter by a celestial ascent
that is preceded by three levels.
First, the rational faculty masters the urban arts at age fifteen.
Second, the ruling faculty learns to govern brothers
with generosity and compassion at age thirty.
Third, the legal faculty helps kings exercise command and control
with kindness and moderation at age forty.
The brothers assembled in sincere friendship for sanctity, purity, and good counsel.
They believed the religious law had been contaminated by error and folly
and that it must be purified by philosophy.
Perfection could be achieved by combining Greek philosophy with Islamic religious law.
The sick require the religious law while the healthy need philosophy.
Virtue is acquired by philosophy and leads to the divine life.
The religious virtues based on authority and opinion are corporeal and temporal,
aiding in recovery from illness; but virtues based on demonstrative proof
are certain, spiritual, and eternal, preserving health.
The school of Abu 'Abdallah al-Basri was criticized for teaching the skeptical doctrine
that various proofs are equivalent.
Another circle was led by Abu 'Abdallah ibn Sa'dan, who was Vizier for
'Adud al-Daula's son Samsam for the first year of his rule to 984.
He tried to calm the rivalry between 'Adud's successors and recommended the lesso
of the ascetics to discoursing philosophers.
When ibn Sa'dan tried to appoint his father to office,
his rival ibn Yusuf was able to replace ibn Sa'dan
and get him executed during a revolt led by Asfar.
The historian and ethical philosopher Abu 'Ali ibn Miskawayh
(c. 936-1030)
studied the histories of al-Tabari with abu Bakr
Ahmad ibn Kamil al-Qadi
and philosophy with the Aristotelian commentator
ibn al-Khammar.
For seven years Miskawayh served as librarian
for abu al-Fadl ibn al-'Amid,
and he probably served Buyid princes
such as 'Adud al-Daula.
Miskawayh wrote a history of the world.
He believed that history is a mirror of society in each era,
and
the historian must be careful not to mix facts with fiction.
Facts
should be interpreted according to human interests
that show creative
hopes and aspirations.
History is like a living organism that
is guided by nations' ideals,
and it even affects the future.
Miskawayh shared the same theory of evolution as the Brothers
of Purity (Sincerity)
with the four stages of mineral, plant,
animal, and human,
culminating with the prophet imbibing the celestial
soul within.
Miskawayh also adopted Plato's psychology and the traditional
virtues of
wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice,
and he elucidated
Aristotle's ethical doctrine of the mean.
Wisdom he divided into
intelligence, retention, rationality,
understanding, clarity,
and capacity for learning.
Courage includes greatness of spirit,
fearlessness, composure,
fortitude, magnanimity, calmness, manliness,
and endurance.
Temperance he divided into modesty, tranquility,
self-control, liberality, integrity,
sobriety,
goodness, self-discipline,
good disposition, imperturbability, stability, and good deeds.
Justice includes friendship, concord, family fellowship,
recompense,
fairness, honesty, amiability, and piety.
He further divided liberality
into generosity, altruism, nobility, charity, and forgiveness.
Miskawayh believed that wisdom is the noblest aim in life and
achieves the most happiness.
The other goals people seek are honor
and pleasure.
He recommended humanistic education as the way to
salvation, perfection, and happiness.
Perfection of character
begins with ordering one's faculties and actions
so that they
are in harmony within.
The intelligent person examines imperfections
and makes effort to remedy them.
A youth should be trained in
law to carry out duties until it is a habit.
Then ethical studies
establish the habits firmly as virtues in the soul by proofs.
However, education by obscene poetry can result in the false values
of lying and immorality.
Miskawayh criticized asceticism and withdrawal from society as unjust
because they want services without rendering any themselves.
He noted that ascetics sever themselves from moral virtues.
He believed that people are social and need to learn mutual cooperation
with others to perfect humanity.
Humans need others in order to survive, and they naturally desire friendship.
Those who serve others much may demand much,
but those who serve little can ask for little.
Human affairs need to be ordered by government, which removes misfortunes.
The highest law is from God, followed by the law of the ruler, and the law of money.
The four causes of harm are the baseness that results from passion,
wickedness resulting from injustice, grief caused by error,
and anxiety resulting from misfortune.
Humans should love each other and contribute to each other's perfection
like different organs in a single body.
Miskawayh rejected the idea that happiness only comes after death;
he believed we must search for happiness in this world and in the world to come.
Miskawayh found that human love for God is too high to be attained
by mortals;
but the student's love for the teacher is even more
important than
a son's love for his parents
because teachers educate
souls and guide them to happiness.
