Alternate titles: Muslim world
By Azeem Shaikh See All https://islamicurdustudies.blogspot.com
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Islamic world, The complex of societies and cultures in which Muslims and their faith have been pervasive and socially dominating is known as the Islamic world, sometimes known as Islamdom.
Islamism is a worldwide phenomenon; Muslims are the majority in between 30 and 40 nations from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, as well as along a belt that runs from northern Africa into Central Asia and from there south to the northern parts of the Indian subcontinent. Less than one-fifth of Muslims are Arab, and more than half of them reside east of Karachi, Pakistan. The Islamic faith continues to grow despite the lack of any Islamic political organisations, according to some estimates more quickly than any other major religion.
The article Islam especially discusses the Muslim faith and the life of the Prophet Muhammad. The article Islamic arts discusses the writings, music, dance, and visual arts of Muslim peoples. Articles on specific nations or regions, such as Egypt, Iran, Arabia, and North Africa, where Islam is a factor are also discussed. See the articles on certain branches, sects, and ideas of Islam, such as Hadith, Sunni, and Shi'i.
The history of the modern Islamic world needs to be explained from a very broad viewpoint. To paint a complete picture of the processes through which succeeding Muslim groups, during the 14 centuries of Islam, encountered and assimilated new peoples to develop a global religion and civilization, this approach must go beyond traditional political or dynastic boundaries.
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The eras BCE (before the Common Era or Christian Era) and CE (Common Era or Christian Era), which are comparable to BC (before Christ) and AD, are used to denote dates for events in this article that are generally calculated using the Gregorian calendar (Latin: anno Domini). Sometimes, as denoted by AH, the Muslim counting of the Islamic era is applied (Latin: anno Hegirae). The Hijrah, or migration, of Muhammad to Medina, which falls on July 16, 622 CE in the Gregorian calendar, marks the start of the Islamic era.
The terms Islamic world and Islamdom are used interchangeably in the sentences that follow. The word "Islamic" refers to elements of Islam as a religion, whereas the adjective "Muslim" refers to elements of Islam's followers. The social and cultural complex that has historically been connected to Islam and Muslims is referred to as "Islamicate," and it includes the role and involvement of non-Islamic and non-Muslim individuals and organisations.
Prehistory (c. 3000 BCE–500 CE)
The history of central Afro-Eurasia from Hammurabi of Babylon to Cyrus II of the Achaemenid dynasty in Persia to Alexander the Great to the Ssnian emperor Anshirvan to Muhammad in Arabia, or, in the Muslim perspective, from Adam to Noah to Abraham to Moses to Jesus to Muhammad, constitutes the prehistory of Islam. The emergence of the first civilizations in western Asia opened the door for the Muslim empire to grow. The development and expansion of what have been referred to as the Axial Age religions in the area—Abrahamic, which was centred on the Hebrew patriarch Abraham, and Mazdean, which was centred on the Iranian deity Ahura Mazd—as well as their later relative, Christianity, polished it. It was made easier by the ensuing governmental upheavals as well as the spread of trade from eastern Asia to the Mediterranean. The communities the Muslims constructed bridged time and space, from ancient to modern and from east to west; they were the heirs to the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, Hebrews, even the Greeks and Indians.
The rise of agrarian-based citied societies
The lands between the Nile and Oxus (Amu Darya) rivers, which had previously been under the control of the Byzantines in the west and the Syrians in the east, were taken over by a coalition of Arab groups, some sedentary and some migratory, inside and outside the Arabian Peninsula, in the 7th century CE. The rise of agrarian-based urban communities in western Asia in the fourth millennium BCE marked the beginning of the circumstances that surrounded and guided their achievement. Out of a pastoralist and subsistence farming setting, sophisticated agrarian-based communities like Sumer emerged. This process required the establishment of cities, the expansion of city rule over neighbouring villages, and interactions between both with pastoralists.
This kind of social structure presented fresh opportunities. Agriculture output rose, as did intercity trade, especially in luxury items. Few of these individuals were able to build territorial kingdoms and cultivate religious institutions with a wider appeal, but others were able to use the physical labour of others to gain enough wealth to support a variety of arts and crafts. The well-known trio of court, temple, and market gradually came into view. The new ruling groups developed expertise in governing and integrating non-kin groupings. They profited from the rise in writing practises and, in many instances, from the adoption of a single writing system, like cuneiform, for official purposes. Their influence was further increased by new institutions like money, territorial deities, royal priesthoods, and standing armies.
