Islam’s First Dynasty

THE RISE OF ISLAM AND CALIPHATES HIST 1301 | History Islam’s First Dynasty In addition to managing the conquest of the area, the Rashidun caliphs are renowned for having contributed to the formulation of Muhammad's ummah and the ways in which Islam differed from other monotheistic faiths like Judaism and Christianity. The first four caliphs assisted in interpreting and articulating the religious law and committed to drafting a canonised version of the Quran. They played a vital role in passing down the hadith, or the sayings and deeds of Muhammad and his closest companions, to assist resolve the concerns surrounding faith that the Quran did not explicitly address. The majority of Islamic law up to this point has been derived from the Quran and hadith, and the Rashidun caliphs have traditionally been seen as interpreters of this text for subsequent Muslims unable to communicate directly with Muhammad. The people who had spent the most time with Muhammad—not just his wives but also the Rashidun—were crucial to the hadith's transmission. Muhammad's youngest wife Aisha, whose contributions as a transmitter and interpreter of Islamic law in the decades after her husband's death cannot be overstated, was one of the most significant for the hadith. Despite its moniker, the rule of the "rightly guided" was not without controversy and opposition. The first Islamic civil war broke out under the rule of Ali ibn Abi Talib, the fourth caliph, and it was disastrous for the long-term stability of the nascent faith. The conflict arose from the assassination of Uthman, the third caliph, in 656, and the failure of his successor to prosecute the assassins and those who assisted them. The Umayya tribe, Uthman's relatives, came up to oppose Ali's caliphate claim. In this struggle, many of Muhammad's early family members and allies took up weapons against one another, severely shattering the unity of the Islamic world. For instance, during the start of the American Civil War, Aisha was instrumental in resisting Ali at the Battle of the Camel. Ali's final assassination in 661 widened the gulf between his adherents and other Muslims. Following Ali's demise, Mu‘awiya ibn Abi Sufyan and the Umayyads founded the first hereditary dynasty in Islamic history. They established themselves as a powerful imperial force in the area and started to distinguish Islam from other local religious traditions by relocating their state's capital from Medina, the home of the Prophet, to Damascus, in Syria. Mu'awiya, the dynasty's founder, proved to be an especially astute politician, yet his penchant for nepotism resulted in a mixed legacy for his family over time. In the 680s and 690s, there was another civil conflict, but his successors persisted in favouring their own, and the acquisition of new lands slowed and eventually ended. The dynasty's battle for legitimacy characterised the latter Umayyad period, which ended in 750, following the Muslims' defeat at the walls of the Byzantine capital of Constantinople. The Umayyads first adopted the strategies of the Rashidun, producing artwork and architectural structures with forms and symbols recognisable to the Persian and Byzantine cultures. By doing this, they sought to uphold the traditions of the previous empires they had overthrown and gain respect from the majority of the non-Muslim populace they now controlled. In the early decades, a large number of government personnel, ranging from tax collectors to scribes at the ruler's court, were non-Muslim remnants of the Byzantine and Persian empires. They assisted the early Muslim monarchs in setting up and running a government that was unlike anything they had ever seen. But as time went on, the Umayyads succeeded in better articulating what made Islam unique. In order to achieve this, they altered the symbols and artistic style, adopted written Arabic—the language of the Quran—as being exclusive to Muslims, positioned Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, as the "seal" of a long line of biblical (Christian) and Rabbinic (Jewish) prophets, and declared their opposition to the Trinity. With time, tensions between Muslims and Christians grew as a result of this final judgement on the identity of Jesus in the Christian faith. Following the second Islamic civil war in the early 690s, the culture began to shift. The Umayyad family branch that emerged victorious started to give the empire an increasingly Arab appearance. One of their political initiatives was the progressive elimination of emblems and markers linked to the previous Byzantine and Persian emperors, including Christian crosses on currency. Arabic's adoption as the Islamic empire's official language was another change. Once more, gold coins show how widespread this shift was and how Islamic-specific markings started to appear. Arabic is the language. The phrases "There is no God but God, He is Alone, He has No Associate" and other Islamic incantations may be found on the inscriptions. (Source: American Numismatic Society, "Gold dinar of Abd al-Malik 697-98," Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain) Muslims took some time to drastically alter the shapes and styles of their artwork. During the intermediate era, as evidenced by two of the first mosques built by Muslims, the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, monarchs combined new architectural features with the customs of the previous empires. These illustrations show how an early Islamic kingdom was starting to define its own identity. Regarding how they handled the Arab ethnicity, the Umayyads, however, also had difficulties inside the ummah. Arab-Muslims relied on the continuous employment of former Byzantine and Persian officials to aid with state administration as they attempted to construct a new empire that was expanding faster than they could manage alone. The early administration of the Rashidun and the Umayyad empire depended heavily on these non-Muslim and mostly non-Arab government officers, but by the eighth century, Arabs were quickly displacing them. Non-Muslims were sometimes passed over for the top jobs, and in other circumstances, recent converts to Islam were more and more irate at not being taken seriously as complete members of the occupying class. Interest in converting to Islam among non-Arabs increased as more individuals came into contact with its teachings. Not only did the Umayyads rely on tax money from Muslims who were exempt from paying it, but they also actively resisted this tendency. They also thought of their religion as something that Arabs did for Arabs. They believed that God had sent his final prophet, an Arab named Muhammad, to the Arab world to convey his message in Arabic. Converting to Islam included more than simply a religious change; it was a cultural shift as well. Before being converted to Islam, non-Arabs had to essentially become ethnically Arab and be accepted as a protected member of an Arab tribe known as a mawali. This was a laborious procedure that made conversion unpopular. However, when more Arab-Muslims moved into the conquered areas and married into the Indigenous population, a higher number of mixed-parent children were produced, which increased the scrutiny around the Umayyads' purportedly pure Arab domination and "Arabness." The Umayyads' downfall was largely due to their treatment of mawali as second-class citizens, which also helped to establish a more universalist interpretation of Islam and strengthened its influence in the area.