Friendship he considered most
sacred, and he noted that even a king needs friends
to give him
information and carry out his orders.
One should please one's
friends without hypocrisy or flattery.
Miskawayh disagreed with
Aristotle that love is an extension of self-love,
for he found
that one must limit self-love in order to love another.
He contrasted
the pleasure of animal love with the virtue or goodness of spiritual
love.
Love is the best sovereign; but when it fails,
justice must
be brought about by fear and force.
Miskawayh recommended practical disciplines for diseases of
the soul
such as anger, vanity, contentiousness, recklessness,
cowardice, pride,
self-indulgence, deceit, fear, and sadness.
Some of his remedies are similar to those of al-Razi.
One may
control the passions by not dwelling on the memories of pleasurable
sensations.
Rational deliberation can help one avoid being driven
by the force of habits.
Like Pythagoras, he recommended reviewing
one's actions at the end of the day
to examine one's shortcomings.
The cure of many ills is achieved by eradicating anger and arrogance.
Anger is caused by vanity, pride, bickering, importunity, jesting,
conceit,
derision, treachery, wrong, ambition, and envy,
but they
all culminate in the desire for revenge.
Anger also accompanies
greed.
The self-respecting and courageous person overcomes anger
with magnanimity and discernment.
Fear is of future events which
may not occur.
Fears that cannot be prevented such as old age
or death can be relieved
by understanding that death is an escape
from pain.
Grief is caused by attachment to material possessions
and by not attaining physical desires.
The remedy is realizing
that nothing in the world
of generation and corruption is stable
nor endures.
Those who learn how to be satisfied with what
they
find and are not grieved at loss will be happy.
Abu 'Ali al-Husayn ibn Sina (980-1037), known in Christian
Europe as Avicenna,
was the son of the Bukhara governor.
Avicenna
was taught literature and had memorized the Qur'an
by the age of ten.
He studied Islamic law with the Hanafi jurist
Isma'il al-Zahid and philosophy with al-Natili.
Avicenna also
studied medicine, and by the time he was sixteen
he was leading
legal and medical discussions.
He read Aristotle's Metaphysics
forty times but admitted that he did not really
understand it
until he bought al-Farabi's book On the Objects of Metaphysics.
When Nuh ibn Mansur became seriously ill, Avicenna was consulted;
upon the Emir's recovery the young physician joined the Samanid
staff
and now had access to its library.
At this time he wrote
a commentary on the philosophical legacy called Sum and Substance
and a book on ethics entitled Innocence and Guilt.
In the
latter he defended the naturalistic theodicy that enables good
and truth
to win over evil and falsehood.
He argued in favor of
the popular belief in retribution and recompense,
which operate
through nature, human action, and seemingly by chance;
but in
reality they descend ultimately from God.
When his father died, Avicenna was given a government position
and became independent;
but he was compelled to leave Bukhara
after the last Samanid 'Abd al-Malik ibn Nuh was deposed in 999.
Avicenna moved to Gurganj and stayed there until 1012.
Avicenna
was summoned to the court of Mahmud;
but faced with the Ghaznavid's
cruel policies of conquest,
persecution for deviating from orthodoxy,
high taxes, and military conscription,
the philosopher fled south.
He was given refuge by Qabus after curing a member of his family;
but Qabus was imprisoned and died in 1013.
In Jurjan Avicenna
began writing his great medical Canon.
With his loyal disciple Juzjani he traveled to the court of al-Saiyida and her son
Majd al-Daula at Ray, which also soon fell to the Ghaznavids.
After Shams al-Daula recaptured Ray in 1015,
Avicenna medically treated the prince and joined his court.
Mutineers demanded the life of Avicenna but were mollified
when Shams al-Daula banished him for forty days.
The philosopher-physician was reinstated after treating the prince's colic.
Avicenna was at Hamadhan until 1023; there he was vizier twice
and completed his Canon.
In the second part he suggested seven rules for scientific experimentation
in order to isolate causes and quantify effects.
His pharmacopoeia included 760 drugs.
When Shams al-Daula died, Avicenna negotiated with Isfahan’s monarch 'Ala' al-Daula
and was imprisoned by Shams' son Taj al-Mulk for four months in a castle,
where he wrote his Hidayah (Book of
Guidance).
Avicenna, his brother Mahmud, Juzjani, and two
slaves managed to escape
disguised as Sufis to Isfahan.
Avicenna
recognized Sufi experiences as a valid subject for philosophical
study.
In 1029 Mahmud captured nearby Ray and destroyed the library
in the Buyid palace.
