The Arabian Empire once extended from the Atlantic Ocean to the border of India. It was the largest empire that the world had ever seen up to that point, so what would things look like if this empire was suddenly re-created today?
The Near East and the Mediterranean at the Advent of Islam c. 600
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The Near East and the Mediterranean at the Advent of Islam c.600
🗺️ The Near East and the Mediterranean at the Advent of Islam c.600
Araplar ve Komşuları: Doğu Roma ve Sasaniler
Araplar ve Komşuları: Doğu Roma İmparatorluğu ve Sasaniler
Kuzeyde Doğu Roma İmparatorluğunda 313’te Konstantin (312-337) Hıristiyanlığa döndü ve Theodosius (379-395) altında Hıristiyanlık devlet dini yapıldı.
Doğu Roma imparatorları Batıdaki papalığın yetkesini tanımadılar ve egemenlikleri altındaki dinsel-türlülük kültürüne kendi Yunan kiliselerini dayattılar.
Roma ve Konstantinopolis tarafından biçimlendirilen Hıristiyanlık bütününde sayısız boşinanç türü ile yüklü olarak başladı.
Doğuda Sasanilerin (İS 224-637) devlet dini Avestan metinleri üzerine dayalı bir Zerdüştlük biçimi idi. Sasani İmparatorluğunun sınırları içerisinde Yahudiler, Hıristiyanlar, ortodoks Zerdüştler, Manikheanlar ve Mazdaistler de bulunuyordu.
İslam büyük ölçüde monoteizme doğru ilerleme sürecinde olan bir inançlar türlülüğü alanında olağanüstü bir direnç görmeden yayılmaya başladı ve özsel olmayan ayrımlar yeni inanç tarafından bir hoşgörü politikası ile hafifletildi.
Doğu Roma ve Sasani İmparatorlukları arasındaki barış 502’de sona erdi ve 603-28’deki son Pers-Roma çatışmasına dek süren yeni bir savaşlar dizisi başladı.
İki İmparatorluk arasındaki sürekli düşmanlık Heraklios (610-641) ve II. Khusrau (591-628) arasındaki savaşlar nedeniyle daha da yeğinleşti. Sonuç iki imparatorluğun da büyük ölçüde güçsüzleşmesi oldu.
610’da Khusrau Konstantinopolis'e saldırdı; 611-614'te orduları Suriye'yi işgal ederek Şam ve Kudüs kentlerini ele geçirdi. 620'de Sasani orduları Mısır'a girerek İskenderiye'yi ele geçirdi ve Etyopya'ya dek yürüdüler.
Heraklios Ortodoks kilesinin büyük yardımı ile Sasanileri ilkin Anadolu'dan ve sonra Ermenistan, Azerbeycan ve Mısır'dan çıkarmayı başardı. Konstantinopolis üzerine bir başka saldırının da üstesinden gelerek 628'de Sasani başkenti Ctesiphon'u kuşattı. Barış yapmayı kabul etmeyen Khusrau tahttan indirildi ve oğlu II. Kavad tarafından öldürüldü. Arkadan savaşların ve taht kavgalarının yol açtığı bir kaos dönemi geldi.
İç zayıflıktan ve iki yanın birbirlerine verdikleri zarar nedeniyle ne Romalılar ne de Sasaniler yedinci yüzyılda başlayan Arap fetihlerine direnecek durumda idi.
Arap saldırıları sonucunda Sasani hanedanı birkaç yıl içinde bütünüyle tükendi ve toprakları Arap egemenliği altına alındı.
The Byzantine Empire in 650 — by this year it had lost all of its southern provinces except the Exarchate of Africa.
Romalılar ise Araplar tarafından Mısır, Kuzey Afrika ve doğu Akdeniz’den atılmalarına karşın çok daha uzun süre dayandılar. İmparatorlukları Anadolu’da ve Balkanlar’da yüzyıllarca sürdü ve ancak on dört ve on beşinci yüzyıllardaki sürekli Osmanlı baskısı karşısında çöktü.