A well-placed person may experience the consequences of his deeds in his own lifetime in such town-and-country complexes, which would prompt unheard-of levels of self-criticism and moral introspection. These new social structures were supported by and reflected in the religion of these social units. The religions of complex societies, in contrast to the religions of tiny communities, were centred around deities like Marduk, Isis, or Mithra, whose attraction was not restricted to one particular region or tribe and whose powers were far less dispersed.
The intricate funeral procedures of pharaonic Egypt serve as a reminder of how the connection between this life and the hereafter became more complicated. Individual religious activity started to compete with group prayer and ritual, and it occasionally offered a different kind of spiritual transcendence and transformation, as seen in the pan-Mediterranean mystery religions. However, large-scale organisation had brought about social and economic inequities that authorities and religions could only redress. Many believed that the best chance for justice lay in an absolute monarch who could unite a variety of ethnic, religious, and interest groupings.
Cultural core areas of the settled world
The settled world had divided into four major cultural regions by the middle of the first millennium BCE: the Mediterranean, the Nile-to-Oxus, India, and East Asia. The eventual centre of Islam, from the Nile to the Oxus, was the most convoluted and least cohesive. The Nile-to-Oxus region was a linguistic palimpsest of Irano-Semitic languages of various kinds, including Aramaic, Syriac (eastern or Iranian Aramaic), and Middle Persian, whereas each of the other regions evolved a single language of high culture—Greek, Sanskrit, and Chinese, respectively (the language of eastern Iran).
The Nile-to-Oxus region
The Nile-to-Oxus region had different linguistic groupings, as well as climatic and ecological variations. It was in the centre of a huge arid region that spanned Afro-Eurasia from the Sahara to the Gobi and favoured pastoralists and oasis dwellers as well as states that could control flooding (like Egypt) and irrigation (like Mesopotamia). Although its agricultural potential was severely constrained, it had almost limitless commercial potential. The region provided unique social and economic significance to its merchants thanks to its strategic location at the crossroads of trans-Asian trade and its abundance of natural transit sites.
The Axial Age, which spanned from 800 to 200 BCE, has been dubbed as such because of its crucial role in the development of religion and society. In the four key regions, the earliest religions of salvation emerged. All later forms of great religion, such as Christianity and Islam, are descended from these traditions, such as Judaism, Mazdeism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. The Axial Age religions, as opposed to those that preceded their inception, focused transcendent power into a single location, whether it was represented theistically or not. Their profoundly dualistic cosmology proposed the existence of a second universe that was completely distinct from the earthly one and capable of opposing and supplanting conventional terrestrial values. The person was challenged to develop the proper relationship with the "other" realm in order to avoid the immortality promised by rebirth by annihilating all earthly ties or transcend mortality by winning a seat of eternal rest.
During the Axial Age, two significant traditions developed in the Nile-to-Oxus region: the Mazdean in the east and the Abrahamic in the west. They are known as confessional religions because they demanded exclusive devotion by a personal declaration of belief in a stern and benevolent deity. Every incident in every person's life had significance in relation to God's judgement at the end of time since this deity was a singular, all-powerful creator who continued to be involved in history. These new religions' sacred scriptures contained the universally applicable truth. In their particular concern for justice, honesty, covenant keeping, moderation, law and order, accountability, and the rights of regular people, the traditions reflected the mercantile milieu in which they were created. The elitism and absolutism of courtly circles were always potential enemies of these values. Most frequently, as in the case of the Achaemenian Empire, the dispute was resolved by considering the kingship as the protector of divine justice or by rebelling against the crown.
Afro-Eurasian continuities and interconnections were well established by the Axial Age and remained throughout premodern eras, despite the fact that modern Western historiography has projected an East-West dichotomy onto ancient times. Without mentioning them, it is impossible to understand the history of Islam. The Irano-Semitic cultures of the Nile-to-Oxus region were permanently covered with Hellenistic characteristics through Alexander's conquests in three of the four key areas in the 4th century BCE, and a connection was created between the Indian subcontinent and Iran. Cross-cultural movements like gnosticism and Manichaeism helped people from different civilizations come together around the third century CE. In every area of the world that had been colonised, there were similarly structured, enormous, land-based empires with official religions. The Zoroastrian-Mazdean Ssnian Empire, which stood opposite the Christian Roman Empire to the east, was at war with it. Each of the other empires was alternately intertwined with Aksum, an additional Christian power in East African Abyssinia. Residents of Arabia made their tragic entry into international political, religious, and economic life in the setting of these regional interrelationships.