The following January Avicenna was forced
to flee Isfahan as his baggage was plundered
Avicenna never married;
but some blame his frequent sexual intercourse with slaves
as
a contributing factor in his fatal illness of 1037.
Avicenna wrote
at least a hundred books, and his medical book al-Qanan (Canon)
became the standard text in Europe until the 17th century.
His
major philosophical work is called al-Shifa (The Healing)
and discusses comprehensively logic, physics, mathematics, and
metaphysics.
In his Book of Hints and Pointers Avicenna asked the
reader to reflect that
absent any sensory experience one could
still realize one's existence.
Thus he posited that the conscious
subject or soul is independent of the body.
He also noted that
mathematical and other theoretical knowledge transcend the temporal.
Since the soul does not depend on the body for its existence,
it is not necessarily destroyed with the body.
Avicenna agreed
with al-Farabi that the active intelligence
knows in the same
way as God knows, though not as completely.
The soul is what receives
the reward since it survives the body's perishing
and is unmolested
by passing time.
In a mystical treatise On Love Avicenna
went beyond the language
of conjunction to the Sufi idea of unity.
He wrote that every being loves the absolute good with innate
love
and that the absolute good manifests itself to all who love
it,
though their receptivity may vary.
Avicenna argued that the
soul can cure another body without instruments,
and he cited evidence
from hypnosis and suggestion.
These demonstrate that what are
called miracles can occur.
Avicenna explained how prophets bringing revelation
can impel
people to good actions by more than intellectual insight and inspiration.
Thus the prophet should be the law-giver,
and some can understand
the laws by philosophical methods.
However, those who are unable
to understand philosophical truth behind the law
have to accept
revelation of the law as literal truth.
Avicenna's social and
political philosophy are discussed in relation to prophecy.
Humans
are a species that needs to be complemented by others of the same
species
since an isolated individual has difficulty fulfilling
basic needs.
Thus humans require partnerships and reciprocal transactions,
which in turn demand law and justice.
The creation of the laws
may come from a prophet,
who lays down laws by God's permission.
The first principle is to teach people they have a single omnipotent
Creator
who knows all and that the commands of God must be obeyed.
Those who do obey will obtain an afterlife of bliss,
but the disobedient
will be miserable.
Avicenna warned that not everyone can understand
the more complex philosophical
knowledge of God and that if those
unable to do so try,
they fall into dissension with multiplying
doubts and complaints.
To ensure the preservation of the laws the prophet should teach
people to pray
so that they will be reminded of God and the afterlife.
Avicenna also stated his belief that worldly interests could be
enhanced by holy war (jihad)
and the pilgrimage, though
the noblest act of worship is prayer.
He argued that happiness
in the hereafter is achieved by the soul's detaching itself by
piety
from what is acquired by the bodily dispositions.
This purification
is achieved by ethical states and moral habits of character
that
turn the soul away from the body and its senses
and toward the
memory of its true essence.
Avicenna suggested that the legislator divide the state into
administrators, artisans, and guardians with a leader for each
group.
The common fund comes from duties on acquired and natural
profits,
such as agricultural fruits.
Property may also be taken
from those who resist the law,
and Avicenna includes war booty
in this category.
These funds are required to meet the needs of
the guardians (soldiers)
who do no productive work and of the
sick and aged unable to work.
Avicenna condemned gambling as unproductive,
usury as seeking excessive profit,
and fornication and sodomy
as detrimental to the sacredness of marriage.
What is most conducive
to the general good is love,
which is achieved through friendship
and long association.
He considered women less rational but needing
protection from separation.
Thus judges and the law should decide
about divorces
in order to protect the woman from mistreatment.
Avicenna observed that sexual relations of women are considered
shameful
while those of men only arouse jealousy.
Thus he approved
of the veiling of women and their seclusion from men.
Men should
be the bread-earners, but women share in the proper upbringing
of children.
He argued that the man's work is compensated
by his
exclusive use of the woman's genitalia.
The prophet's successor may be designated by the legislator
or by the consensus of the elders.
Avicenna recommended the decree
that if someone secedes or claims the caliphate
by power or because
of wealth, it is the duty of every citizen to fight and kill him.
Those who do not do so disobey God,
and only belief in the prophet
is more important to God than killing such a usurper.
Avicenna
suggested that those who oppose the laws should be called upon
to accept the truth; if they resist, they should be destroyed
by war.
Their property and women should be administered
according
to the constitution of a virtuous state.
He justified this slavery
because some people must be forced to serve others.
Those not
capable of acquiring virtue he argued are already slaves by nature.