Ele geçirilen Roma ve Sasani topraklarında Arapların genellikle insanları inanç değiştirmeye zorlamaktan uzak durmaları geçiş sürecini kolaylaştırdı.
Erken Müslüman yönetimi altında Hıristiyanlar, Yahudiler ve Zerdüştler (“Kitabın Halkları” olarak kabul edilen gruplar) çoğunlukla kendi dinlerine bağlı kalmada özgür bırakıldılar. Bu nedenle İslama dönüş süreci yüzyıllar sürdü ve sonuçta Müslümanlar ancak on birinci yüzyılda yönettikleri topraklarda çoğunluğu oluşturmaya başladılar.
🗺️ The Expansion of Islam under the Prophet and the Rightly Guided Caliphs (c.622-661)
The Expansion of Islam under the Prophet and the Rightly Guided Caliphs (c.622-661)
The Expansion of Islam under the Prophet and the Rightly Guided Caliphs c.622-661
Islamic Conquests (622-750)
The Qur’an says:
“There shall be no compulsion in the religion. The right course has become clear from the wrong.” (2:256 — Al-Baqara).
“Under the last of the Umayyads, the Arabian empire extended two hundred days journey from east to west, from the confines of Tartary and India to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean ... We should vainly seek the indissoluble union and easy obedience that pervaded the government of Augustus and the Antonines; but the progress of Islam diffused over this ample space a general resemblance of manners and opinions. The language and laws of the Quran were studied with equal devotion at Samarcand and Seville: the Moor and the Indian embraced as countrymen and brothers in the pilgrimage of Mecca; and the Arabian language was adopted as the popular idiom in all the provinces to the westward of the Tigris.”
The Muslim conquests brought about the collapse of the Sassanid Empire and a great territorial loss for the Byzantine Empire. The reasons for the Muslim success are hard to reconstruct in hindsight, primarily because only fragmentary sources from the period have survived. Fred McGraw Donner suggests that formation of a state in the Arabian peninsula and ideological (i.e., religious) coherence and mobilization was a primary reason why the Muslim armies in the space of a hundred years were able to establish the largest pre-modern empire until that time. The estimates for the size of the Islamic Caliphate suggest it was more than thirteen million square kilometers (five million square miles). Most historians agree as well that the Sassanid Persian and Byzantine Roman empires were militarily and economically exhausted from decades of fighting one another.
It has been suggested that some Jews and Christians in the Sassanid Empire and Jews and Monophysites in Syria were dissatisfied and welcomed the Muslim forces, largely because of religious conflict in both empires.It has also been suggested that later Syriac Christians reinterpreted the events of the conquest to serve a political or religious interest.At other times, such as in the Battle of Firaz, Arab Christians allied themselves with the Persians and Byzantines against the invaders.In the case of Byzantine Egypt, Palestine and Syria, these lands had been reclaimed from the Persians only a few years before.
Explanations of success of the early conquests
The rapidity of the early conquests has received various explanations.Contemporary Christian writers conceived them as God's punishment visited on their fellow Christians for their sins. Early Muslim historians viewed them as a reflection of the religious zeal of the conquerors and evidence of divine favor. The theory that the conquests are explainable as an Arab migration triggered by economic pressures enjoyed popularity early in the 20th century, but has largely fallen out of favor among historians, especially those who distinguish the migration from the conquests that preceded and enabled it.
There are indications that the conquests started as initially disorganized pillaging raids launched partly by non-Muslim Arab tribes in the aftermath of the Ridda wars, and were soon extended into a war of conquest by the Rashidun caliphs,although other scholars argue that the conquests were a planned military venture already underway during Muhammad's lifetime. Fred Donner writes that the advent of Islam “revolutionized both the ideological bases and the political structures of the Arabian society, giving rise for the first time to a state capable of an expansionist movement.”According to Chase F. Robinson, it is likely that Muslim forces were often outnumbered, but, unlike their opponents, they were fast, well coordinated and highly motivated.
