Like other tribal peoples, these people of the desert had been polytheistic, and they had believed in spirits that were neutral to them, spirits that were hostile and spirits to which they could appeal. They had believed that through ritual they could bind themselves as a tribe to a spirit. And they saw spirits in various objects and places. They saw spirit in the moon and stars, in the rocks which marked their way through the desert, in springs and water wells, in caves, in the few trees in the region and on mountain tops -- places they considered holy.
When Arabic tribes came together at markets and fairs they engaged religious ceremony, and during these fairs they held a truce. It was at these fairs that the tribes acquired a common view of a god they called Allah, a god who was all knowing, all powerful, who had created the world and predestined all. These contacts among the Arabs also reinforced their common language, which was rich in poetry. And at fairs they acquired a common identity as Arabs.
Islam was rooted in contact between Arabs and people of other cultures. Cultural diffusions impacted Arabia as it had elsewhere in the world. Adding to this diffusion were descendants of Jewish refugees from centuries before. By 500 CE Christian missionaries had arrived in Arabia. Before the rise of Islam, the entire Arabian province of Najran had been Christian. Christianity was established superficially in various other centers of trade, and Arabs living on the borders of what was left of the Roman and Persian empires had contacts with people and ideas within those empires.
The Prophet, from Rejection to Conquest
The founder of Islam, Muhammad, had been familiar with Christianity through his wife's cousin, who was a Christian. Muhammad was familiar with the New Testament of the Christians and the Old Testament of the Jews, and with Zoroastrianism. And in his travels as a merchant he had become familiar with Arabia's Hanif movement, which was neither Jewish nor Christian but had discarded the worship of idols and traditional polytheistic religion.
Similar to some Christian ascetics in Syria , Muhammad occasionally withdrew to meditate in a cave outside of his hometown, Mecca. There, according to legend, at around forty years of age, he began hearing messages from God via the angel Gabriel. Muhammad decided that the god he knew as Allah was also Jehovah, the god of the Jews and Christians. He claimed to foresee the end of the world, a day of judgment, when the dead would be awakened, when all would be judged according to their deeds and sent to either paradise or eternal flames.
Muhammad saw his faith as monotheistic, like that of the Hanif, Christians and Jews. And like the Christians he saw the world between God and humanity as occupied by angels and demons. He saw the future as in the hands of God, and he felt it was his duty to convert people to what he called "submission to the will of God" and to warn his fellow Meccans of God's Final Judgment. The word Islam means submission to the will of God.
Muhammad proclaimed that God had chosen him to preach the truth, that he was to be God's final and foremost messenger, superseding the message proclaimed by Jesus. Around the year 613, Muhammad began preaching publicly in Mecca -- where he saw tribal ties were weakening, where the old values of simplicity and sharing were diminishing and some were turning to the new vices of gambling and drunkenness. Muhammad won only a few followers, and because his message was new and different his tribe's elders thought him insane. But Mecca was a holy city visited by pilgrims, and pilgrims from the town of Yathrib were more favorably impressed by Muhammad. The people from Yathrib invited Muhammad to their town. It was an opportunity for Muhammad to enlarge his movement, and with his followers from Mecca he arrived there in June, 622.
Muhammad found Yathrib without any stable authority. There, in a modest dwelling with a mat and cushions he lived with his second wife, a servant, a young secretary and his black slave, whose name was Bilal. Recognized in Yathrib as a religious leader, people in town began going to him to settle disputes, and he became a respected authority in town.