Thus the legislator must impose prohibitions, penalties,
and punishments
for disobeying the divine law.
Avicenna taught the traditional moderation of the cardinal
virtues in temperance and courage.
Excessive indulgence harms
human interests,
and a deficiency of courage harms the state.
Wisdom guides practical action, and the sum of wisdom, courage,
and temperance is justice.
These include the virtues of contentment,
generosity, patience, forgiveness, tolerance,
moral strength,
keeping confidences and promises, eloquence, kindness, firmness,
honesty, loyalty, friendliness, mercy, modesty, magnanimity, and
humility.
Ibn Hazm al-Andalusi (994-1064) was born at Cordoba
into a wealthy family that had recently converted from Christianity to Islam.
His family fled the Berber invasion.
His mother, brother, sister-in-law, and father had all died by the time he was 18,
and Ibn Hazm himself suffered from heart palpitations and an enlarged spleen.
The family's property had been lost during a civil war at Cordoba in 1009,
but Ibn Hazm became Vizier to the Caliph at Valencia and was Vizier at Cordoba
under Caliph al-Mustazir in 1023.
However, the continuing civil war destroyed the Umayyad caliphate
as Spain broke up into petty states.
He spent three years studying jurisprudence in order to answer criticism
he received from eminent jurists.
He was imprisoned several times for his politics and eventually retired to write.
According to his son he wrote 400 books, though fewer than forty survived.
His critical writings were often unpopular, and some of his books were burned in public.
Ibn Hazm wrote about romantic love in The Ring of the Dove,
and his greatest work was an encyclopedic study of comparative religion.
He rejected the current notion that women are more susceptible to corruption.
Ibn Hazm defended the rights of women and slaves and argued that
everyone should have a free education.
In politics he rejected the Shi'i ideas that the imam (leader)
should
be chosen by heredity and that he is infallible.
Ibn Hazm believed
that the ruler must be just,
but he ranked the scholar who teaches
the people
as deserving an even higher place in the hereafter.
Near the end of his life Ibn Hazm wrote A Philosophy of Character and Conduct.
In considering that life is a continual
process of reducing anxiety,
Ibn Hazm discovered a method for
arriving at what all people seek.
He described it eloquently as
follows:
I discovered that this method consists in nothing else but directing one's self
towards a Supreme Goodness by means of good works conducive to immortal life.
For, as I investigated, I observed that all things tended to elude me,
and I reached the conclusion that the only permanent reality possible
consists in good works useful for another, immortal life.
Every other hope that I desired to see realized was followed by melancholy,
sometimes because what was ardently desired escaped me,
sometimes because I decided to abandon it.
It seemed to me that nothing escaped these dangers but good works,
directed by a Supreme Goodness.
These alone were always followed by pleasure in the present and in the future;
in the present because I was freed from numerous anxieties
which disturbed my tranquillity, and, moreover,
friends and enemies concurred in commending me;
and in the future because these works promised immortality.10
This virtuous work is free of defects and the most effective
way to stop anxiety.
Ibn Hazm observed that those who worked for
this end were joyful and free of cares,
even when they underwent
unpleasant tests,
because of the hope that the end of their life
would bring what they sought.
He compared the spiritual life to
sensual pleasures.
The pleasure which the intelligent man experiences in the exercise of his reason,
the learned man in his study, the prudent man in his discreet deliberation,
and the devout man in his ascetic combat is greater than the delight
which is felt by the glutton in his eating, the toper in his drinking,
the lecher in his incontinence, the trader in his painful bargaining,
the gamester in his merriment, and the leader in the exercise of his authority.
The proof of this lies in the fact that intelligent, learned, prudent, and devout men
also experience those other delights which I have just enumerated
in the same way as one who lives only to wallow in them,
but they tend to abandon and separate themselves from them,
preferring instead the quest for permanent release
from anxiety through good and virtuous works.11
Ibn Hazm advised his readers to listen to the Creator more than to what other people say.
He believed that those who think they are safe from all criticism are out of their minds.
Those who study deeply and discipline the soul not to rest until it finds the truth
are more glad to receive criticism than praise because praise can lead to pride,
while criticism may result in correction.
Even unjust criticism can help a person to learn how to control oneself with patience.
He put those seeking eternity on the side of the angels,
those striving for evil on the side of the demons,
those striving for fame and victory on the side of the tigers,
and those seeking pleasures on the side of the beasts.
Those who seek only money are too base to be compared
even to beasts but resemble collected slime.
The person with a strong intellect with extensive knowledge,
who does good deeds, should rejoice,
because only the angels and best people are superior.