Formation and orientation (c. 500–634)
The city of Mecca: centre of trade and religion
Although the client states of the sixth century were the largest Arab polities of the time, no permanently powerful Arab state emerged from them. Instead, it developed among autonomous Arabs residing in Mecca (Makkah), at the intersection of important north-south and west-east roads, in one of the Hejaz's (al- ijz's) less naturally advantageous Arab cities. It was not unusual for a trading town to grow into a city-state, but unlike many other western Arabian communities, Mecca was not built around an oasis or situated in a non-Arab power's hinterland. It had enough wells and springs to support a lot of camels, but not enough for cultivation; instead, its economy depended on both long- and short-distance trading.
Mecca under the Quraysh clans
A tribe of Arabs known as the Quraysh, who were in the process of becoming sedentary, took over Mecca sometime after the year 400 CE. They were led by a man known as Quayy ibn Kilb (also known as al-Mujammi, "the Unifier"), who is remembered today. The Quraysh's many clans promoted a development in Mecca during the centuries prior to Muhammad's birth in around 570 that appears to have been taking place in a few other Arab towns as well. They established their town as a regional hub whose influence extended in many directions by utilising their trading links and their relationships with their Bedouin kin. Mecca was designated as a quarterly aram as a refuge from the frequent intertribal fighting and raiding.As a result, Mecca gained popularity as a location for sizable trade shows that fell in line with pilgrimages (Arabic: ajj) to a nearby shrine, the Ka'bah. In addition to the Meccans' supra-tribal creator and covenant-guaranteed deity, Allh, the Ka'bah also held the deities of visitors. The majority of Arabs undoubtedly saw this deity as one of many with universal powers; some people might have related this being to the God of the Jews and Christians.
The Quraysh's construction endeavours directly challenged one non-Arab state, prompting the Abyssinians to allegedly assault Mecca in the year of Muhammad's birth. However, internal rearrangement and new fighting diverted the attention of the Byzantines and the Syrians, while the Yemeni kingdoms were in decline. Along with protecting Mecca's independence and neutrality, these changes in the global balance of power may have disrupted existing tribe links just enough to make it an appealing new centre for supra-tribal organisation.
The Meccan connection between the shrine and the market has deeper meaning in the development of religion. It is reminiscent of the shifts that occurred several millennia ago with the rise of complex communities throughout the settled globe. The religious practises of the tribal Arabs exhibited many traits of small-group, or "primitive," religion, such as the sacralization of naturally occurring events and artefacts that were unique to certain groups and the presence of numerous spirit beings, also known as jinn among Arabs. The "trinity" of Allah's "daughters," known as al-Lt, Mant, and al-Uzz, had already emerged in areas where more intricate settlement patterns had taken hold. Wherever they have occurred in human history, such qualified simplicity and inclusion appear to have been linked to other major changes—increased settlement,
New social patterns among the Meccans and their neighbours
The Quraysh were forced to adopt new behavioural patterns as a result of their sedentarization and attempts to forge a growing network of cooperating Arabs. The Quraysh's ability to deal with their issues was hampered by the tumultuous connection between stationary and migratory Arabs. Tribal Arabs were easily able to enter and exit sedentarization, and kinship ties frequently spanned lifestyles. The Quraysh's sedentarization did not include severing their ties to the Bedouin or idealising their way of life. For instance, rich Meccans frequently sent their infants to Bedouin foster moms because they believed Mecca to be unhealthy. However, the Quraysh's settling in Mecca was no typical case of sedentarization. Their commercial success led to the emergence of a community distinct from the Bedouin.
The atmosphere in Arabia did not support the development of many stable, powerful governments. Because they were not supported by a stronger power and were largely dependent on the prosperity of a trade route that had previously been controlled at its southern terminus and could one day be controlled elsewhere, or exclude Mecca entirely, Meccan efforts at centralization and unification may therefore have been temporary. The development of the Meccan system occurred at the same time that confessional religions were being disseminated by immigration, missionary activity, conversion, and outside influence. Unaffiliated monotheists, or "anfs," who removed themselves from the Meccan religious system by rejecting the old gods but adopting neither Judaism nor Christianity, coexisted with adherents of the confessional religions.