Another key reason was the weakness of the Byzantine and Sasanian empires, caused by the wars they had waged against each other in the preceding decades with alternating success. It was aggravated by a plague that had struck densely populated areas and impeded conscription of new imperial troops, while the Arab armies could draw recruits from nomadic populations. The Sasanian empire, which had lost the latest round of hostilities with the Byzantines, was also affected by a crisis of confidence, and its elites suspected that the ruling dynasty had forfeited the favor of the gods.
The Problem of Succession
(Bernard Lewis)
The Problem of Succession (Bernard Lewis, “The Arabs in History,”
p. 48-9)
The death of Muhammad confronted the infant Muslim
community with something in the nature of a constitutional crisis. The Prophet had left no provision for the
succession, nor had he even created a council on the lines
of the tribal Majlis which might have exercised authority
during the crucial transition period. The unique and
exclusive character of the authority which he claimed as
sole exponent of God's will would not have allowed him
to nominate a colleague or even a successor-designate during his lifetime. The later tradition of the nomination
by the Prophet of his cousin 'All, who married his
daughter Fatima, is accepted only by the Shia.
The concept of legitimate succession was foreign to
the Arabs at the time, and it is probable that even if
Muhammad had left a son the sequence of events would
not have been different. The fate of Moses supports this
view. The Arab tradition that the Sheikh should be chosen
from a single family seems to have had little effect, and in
any case the claims of fathers-in-law like Abu Bakr, or
sons-in-law like 'All, can have had little force as such in a
polygamous society. The Arabs had only one precedent
to guide them — the election of a new tribal chief. The
Medinese proceeded to choose one from among the tribe
of Khazraj, thus incidentally revealing the limitations of
their conversion.
The crisis was met by three men: Abu Bakr, ‘Umar, and
Abu ‘Ubayda, who by swift and resolute action installed Abu Bakr as ruler in place of the Prophet. The Meccans
and the Ansar were confronted the next day with a fait
accompli which they seem to have rather reluctantly
accepted. Abu Bakr was given the title of Khalifa or
‘Deputy’ (of the Prophet), usually rendered 'Caliph' in
European writings, and his election marks the inauguration of the great historic institution of the Caliphate.
His electors can have had no idea of the later functions
and development of the office. At the time they made no
attempt to delimit his duties or powers. The sole condition of his appointment was the maintenance intact of the
heritage of the Prophet.”
The list of expeditions of Muhammad includes the expeditions undertaken by the Muslim community during the lifetime of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
Some sources use the word ghazwa and its plural maghazi in a narrow technical sense to refer to the expeditions in which Muhammad took part, while using the word sariyya (pl. saraya) for those early Muslim expeditions where he was not personally present.Other sources use the terms ghazwa and maghazi generically to refer to both types of expeditions.
Early Islamic sources contain significant divergences in the chronology of expeditions. Unless noted otherwise, the dates given in this list are based on Muhammad at Medina by Montgomery Watt, who in turn follows the chronology proposed by Leone Caetani.
List of expeditions
expeditions in which Muhammad took part (28) expeditions which Muhammad did not take part (73)
The Ridda Wars (Arabic: حروب الردة), also known as the Wars of Apostasy, were a series of military campaigns launched by the CaliphAbu Bakr against rebel Arabian tribes during 632 and 633, just after Muhammad died. The rebels' position was that they had submitted to Muhammad as the prophet of God, but owed nothing to Abu Bakr. Some rebels followed either Tulayha or Musaylima or Sajjah, all of whom claimed prophethood. Most of the tribes were defeated and reintegrated into the Caliphate. The peoples surrounding Mecca did not revolt.
Map detailing the route of Khalid ibn Walid's conquest of Arabia.
Geophysical map of the Caucasus area with major settlements and regions, overlaid with green for Umayyad territory, yellow for Khazar territory, and red for Byzantine territory.
Historians usually distinguish two major periods of conflict, the First Arab–Khazar War (c. 642-652) and Second Arab-Khazar War (c. 722-737),but the Arab-Khazar military confrontation also involved sporadic raids and isolated clashes from the middle of the 7th century to the end of the 8th century.