Muhammad's followers suffered from poverty, and beginning in January 623 some of them resorted to the tradition of raiding the caravans that traveled along the eastern coast of the Red Sea from Mecca to Syria. Seeing himself as their leader, Muhammad put himself at the head of these raids, excusing them on the grounds of the injustice of poverty and describing the raids as part of a holy war (Jihad) against the rulers of Mecca for their having rejected his teaching. Muhammad and his followers had been developing a contempt for people they called "idolaters" -- for people who worshipped traditional, numerous gods. Energized by religious fervor, a sense of unity and the prospect of booty, his men fought well.3a
Yathrib had a large Jewish community, and Muhammad approached its leaders, claiming to be a leader of Judaism. These Jews believed Muhammad's grasp of Judaism was an absurd muddle, and they rejected him. Until then, Muhammad and his followers had been bowing toward Jerusalem. Now, after a year and a half in Yathrib, a disappointed Muhammad began bowing toward Mecca, and he abandoned Saturday as the Sabbath and made Friday the special day of the week for Islam.
Muhammad's movement was still a fraction of those in Yathrib -- maybe around 1,500 of something like 10,000 city inhabitants. But his success in warfare was bringing new people into his army, and a larger army brought increased success and more converts. In March 624 he had his greatest success so far, at Bedr, where his followers killed from 50 to 70 Meccans who had been accompanying a caravan. Just as Christians attributed divine help in the violence that Constantine conducted against Maxentius at the Tiber River, so too did Muhammad attribute his success to the will of Allah.
Muhammad's power grew as he distributed booty and made alliances with tribes neighboring Yathrib. With his rise in prestige and his added self-confidence he sought an increase in power by moving against those in Yathrib who did not fully support his activities. In April 624 he moved against a community of Jews in Yathrib called the Bani Qainuqa, many of whom were goldsmiths. The Bani Qainuqa -- perhaps about 1500 in number -- were expelled from Yathrib and their property distributed to Muhammad's followers (Muslims).
In the latter half of 625, after a series of failures at raiding, Muhammad moved against another community of Jews in Yathrib, the Banu Nadir. According to a Muslim account of this episode, after Muhammad had asked for a contribution from the community, the leader of the community had tried to kill him. Muhammad's response was collective punishment. The Banu Nadir fortified themselves behind the walls of their community. Muuslims cut down the surrounding palm orchards, which was the livelihood of the Jews. After two or three weeks of siege the Banu Nadir agreed to leave Yathrib. Two Jews who had converted to Islam are said to have been allowed to stay and to keep their property, and the property of the other Jews was divided among the Muslims.
Authorities in Mecca had a different view of Muhammad's raiding caravans than did Muhammad, and they and the merchants of Mecca rallied against him. In early 627 they sent an army of around 600 against Yathrib. The people of Yathrib finished digging a ditch around the city just before the Meccans arrived, and they had the masonry walls of their buildings to fight behind -- against an army with only swords, lances, and bows and arrows. For a month the army from Mecca waited outside the city for the Muslims to come out for battle. A few arrows flew. A duel between champions was fought, and the Meccan champion lost, followed by a small skirmish which gained the Meccans nothing. After a gale wind and cold rain, the Meccans returned home -- in time to prepare for the annual fairs and pilgrimage to Mecca. Meanwhile, sensing treason by Yathrib Jews of the Quarayzah clan, who had not backed him in the face of the threat from Mecca, Muhammad had the men among them -- perhaps six or seven hundred in number -- beheaded and their bodies thrown into a trench, and some of the women were sold into slavery. 4
The war between Muhammad and Mecca continued. Or, as has been written, the towns of Yathrib and Mecca were in a war, competing for power in Western Arabia. By Arab standards, Muhammad had become the leader of a great military machine, and Mecca had failed to acquire much help from other tribes. In January 630 a Muslim army of around 10,000 men stood outside Mecca and frightened the city into surrendering. Muhammad exercised diplomatic skills and bloodshed was avoided. Muhammad strengthened his movement by giving Meccan leaders important positions under his rule, neutralizing them as potential enemies, maintaining their leadership vis-à-vis other Meccans and soothing what might otherwise have been wounded pride. It was a traditional move by the wiser of conquerors.