The Prophet Muhammad
Muhammad’s years in Mecca
Spiritual awakening
Any explanation for such an extraordinary development must examine Muhammad's individual brilliance as well as his capacity to construct an ideology that could win over a wide range of supporters. His interpretation of the prophetic role enabled a range of people to envision and establish a common community. Many social behaviour researchers believe that Muhammad was uniquely qualified to lead such a social movement because of his exceptional inherited and ascribed traits. Despite being a member of a tribe with considerable standing, he belonged to one of its lower-ranking clans. His mother and grandfather both passed away when he was a little child, leaving him without a father and in need of an uncle's care.
Other forms of holy intermediaries were acknowledged by the Arabs. Some Yemeni rulers are reported to have served in priestly roles. Sheikhs, or tribal leaders, played a spiritual role in preserving their tribes' revered tradition (sunnah). The tribal Arabs also had their khins, religious experts who read omens and gave oracles in ecstatic rhymed prose (saj). Additionally, they had their shirs, trained poets who defended the group's honour, portrayed the group's identity, and participated in verbal combat with poets from other groups. It was commonly known that spoken words had power; the poets' words were even compared to arrows that may harm an undefended foe. Many of Muhammad's listeners naturally believed that he was one of the personalities with whom they were more familiar since Muhammad's statements appeared to be, at least in form, comparable to those of the khins. Muhammad might not have even garnered attention if he had not spoken in a manner similar to other holy men, but by eschewing all sources other than the one supreme being, whom he identified as Allh ("God") and whose message he believed to be cosmically significant and binding, he was gradually able to set himself apart from all other intermediaries. Muhammad, like many other powerful figures, overcame limitations via transformative conservatism. He increased his authority by merging two well-known leadership positions with one that was less well-known; by giving long-standing procedures a new background, he reoriented them; by assigning a new cause to existing problems, he resolved them. His personal characteristics fit his historical circumstances perfectly.
Public recitations
Muhammad’s first vision was followed by a brief lull, after which he began to hear messages frequently, entering a special physical state to receive them and returning to normalcy to deliver them orally. Soon he began publicly to recite warnings of an imminent reckoning by Allāh that disturbed the Meccan leaders. Muhammad was one of their own, a man respected for his personal qualities. Yet weakening kinship ties and increasing social diversity were helping him attract followers from many different clans and also from among tribeless persons, giving all of them a new and potentially disruptive affiliation. The fundamentals of his message, delivered often in the vicinity of the Kaʿbah itself, questioned the very reasons for which so many people gathered there. If visitors to the Kaʿbah assumed, as so many Arabs did, that the deities represented by its idols were all useful and accessible in that place, Muhammad spoke, as had Axial Age figures before, of a placeless and timeless deity that not only had created human beings, making them dependent on him, but would also bring them to account at an apocalypse of his own making. In place of time or chance, which the Arabs assumed to govern their destiny, Muhammad installed a final reward or punishment based on individual actions. Such individual accountability to an unseen power that took no account whatsoever of kin relationships and operated beyond the Meccan system could, if taken seriously, undermine any authority the Quraysh had acquired. Muhammad’s insistence on the protection of the weak, which echoed Bedouin values, threatened the unbridled amassing of wealth so important to the Meccan oligarchy.
Efforts to reform Meccan society
Yet Muhammad also appealed to the town dweller by describing the human being as a member of a polis (city-state) and by suggesting ways to overcome the inequities that such an environment breeds. By insisting that an event of cosmic significance was occurring in Mecca, he made the town the rival of all the greater cities with which the Meccans traded. To Meccans who believed that what went on in their town and at their shrine was hallowed by tribal custom, sunnah, Muhammad replied that their activities in fact were a corrupt form of a practice that had a very long history with the God of whom he spoke. In Muhammad’s view, the Kaʿbah had been dedicated to the aniconic worship of the one God (Allāh) by Abraham, who fathered the ancestor of the Israelites, Isḥāq (Isaac), as well as the ancestor of the Arabs, Ismāʿīl (Ishmael). Muhammad asked his hearers not to embrace something new but to abandon the traditional in favour of the original. He appealed to his fellow Quraysh not to reject the sunnah of their ancestors but rather to appreciate and fulfill its true nature. God should be worshipped not through offerings but through prayer and recitation of his messages, and his house should be emptied of its useless idols.