The Arab-Khazar wars were a result of the attempts of the Umayyad Caliphate to secure control of Transcaucasia and the North Caucasus, where the Khazars were already established. The first Arab invasion, in the 640s and early 650s, ended with the defeat of an Arab force led by Abd ar-Rahman ibn Rabiah outside the Khazar town of Balanjar. Hostilities broke out again with the Caliphate in the 710s, with raids back and forth across the Caucasus Mountains. Led by the distinguished generals al-Jarrah ibn Abdallah and Maslama ibn Abd al-Malik, the Arabs were able to capture Derbent and even the southern Khazar capital of Balanjar, but these successes had little impact on the nomadic Khazars, who continued to launch devastating raids deep into Transcaucasia. In one such raid in 730, the Khazars inflicted a major defeat on the Umayyad forces at the Battle of Ardabil, killing al-Jarrah, but were in turn defeated the next year and pushed back north. Maslama then recovered Derbent, which became a major Arab military outpost and colony, before being replaced by Marwan ibn Muhammad (the future caliph Marwan II) in 732. A period of relatively localized warfare followed until 737, when Marwan led north a massive expedition that reached the Khazar capital Atil on the Volga. After securing some form of submission by the khagan, the Arabs withdrew.
The 737 campaign marked the end of large-scale warfare between the two powers, establishing Derbent as the northernmost Muslim outpost and securing Muslim dominance over Transcaucasia. At the same time, the continuing warfare weakened the Umayyad army and contributed to the eventual fall of the dynasty to the Abbasid Revolution a few years later. Relations between the Muslims of the Caucasus and the Khazars remained largely peaceful thereafter, apart from two Khazar raids in the 760s and in 799, resulting from failed efforts to secure an alliance through marriage between the Arab governors or local princes of the Caucasus and the Khazar khagan. Occasional warfare continued in the region between the Khazars and the Muslim principalities of the Caucasus until the collapse of the Khazar state in the late 10th century, but the great wars of the 8th century were never repeated.
The Khazars (Persian: خزر, Azerbaijani: Xəzərlər; Turkish: Hazarlar; Bashkir: Хазарлар; Tatar: Хәзәрләр, Xäzärlär; Hebrew: כוזרים, Kuzarim;Xazar; Ukrainian: Хоза́ри, Khozáry; Russian: Хаза́ры, Khazáry; Hungarian: Kazárok; Greek: Χάζαροι, Házaroi; Latin: Gazari/Gasani) were a semi-nomadicTurkic people with a confederation of Turkic-speaking tribes that in the late 6th century CE established a major commercial empire covering the southeastern section of modern European Russia. The Khazars created what for its duration was the most powerful polity to emerge from the break-up of the Western Turkic Khaganate.Astride a major artery of commerce between Eastern Europe and Southwestern Asia, Khazaria became one of the foremost trading emporia of the medieval world, commanding the western marches of the Silk Road and playing a key commercial role as a crossroad between China, the Middle East and Kievan Rus'.For some three centuries (c. 650-965) the Khazars dominated the vast area extending from the Volga-Don steppes to the eastern Crimea and the northern Caucasus.
Khazaria long served as a buffer state between the Byzantine Empire and both the nomads of the northern steppes and the Umayyad Caliphate, after serving as Byzantium's proxy against the Sasanian Persian empire. The alliance was dropped around 900. Byzantium began to encourage the Alans to attack Khazaria and weaken its hold on Crimea and the Caucasus, while seeking to obtain an entente with the rising Rus' power to the north, which it aspired to convert to Christianity.Between 965 and 969, the Kievan Rus' ruler Sviatoslav I of Kiev conquered the capital Atil and destroyed the Khazar state.
Determining the origins and nature of the Khazars is closely bound with theories of their languages, but it is a matter of intricate difficulty since no indigenous records in the Khazar language survive, and the state was polyglotand polyethnic. The native religion of the Khazars is thought to have been Tengrism, like that of the North Caucasian Huns and other Turkic peoples.The polyethnic populace of the Khazar Khaganate appears to have been a multiconfessional mosaic of pagan, Tengrist, Jewish, Christian and Muslim worshippers.The ruling elite of the Khazars was said by Judah Halevi and Abraham ibn Daud to have converted to Rabbinic Judaism in the 8th century,but the scope of the conversion within the Khazar Khanate remains uncertain.