Ibn Hazm encapsulated the whole of virtue in the saying of
the prophet Muhammad
on the golden rule—"Do as you would be done by."12
From the prophet's forbidding of all anger Ibn Hazm inferred that
the soul should turn away from greed and lust while upholding justice.
He considered the person misguided who
would barter an eternal future for a passing moment.
The person who harms is bad, and anyone returning evil for evil is just as bad.
Anyone refraining from returning evil is their master and the most virtuous.
Ibn Hazm warned against gaining a reputation for being devious.
The person who knows one's own faults better than others know them is blessed.
Security, health, and wealth are only appreciated by those who lack them;
but the value of a sound judgment and virtue is known only to those who share them.
The wise are not deluded by a friendship that began when one was in power.
He recommended trusting the pious.
Too much wealth causes greed, and Ibn Hazm defined the supreme objective
of generosity as giving away the entire surplus of one's possessions to charity.
He defined courage as fighting in defense of religion, women, ill-treated neighbors,
the oppressed who seek protection, for a lost fortune,
when honor has been attacked, and for other rights.
Ibn Hazm defined continence as turning away
all one's organs of sense from forbidden objects.
He defined justice as giving spontaneously
what is due and knowing how to take what is right.
Nobility is to allow others their rights willingly.
"One hour of neglect can undo a year of pious effort."13
During civil war the blossom does not set fruit.
He considered it a virtue of self-discipline to confess faults
so that others may learn from them.
Then Ibn Hazm described how he worked to overcome his faults of self-satisfaction,
sarcasm, pride, trembling, love of fame, disliking women, and bearing grudges.
He believed that the best gift from God is justice and the love of justice and truth.
He observed that anyone who cares about your friendship
is willing to criticize you while those who make light of faults show they do not care.
Ibn Hazm warned against giving advice, interceding, or giving
gifts
only on the condition that they be accepted; one should
not insist.
He considered the highest aim of friendship to have
all things in common
without constraint and preferring one's friend
to all others.
He characterized love as longing for the loved
one, fearing separation,
and hoping that one's love will be reciprocated.
He believed that jealousy is a virtuous feeling made of courage
and justice,
and he claimed that a jealous person never committed
adultery.
He described the five stages of love as making friends,
admiration, close friendship
such that one misses the other terribly,
the obsession of amorous affection, and finally passion.
For Ibn
Hazm the four roots of virtue are justice, intelligence, courage,
and generosity,
and their contrary vices are unfairness, ignorance,
cowardice, and greed.
He considered honesty part of justice, and
temperance part of generosity.
He noted that the good do have
a hard time in this world,
but they find rest in their calmness
that
others worrying about the vanities of this world do not know.
The wise see their own faults and fight against them in order to overcome them.
The fool ignores them, or even worse, takes them for good qualities.
One should avoid speaking of the faults of others
except when counseling someone face to face.
One should also be careful not to praise people to their face
lest one be taken for a vile flatterer.
Ibn Hazm warned against being proud of intelligence, good works, knowledge,
and courage because there are always others who are superior in these good qualities;
being proud of wealth, beauty, praise, ancestry, and physical strength
is ridiculous because they have no lasting value.
If your pride causes you to boast, you are doubly guilty
because it shows that your intelligence was unable to control your pride.
He reminded us that it is harder to tame oneself than it is to tame a wild beast,
and it is also more difficult to guard against other humans than it is against wild animals.
Ibn Hazm believed that to the well-born honor is more important than gold.
The well-born should use gold to protect one's body, one's body to protect one's soul,
one's soul to protect one's honor, one's honor to protect one's religion,
and one's religion should not be sacrificed for anything.
A person wishing to be fair should put oneself in the adversary's position
in order to see the unfairness of one's own behavior.
Solomon ibn Gabirol was born at Malaga in Spain
about 1022 and was educated at Zaragoza.
By the age of 16 he was already well known for writing poetry.
He was protected by the King’s advisor Yekutiel ibn Hasan until Hasan
was imprisoned and executed in 1039.
Ibn Gabirol was called a Greek for his Neo-Platonic philosophy, and his two ethical works,
Choice of Pearls and The
Improvement of the Moral Qualities,
were written when he was quite young.
He became a court poet with the prominent Jewish statesman Samuel ha-Nagid in Granada.
Samuel's son Joseph (1031-1066) became the Jewish leader (Nagid) when he was 24;
but he was killed when Muslims massacred 1500 Jewish families in Granada on one day.
This was the first major persecution of Jews in Islamic Spain,
and the Jews in Granada were compelled to sell their property and go into exile.