In their initial rejection of his appeal, Muhammad’s Meccan opponents took the first step toward accepting the new idea: they attacked it. For it was their rejection of him, as well as his subsequent rejection by many Jews and Christians, that helped to forge Muhammad’s followers into a community with an identity of its own and capable of ultimately incorporating its opponents. Muhammad’s disparate following was exceptionally vulnerable, bound together not by kinship ties but by a “generic” monotheism that involved being faithful (muʾmin) to the message God was sending through their leader. Their vulnerability was mitigated by the absence of formal municipal discipline, but their opponents within the Quraysh could apply informal pressures ranging from harassment and violence against the weakest to a boycott against Muhammad’s clan, members of which were persuaded by his uncle Abū Ṭālib to remain loyal even though most of them were not his followers. Meanwhile, Muhammad and his closest associates were thinking about reconstituting themselves as a separate community in a less hostile environment. About 615 some 80 of his followers made an emigration (Hijrah) to Abyssinia, perhaps assuming that they would be welcome in a place that had a history of hostility to the Meccan oligarchy and that worshipped the same God who had sent Muhammad to them, but they eventually returned without establishing a permanent community. During the next decade, continued rejection intensified the group’s identity and its search for another home. Although the boycott against Muhammad’s clan began to disintegrate, the deaths of his wife and his uncle, about 619, removed an important source of psychological and social support. Muhammad had already begun to preach and attract followers at market gatherings outside Mecca; now he intensified his search for a more hospitable environment. In 620 he met with a delegation of followers from Yathrib, an oasis about 200 miles (320 km) to the northeast; in the next two years their support grew into an offer of protection.
Muhammad’s emigration to Yathrib (Medina)
Like Mecca, Yathrib was experiencing demographic problems: several tribal groups coexisted, descendants of its Arab Jewish founders as well as a number of pagan Arab immigrants divided into two tribes, the Aws and the Khazraj. Unable to resolve their conflicts, the Yathribis invited Muhammad to perform the well-established role of neutral outside arbiter (ḥakam). In September 622, having discreetly sent his followers ahead, he and one companion, Abū Bakr, completed the community’s second and final emigration, barely avoiding Quraysh attempts to prevent his departure by force. By the time of the emigration, a new label had begun to appear in Muhammad’s recitations to describe his followers: in addition to being described in terms of their faithfulness (īmān) to God and his messenger, they were also described in terms of their undivided attention—that is, as muslims, individuals who assumed the right relationship to God by surrendering (islām) to his will. Although the designation muslim, derived from islām, eventually became a proper name for a specific historical community, at this point it appears to have expressed commonality with other monotheists: like the others, muslims faced Jerusalem to pray; Muhammad was believed to have been transported from Jerusalem to the heavens to talk with God; and Abraham, Noah, Moses, David, and Jesus, as well as Muhammad, all were considered to be prophets (nabīs) and messengers of the same God. In Yathrib, however, conflicts between other monotheists and the muslims sharpened their distinctiveness.
The forging of Muhammad’s community
As an autonomous community, muslims might have become a tribal unit like those with whom they had affiliated, especially because the terms of their immigration gave them no special status. Yet under Muhammad’s leadership they developed a social organization that could absorb or challenge everyone around them. They became Muhammad’s ummah (“community”) because they had recognized and supported God’s emissary (rasūl Allāh). The ummah’s members differed from one another not by wealth or genealogical superiority but by the degree of their faith and piety, and membership in the community was itself an expression of faith. Anyone could join, regardless of origin, by following Muhammad’s lead, and the nature of members’ support could vary. In the concept of ummah, Muhammad supplied the missing ingredient in the Meccan system: a powerful abstract principle for defining, justifying, and stimulating membership in a single community.
Muhammad made the concept of ummah work by expanding his role as arbiter so as to become the sole spokesman for all residents of Yathrib, also known as Medina. Even though the agreement under which Muhammad had emigrated did not obligate non-Muslims to follow him except in his arbitration, they necessarily became involved in the fortunes of his community. By protecting him from his Meccan enemies, the residents of Medina identified with his fate. Those who supported him as Muslims received special designations: the Medinans were called anṣār (“helpers”), and his fellow emigrants were distinguished as muhājirūn (“emigrants”). He was often able to use revelation to arbitrate.