Proposals of Khazar origins have been made regarding the Bukharan Jews, the Muslim Kumyks, Kazakhs, the Cossacks of the Don region, the Turkic-speaking Krymchaks and their Crimean neighbours the Karaites to the Moldavian Csángós, the Mountain Jews, Subbotniks and others.In the late 19th century, a theory emerged that the core of today's Ashkenazi Jews descended from a hypothetical Khazarian Jewish diaspora who had migrated westward from modern Russia and Ukraine into modern France and Germany. This theory still finds occasional support, but most scholars view it with scepticism.The theory is sometimes associated with antisemitismand anti-Zionism.
Overview of the spread of Islam from the time of Muhammed to the Rashidun, Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates. Discussion of Muslim conquest and conversion.
📹 Rise of Islamic Empires (Great Courses / Professor Craig G. Benjamin) (VİDEO)
Prior to the rise of Muhammad and the unification of the Arab tribes of the Arabian Peninsula under Islam, the tribes of Arabia followed a pre-Islamic Arab polytheism, lived as self-governing sedentary and nomadic communities and often raided their neighbouring tribes.Following the conquests under Muhammad of the Arabian Peninsula, the region became unified and most of the tribes adopted Islam.
The first caliphate, the Rashidun Caliphate, was established immediately after Muhammad's death in 632. The four Rashidun caliphs, who directly succeeded Muhammad as leaders of the Muslim community, were chosen through shura, a process of community consultation that some consider to be an early form of Islamic democracy.The fourth caliph, Ali, who, unlike the prior three, was from the same clan as Muhammad (Banu Hashim), is considered by Shia Muslims to be the first rightful caliph and Imam after Muhammad.Ali reigned during the First Fitna (656–661), a civil war between supporters of Ali and supporters of the assassinated previous caliph, Uthman, from Banu Umayya, as well as rebels in Egypt; the war led to the establishment of the Umayyad Caliphate under Muawiyah I in 661.
This video is extracted from 36 lectures course called "The Big History of Civilizations" instructed by Professor Craig G. Benjamin
Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry (LINK)
From before the days of Moses up through the 1960s, slavery was a fact of life in the Middle East. Pagans, Jews, Christians, and Muslims bought and sold at the slave markets for millennia, trading the human plunder of wars and slave raids that reached from the Russian steppes to the African jungles. But if the Middle East was one of the last regions to renounce slavery, how do we account for its--and especially Islam's--image of racial harmony? How did these long years of slavery affect racial relations? In Race and Slavery in the Middle East, Bernard Lewis explores these questions and others, examining the history of slavery in law, social thought, and practice over the last two millennia.
With 24 rare and intriguing full-color illustrations, this fascinating study describes the Middle East's culture of slavery and the evolution of racial prejudice. Lewis demonstrates how nineteenth century Europeans mythologized the region as a racial utopia in debating American slavery. Islam, in fact, clearly teaches non-discrimination, but Lewis shows that prejudice often won out over pious sentiments, as he examines how Africans were treated, depicted, and thought of from antiquity to the twentieth century.
"If my color were pink, women would love me/But the Lord has marred me with blackness," lamented a black slave poet in Arabia over a millennium ago--and Lewis deftly draws from these lines and others the nuances of racial relations over time. Islam, he finds, restricted enslavement and greatly improved the lot of slaves--who included, until the early twentieth century, some whites--while blacks occasionally rose to power and renown. But abuses ring throughout the written and visual record, from the horrors of capture to the castration and high mortality which, along with other causes, have left few blacks in many Middle Eastern lands, despite centuries of importing African slaves.
Race and Slavery in the Middle East illuminates the legacy of slavery in the region where it lasted longest, from the days of warrior slaves and palace eunuchs and concubines to the final drive for abolition. Illustrated with outstanding reproductions of striking artwork, it casts a new light on this critical part of the world, and on the nature and interrelation of slavery and racial prejudice.