Yet Abu Fadl Chasdai, the son of a poet as famous as ibn Gabirol,
was made Vizier in that same year of 1066 by the King of Zaragoza.
Ibn Gabirol's major work on metaphysics was called The Fountain of Life,
but it only survived in
Latin translation with the author's name appearing as
Avicebron
or Avencebrol; only in 1846 was it realized that this book,
which
influenced Christian scholasticism, was by ibn Gabirol.
His poem The Royal Crown humbly calls upon the grace of God.
He
may have died as early as 1051,
though other authorities say ibn
Gabirol died about 1070.
Ibn Gabirol's Choice of Pearls is a collection of aphorisms,
some of which were collected from ancient Greek philosophers.
He passed on the advice about the four mental types—
the wise
know and are aware that they know, and one can learn from them;
those who know but are unaware that they know need reminding;
those ignorant who are aware that they are ignorant can be taught;
and those who are ignorant but pretend that they know are fools
and should be avoided.
He noted that kings may be judges on earth,
but the wise judge the kings.
If one cannot control one's temper,
how much less can one control others.
Those who seek more than
they need hinder themselves from enjoying what they have.
A person's
best companion is the intellect, and the worst enemy is desire.
In The Improvement of the Moral Qualities
ibn Gabirol commented on various moral qualities.
He found that intelligence and modesty go together in people.
Those who hate people are hated by them; this may destroy one,
as one suffers injury from hostile people.
Wrath is reprehensible except when it is used to correct
or because of indignation for transgressions.
Generosity in moderation is commendable but not when it lapses into prodigality,
squandering substance on pleasures and lust.
Valor perseveres in the right and overcomes desires.
It is better to die in the best way than to live in an evil way.
Another influential ethical work was written by Bahya Ben Joseph
ibn Pakuda
in the second half of the 11th century.
Bahya was a
rabbinical judge in Zaragoza.
He believed that one must go beyond
the duties of the body required by religious traditions,
and so
he wrote Duties of the Heart, describing them in ten sections
called gates.
Bahya tried to spiritualize ethics by appealing
to conscience
as more important than ritualized laws.
He himself
became a self-denying ascetic.
Bahya explained that people are
blind for three reasons.
First, they are too absorbed in secular
affairs and pleasures.
Second, they grow up surrounded with such
abundance they take for granted
that they do not appreciate the
wisdom and bounty of God.
Third, people do not seem to realize
that the various mishaps that occur in the world
are valuable
trials in order to learn discipline.
Bahya described the many
blessings of life
and perceived in them the miraculous design
of a divine creator.
He argued that altruism is really in everyone's
self-interest,
for the beneficiary is under obligation to serve
the benefactor.
The famous Arabian tales called The Thousand and One Nights
derive from a Persian collection of a Thousand Legends (Hazar
Afsana)
that was translated into Arabic about 850, though
new stories were being added
to replace others all the way up
to at least the 15th century.
Many stories are set in Baghdad
at the peak of its wealth and splendor
under Caliph Harun al-Rashid
(r. 786-809);
later stories are often set in Cairo.
The prolog
suggests that people can look back
at the fortunes of predecessors
to be admonished about folly.
The Persian original contained the framework story of King Shahzaman,
who caught his wife in bed with a black slave and killed them.
While his brother King Shahryar was hunting, Shahzaman also found his brother's wife
embracing an African in a slave orgy.
Shahryar had his wife's head cut off and ordered his Vizier
to bring him a virgin girl every night; these he ravished each night and in the morning
had them executed until the Vizier could no longer find girls for his King.
The Vizier's daughter Shahrazad was very well read and volunteered
to be ransom for the other daughters.
After King Shahryar ravished the virginity of Shahrazad,
she sent for her younger sister Dunyazad,
who asked her to tell the King stories to pass the night pleasantly.
At dawn Shahrazad discreetly stopped speaking,
and the King, wanting to hear the end of the story, postponed her execution.
Every night Shahrazad would tell stories and stop when she saw morning approaching,
and the King would ask her to complete her story the next night.
Finally after a thousand and one nights, Shahrazad had born three children.
Both kings Shahryar and Shazaman decided to put aside
their resentment of women's treachery, and Shahzaman married Dunyazad.
The stories marvelously describe urban Islamic culture,
and magical genies and Ifrits make any fantasy come true.
Few stories relate to war and the military while many are frankly erotic.
In the "Tale of the Second Sheikh" he tells his Ifrita wife not to kill his brothers
because they know that the wicked person suffers punishment enough.