Because the terms of his emigration did not provide adequate financial support, he began to provide for his community through caravan raiding, a tactic familiar to tribal Arabs. By thus inviting hostility, he required all the Medinans to take sides. Initial failure was followed by success, first at Nakhlah, where the Muslims defied Meccan custom by violating one of the truce months so essential to Meccan prosperity and prestige. Their most memorable victory occurred in 624 at Badr, against a large Meccan force; they continued to succeed, with only one serious setback, at Uḥud in 625. From that time on, “conversion” to Islam involved joining an established polity, the successes of which were tied to its proper spiritual orientation, regardless of whether the convert shared that orientation completely. During the early years in Medina a major motif of Islamic history emerged: the connection between material success and divine favour, which had also been prominent in the history of the Israelites.
The ummah’s allies and enemies
During these years, Muhammad used his outstanding knowledge of tribal relations to act as a great tribal leader, or sheikh, further expanding his authority beyond the role that the Medinans had given him. He developed a network of alliances between his ummah and neighbouring tribes, and so competed with the Meccans at their own game. He managed and distributed the booty from raiding, keeping one-fifth for the ummah’s overall needs and distributing the rest among its members. In return, members gave a portion of their wealth as zakāt, to help the needy and to demonstrate their awareness of their dependence on God for all of their material benefits. Like other sheikhs, Muhammad contracted numerous, often strategically motivated, marriage alliances. He was also more able to harass and discipline Medinans, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, who did not support his activities fully; he agitated in particular against the Jews, one of whose clans, the Banū Qaynuqāʿ, he expelled.
Increasingly estranged from nonresponsive Jews and Christians, he reoriented his followers’ direction of prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca. He formally instituted the hajj to Mecca and fasting during the month of Ramadan as distinctive cultic acts, in recognition of the fact that islām, a generic act of surrender to God, had become Islam, a proper-name identity distinguished not only from paganism but from other forms of monotheism as well. As more and more of Medina was absorbed into the Muslim community and as the Meccans weakened, Muhammad’s authority expanded. He continued to lead a three-pronged campaign—against nonsupporters in Medina, against the Quraysh in Mecca, and against surrounding tribes—and he even ordered raids into southern Syria. Eventually Muhammad became powerful enough to punish nonsupporters severely, especially those who leaned toward Mecca. For example, he had the men of the Qurayẓah clan of Jews in Medina executed after they failed to help him against the Meccan forces at the Battle of the Ditch in 627. But he also used force and diplomacy to bring in other Jewish and Christian groups. Because they were seen, unlike pagans, to have formed ummahs of their own around a revelation from God, Jews and Christians were entitled to pay for protection (dhimmah). Muhammad thus set a precedent for another major characteristic of Islamicate civilization, that of qualified religious pluralism under Muslim authority.
Muhammad’s later recitations
During these years of warfare and consolidation, Muhammad continued to transmit revealed recitations, though their nature began to change. Some commented on Muhammad’s situation, consoled and encouraged his community, explained the continuing resistance of the Meccans, and urged appropriate responses. Some told stories about figures familiar to Jews and Christians but cast in an Islamic framework. Though still delivered in the form of God’s direct speech, the messages became longer and less ecstatic, less urgent in their warnings if more earnest in their guidance. Eventually they focused on interpersonal regulations in areas of particular importance for a new community, such as sexuality, marriage, divorce, and inheritance. By this time certain Muslims had begun to write down what Muhammad uttered or to recite passages for worship (ṣalāt) and private devotion. The recited word, so important among the Arab tribes, had found a greatly enlarged significance. A competitor for Muhammad’s status as God’s messenger even declared himself among a nonmember tribe; he was Musaylimah of Yamāmah, who claimed to convey revelations from God. He managed to attract numerous Bedouin Arabs but failed to speak as successfully as Muhammad to the various available constituencies.
Activism in the name of God, both nonmilitary as well as military, would become a permanent strand in Muslim piety. Given the environment in which Muhammad operated, his ummah was unlikely to survive without it; to compete as leader of a community, he needed to exhibit military prowess. (Like most successful leaders, however, Muhammad was a moderate and a compromiser; some of his followers were more militant and aggressive than he, and some were less so.) In addition, circumstantial necessity had ideological ramifications. Because Muhammad as messenger was also, by divine providence, leader of an established community, he could easily define the whole realm of social action as an expression of faith. Thus, Muslims were able to identify messengership with worldly leadership to an extent almost unparalleled in the history of religion. There had been activist prophets before Muhammad and there were activist prophets after him, but in no other religious tradition does the image of the activist prophet, and by extension the activist follower, have such a comprehensive and coherent justification in the formative period.