Why were most slaves in America from West Africa? Slavery has existed throughout history in various forms across the globe, but who became enslaved was almost always based on military conquest. So why did Europeans travel thousands of miles to enslave people from a particular geographic region? Watch the episode to find out.
The history of all Islamic nations from the birth of the religion in 622, through its rise in the 7th and 8th Centuries, the subsequent Golden Age, and finally its decline following the Sacking of Baghdad in 1258 to the Fall of Constantinople in 1453,
Image from an illuminated manuscript, the Madrid Skylitzes, showing Greek fire in use against the fleet of the rebel en:Thomas the Slav The caption above the left ship reads, στόλος Ρωμαίων πυρπολῶν τὸν τῶν ἐναντίων στόλον, i.e. "the fleet of the Romans setting ablaze the fleet of the enemies." (W)
The Arab-Byzantine wars were a series of wars between the mostly ArabMuslims and the Byzantine Empirebetween the 7th and 11th centuries AD, started during the initial Muslim conquestsunder the expansionist Rashidun and Umayyadcaliphs in the 7th century and continued by their successors until the mid-11th century.
The emergence of Muslim Arabs from Arabia in the 630s resulted in the rapid loss of Byzantium's southern provinces (Syria and Egypt) to the Arab Caliphate. Over the next fifty years, under the Umayyad caliphs, the Arabs would launch repeated raids into still-Byzantine Asia Minor, twice threaten the Byzantine capital, Constantinople, with conquest, and outright conquer the Byzantine Exarchate of Africa. The situation did not stabilize until after the failure of the Second Arab Siege of Constantinople in 718, when the Taurus Mountains on the eastern rim of Asia Minor became established as the mutual, heavily fortified and largely depopulated frontier. Under the Abbasid Empire, relations became more normal, with embassies exchanged and even periods of truce, but conflict remained the norm, with almost annual raids and counter-raids, sponsored either by the Abbasid government or by local rulers, well into the 10th century.
During the first centuries, the Byzantines were usually on the defensive, and avoided open field battles, preferring to retreat to their fortified strongholds. Only after 740 did they begin to launch counterstrikes of their own, but still the Abbasid Empire was able to retaliate with often massive and destructive invasions of Asia Minor. With the decline and fragmentation of the Abbasid state after 861 and the concurrent strengthening of the Byzantine Empire under the Macedonian dynasty, the tide gradually turned. Over a period of fifty years from ca. 920 to 976, the Byzantines finally broke through the Muslim defences and restored their control over northern Syria and Greater Armenia. The last century of the Arab–Byzantine wars was dominated by frontier conflicts with the Fatimids in Syria, but the border remained stable until the appearance of a new people, the Seljuk Turks, after 1060.
The Arabs also took to the sea, and from the 650s on, the entire Mediterranean Sea became a battleground, with raids and counter-raids being launched against islands and the coastal settlements. Arab raids reached a peak in the 9th and early 10th centuries, after the conquests of Crete, Malta and Sicily, with their fleets reaching the coasts of France and Dalmatia and even the suburbs of Constantinople.
📹 Siege of Constantinople 717-718 / Arab-Byzantine Wars (VİDEO)
Siege of Constantinople 717-718 / Arab-Byzantine Wars (LINK)
The forces of the Rashidun Caliphate achieved a decisive victory against the Byzantines at Yarmouk in 636. This allowed the Muslims to take over Syria and Egypt. But the Eastern Roman Empire was still strong and continued its resistance. The next 80 years Byzantines fought against the onslaught and the Arab-Byzantine wars reached their peak during the Siege of Constantinople in 717-718 where emperor Leo assisted by the Bulgars of Khan Tervel faced the overwhelming odds against the Umayyad forces. This battle is often overlooked in comparison to the battle of Tours that happened in France, but it was bigger and scale and had an even bigger impact on the fate of Europe.
🗺️ Byzantine-Arab naval competition in the Mediterranean, 7th to 11th centuries
🗺️ A map of the Byzantine-Arab naval competition in the Mediterranean, 7th to 11th centuries