In "The Fisherman and the Genie" King Yunan kills his physician Rayyan
because he fears the physician may kill him;
but the Vizier explains to the Ifrit that God would have preserved Yunan
if he had preserved the physician.
The Ifrit asks the Vizier to return good for evil by pardoning his wrong.
Tales within tales lead eventually to a fisherman becoming the richest man in the country.
A brother and sister who committed incest were punished by being burned in a fire,
and their punishment in the next world is expected to be even worse.
A Christian broker tells how he had his hand cut off for stealing.
"The Tale of King Umar Al-Numan and His Two Remarkable
Sons,
Sharkan and Du Al-Makan" concerns battles with the
Byzantine empire
and shows the Christian warriors in a negative
light epitomized
by the wicked old Mother-of-Calamity.
In this
story a section on the art of conduct mentions four human ways
of
government, commerce, husbandry, and craftsmanship.
One must
beware that pity weakens government but also that lack of pity
stirs revolt.
The road away from the house of moderation leads
to the town of foolishness.
One should be just, especially to
slaves.
Girls give wise discourses to King Umar.
A qadi to judge justly should look at both sides
and make no difference between rich and poor.
His duty is to reconcile people if possible to maintain peace.
When in doubt, he should reserve judgment.
Justice is the first human duty.
It is better for the unjust to turn toward justice
than for a just person to remain so.
Humans judge only appearances, but God will judge what is hidden.
A judge should not try to exact confession by torture or starvation.
The three things that make a judge useless are
respecting place, loving praise, and fearing to lose one's position.
A second girl says,
There are three things which are possible only under three conditions:
you may not know if a man be really good until you have seen him in his anger;
you may not know if a man be brave until you have seen him in battle;
and you may not know if a man be a friend until you have come to him in necessity.
A tyrant will pay for his injustice, in spite of the flattering words of his courtiers;
and the oppressed will escape perdition, in spite of all injustice.
Deal with people according to their deeds and not according to their words.
Yet deeds are not worth the intentions which inspire them;
therefore each man shall be judged according to his intentions
and not according to his deeds.
The heart is the noblest member of the body.
A wise man said that the worst of men is he who allows
an evil desire to take root in his heart, for he shall lose his manhood.14
When King Shahryar asks Shahrazad for a tale to fortify their
moral precepts,
she tells him of a girl named Sympathy,
who was
known for her learning as well as her beauty.
She advises that
a holy war should only be undertaken for defensive purposes
when
Islam is in danger, and it should never be offensive.
To give
is to enrich oneself.
Sympathy's wisdom includes the following
duties of religion:
The branches of Islam are twenty: strict observance of the Book's teaching,
conformation with the traditions and oral instructions of the Prophet,
the avoidance of injustice, eating permitted food, never to eat unpermitted food,
to punish evil doers that vice may not increase owing to the exaggerated clemency
of the virtuous, repentance, profound study of religion, to do good to enemies,
to be modest, to succor the servants of Allah, to avoid all innovation and change,
to show courage in adversity and strength in time of trial,
to pardon when one is strong, to be patient in misfortune, to know Allah,
to know His Prophet (upon whom be prayer and peace!),
to resist the suggestions of the Evil One,
to fight against the passions and wicked instincts of the soul,
to be wholly vowed in confidence and submission to the service of Allah.15
Faith abides in the heart, the head, the tongue, and in the members.
The strength of the heart is joy; strength of the head is in knowing the truth;
strength in the tongue is in sincerity; and strength of the members is in submission.
In introducing moral anecdotes from a perfumed garden Shahrazad warns the King
that to gross and narrow minds they might seem licentious;
but to the pure and clean all things are pure and clean,
and it is not shameful to speak of things which lie below the waist.
A story about Buhlul the jester in the court of Harun al-Rashid
is perhaps one of the earliest references to the medieval court jesters or fools.
When the Caliph asks Buhlul to make a list of all the fools in Baghdad,
he suggests that it would be easier to make a list of all the wise men
and then conclude that all the others are fools.
The second-to-last tale attempts to explain why al-Rashid had his body-guard Masrur
execute their best friend, Vizier Jafar of the Barmakid family.
The rest of that family that numbered nearly a thousand were thrown into dungeons,
and their goods were confiscated.
The Caliph feared that Yahya al-Barmaki and his sons
had taken away the management of the government from him.
Also they had previously practiced the Magian cult,
and during the expedition to Khurasan they had used their power to prevent
the destruction of Magian temples and monuments.
Jafar had agreed to marry Harun's sister Abbasah
but never see her except in his presence.