Islam at Muhammad’s death
Muhammad’s continuing success gradually impinged on the Quraysh in Mecca. Some defected and joined his community. His marriage to a Quraysh woman provided him with a useful go-between. In 628 he and his followers tried to make an Islamized hajj but were forestalled by the Meccans. At Al-Ḥudaybiyah, outside Mecca, Muhammad granted a 10-year truce on the condition that the Meccans would allow a Muslim pilgrimage the next year. Even at this point, however, Muhammad’s control over his followers had its limits; his more zealous followers agreed to the pact only after much persuasion. As in all instances of charismatic leadership, persisting loyalty was correlated with continuing success. In the next year the Meccans allowed a Muslim hajj; and in the next, 630, the Muslims occupied Mecca without a struggle. Muhammad began to receive deputations from many parts of Arabia. By his death in 632 he was ruler of virtually all of it.
The Meccan Quraysh were allowed to become Muslims without shame. In fact, they quickly became assimilated to the actual muhājirūn, even though they had not emigrated to Yathrib themselves. Ironically, in defeat they had accomplished much more than they would have had they achieved victory: the centralization of all of Arabia around their polity and their shrine, the Kaʿbah, which had been emptied of its idols to be filled with an infinitely greater invisible power.
Because intergroup conflict was banned to all members of the ummah on the basis of their shared loyalty to the emissary of a single higher authority, the limitations of the Meccan concept of ḥaram, according to which the city quarterly became a safe haven, could be overcome. The broader solidarity that Muhammad had begun to build was stabilized only after his death, and this was achieved, paradoxically, by some of the same people who had initially opposed him. In the next two years one of his most significant legacies became apparent: the willingness and ability of his closest supporters to sustain the ideal and the reality of one Muslim community under one leader, even in the face of significant opposition. When Muhammad died, two vital sources of his authority ended—ongoing revelation and his unique ability to exemplify his messages on a daily basis. A leader capable of keeping revelation alive might have had the best chance of inheriting his movement, but no Muslim claimed messengership, nor had Muhammad unequivocally designated any other type of successor. The anṣār, his early supporters in Medina, moved to elect their own leader, leaving the muhājirūn to choose theirs, but a small number of muhājirūn managed to impose one of their own over the whole. That man was Abū Bakr, one of Muhammad’s earliest followers and the father of his favourite wife, ʿĀʾishah. The title Abū Bakr took, khalīfah (caliph), meaning deputy or successor, echoed revealed references to those who assist major leaders and even God himself. To khalīfah he appended rasūl Allāh, so that his authority was based on his assistance to Muhammad as messenger of God.
Abū Bakr’s succession
Abū Bakr soon confronted two new threats: the secession of many of the tribes that had joined the ummah after 630 and the appearance among them of other prophet figures who claimed continuing guidance from God. In withdrawing, the tribes appear to have been able to distinguish loyalty to Muhammad from full acceptance of the uniqueness and permanence of his message. The appearance of other prophets illustrates a general phenomenon in the history of religion: the volatility of revelation as a source of authority. When successfully claimed, it has almost no competitor; once opened, it is difficult to close; and, if it cannot be contained and focused at the appropriate moment, its power disperses. Jews and Christians had responded to this dilemma in their own ways; now it was the turn of the Muslims, whose future was dramatically affected by Abū Bakr’s response. He put an end to revelation with a combination of military force and coherent rhetoric. He defined withdrawal from Muhammad’s coalition as ingratitude to or denial of God (the concept of kufr); thus he gave secession (riddah) cosmic significance as an act of apostasy punishable, according to God’s revealed messages to Muhammad, by death. He declared that the secessionists had become Muslims, and thus servants of God, by joining Muhammad; they were not free not to be Muslims, nor could they be Muslims, and thus loyal to God, under any leader whose legitimacy did not derive from Muhammad. Finally, he declared Muhammad to be the last prophet God would send, relying on a reference to Muhammad in one of the revealed messages as khatm al-anbiyāʾ (“seal of the prophets”). In his ability to interpret the events of his reign from the perspective of Islam, Abū Bakr demonstrated the power of the new conceptual vocabulary Muhammad had introduced.
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