Al-Rashid became so jealous when he learned that she bore a child
that he had his own sister and the baby buried alive.
The tales of the Arabian nights were translated into French
in 1704
and since then have provided immense entertainment to
western culture
that still continues in adventure movies based
on
the voyages of Sindbad and stories of Aladdin's lamp.
Analysis of his horoscope has indicated that 'Umar Khayyam was born May 18, 1048,
and modern investigation has put his death in 1131.
He was educated at Khurasan's capital Nishapur and at Balkh.
He was most noted in his life as an astronomer, mathematician, and philosopher.
He wrote his influential treatise on algebra at Samarkand.
In 1074 he was summoned by Seljuq Sultan Malik-Shah
and his famous Vizier Nizam al-Mulk to construct an observatory and revise the calendar;
the new era was inaugurated on March 16, 1079.
His patron allowed 'Umar Khayyam leisure for writing.
After Nizam al-Mulk died in 1092, 'Umar Khayyam went on pilgrimage.
He made an enemy of Sanjar when he predicted the child would die of an ailment.
Sanjar governed Khurasan from 1117 and was Sultan 1137-1157.
It was reported that 'Umar Khayyam died while reading Avicenna's chapter
on the one and the many, praying to God
that he had only his knowledge to recommend himself.
Ruba'iyat means quatrains, and hundreds of these attributed
to 'Umar Khayyam
were collected after his death.
English renderings
were made famous by the Victorian poet Edward Fitzgerald.
Unlike
traditional Islamic belief and Sufi mysticism, these writings
question the existence of God and the immortality of the soul.
The poet recommended the sensual pleasures of the present
rather
than asceticism or study.
Yet he once wrote, "If the heart
could grasp the meaning of life,
in death it would know the mystery
of God."16
His ethics was not in the least transcendental
as this quatrain indicates:
The good and evil that are in man's heart,
The joy and sorrow that are our fortune and destiny,
Do not impute them to the wheel of heaven because, in the light of reason,
The wheel is a thousand times more helpless than you.17
Although 'Umar Khayyam in his quatrains often recommended drinking
wine,
which is forbidden by the Qur'an,
he nevertheless advised doing so wisely.
If you drink wine, do it with men of sense,
Or drink with a tulip-cheeked paragon of girlhood;
Don't overdo it, or make it your constant refrain, or give the show away;
Drink in moderation, occasionally, and in private.18
'Umar Khayyam found responsibility in each person.
It is we who are the source of happiness, the mine of our own sorrow,
The repository of justice and foundation of iniquity;
We who are cast down and exalted, perfect and defective,
At once the rusted mirror and Jamshid's all-seeing cup.19
'Umar Khayyam disliked religious hypocrisy
and suggested that if all are not saved, then none will be.
Drinking wine and consorting with good fellows
Is better than practicing the ascetic's hypocrisy;
If the lover and drunkard are to be among the damned
Then no one will see the face of heaven.20
1. Wisdom of Royal Glory by Yusuf Khass Hajib, tr. Robert Dankoff, p. 110.
2. The Book of Government by Nizam al-Mulk, tr. Hubert Drake, p. 187.
3. Ibid., p. 187.
4. Ibid., p. 231.
5. Quoted in Islam ed. John Alden Williams, p. 138.
6. Tadhikrat al- ‘Awliyal’ by‘Attar, tr. Paul Losensky in Early Islamic Mysticism, p. 163.
7. Ibid., p. 169.
8. Hilyat ul-auliya’. Vol. 10 by Abu Nu‘aym al-Isfahani
p. 58 quoted in Mystical Dimensions of Islam by Annemarie Schimmel, p. 51.
9. Some Points on Tawhid in Early Islamic Mysticism by Abu l-Qasim al-Junayd, p. 255.
10. A Philosophy of Character and Conduct by Ibn Hazm,
tr. James Kritzeck in Anthology of Islamic Literature, p. 133.
11. Ibid., p. 134.
12. Morality and Behavior by Ibn Hazm,
tr. Muhammad Abu Laylah in In Pursuit of Virtue 26, p. 127.
13. Ibid., 93, p. 140.
14. The Thousand Nights and One Night
tr. J. D. Mardrus and Powys Mathers, Volume 1, p. 429.
15. Ibid., Volume 2, p. 153.
16. Rub’iyat of Omar Khayyam 5 tr. Peter Avery and John Heath-Stubbs, p. 48.
17. Ibid., 34, p. 54.
18. Ibid., 202, p. 97.
19. Ibid., 211, p. 99.
20. Ibid., 222, p. 101.
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