With Mecca under Muslim rule, the holy shrine there, called the Kaaba, was turned from a place of worship for the traditional polytheist religion into a holy place of worship for Islam. Meccans of wealth were obliged to donate to the well-being of Mecca's poor. People in Mecca saw Muhammad's strength as the power of his god, and they saw the other gods as having become powerless. There was a mass conversion to Islam. And Muhammad added Mecca's army to his own.
Again success was to contribute to more success. Muhammad's victory at Mecca alarmed various polytheistic tribes elsewhere in Arabia . But it was too late for the enemies of Yathrib and Muhammad to defeat Muhammad by uniting militarily against him. In February and March, 630, Muhammad’s military fought various skirmishes and the battles of Hunsin, Auras, and Taif., and he emerged victorious. Muhammad's newly won dominance was followed by mass conversions to Islam. And tribes across the region began sending deputations to Muhammad, recognizing him as the great power and agreeing to deliver taxes to Muhammad's government. As had happened elsewhere in the world, military conquest had impacted religion.
Muhammad's Last Two Years
Muhammad spoke of his followers as a chosen people with special access to heaven. Heaven for Muhammad was a place of fine women and described pleasures for men, while hell was of torments unknown -- the opposite of Christianity, where the pleasures of heaven were not described and the torments of hell were.
Muhammad demanded taxes from those who had not converted to Islam, and, in exchange, he offered them protection -- as rulers had for millennia before him. Jews and Christians were among those to receive Muhammad's protection. He proclaimed that Jews and Christians were "people of the book" and were to be tolerated, to be guaranteed the right to practice their religion and to have security in their goods and property.
Neither an ascetic nor a celibate, Muhammad lived his last two years without harsh words about life. He and his most devout followers remained married and had children. He continued the custom of polygamy -- a practice that had helped compensate for the high death rate among Arabs and for a diminished ability to conceive because of Arabia's hot climate. But perhaps as a move against the rich, he limited the number of wives a man could have at any one time to four, except for himself, allowing himself thirteen.
In his final two years of life, Muhammad worked at governing his political and religious order. Instead of creating a new political structure, he focused on what he wished to be the character of his followers. Muhammad, it is said, called on them to have courage, to practice charity and hospitality and to be modest in their bearing. Now in power, he was discomforted by quarrelsome speech. "Subdue thy voice," he said. "The harshest of all voices is that of an ass."
Muhammad wanted none of the pomp and display that had been adopted by potentates of some other religions. It is said that he asked no service from a slave that he had time and strength to do for himself. He saw himself as fallible. He proclaimed no power to perform miracles and no power to foretell the future. He was, he claimed, just a messenger who had received truth from God.
Succession Problems and Conquests outside Arabia
In an authoritarian age succession was always a problem, and it was especially a problem among the Muslims. Muhammad is not known to have left any law about succession other than there be no successor to him as a prophet of God. A group of Muhammad's old companions at Yathrib felt that they should be the ones to select Muhammad's successor. Those from Mecca, who were members of the same tribe as Muhammad, the Quraysh, argued that Arabs would recognize the authority of Muhammad's successor only if he were a Quraysh. And Muhammad's only surviving daughter believed that her husband, Ali (Muhammad's stepbrother as well as son-in-law) should be the successor.
Muhammad's old companions met, quarreled bitterly and rejected Ali. The Quraysh group selected one of their own, Muhammad's father-in-law and companion, the fifty-nine year-old Abu Bakr. The Quraysh group attacked and murdered the favorite of the Yathrib group, Sa'd ibn-Ubada. Bakr was declared "Commander of the Faithful," a title in Arabic that was shortened to caliph, and Ubada was said to have been killed by God -- who after all, according to Islam, directed all things.
The city of Yathrib, meanwhile, had become known as Al Madinah, "the city of the Prophet," which has been shortened to Medina. Bakr ruled from Medina, his powers not well defined, while he claimed no religious authority. Bakr continued to live frugally and simply in a modest household with his wife, receiving no stipend, the state at the time having little income. He conducted government business in the courtyard of what had been the Prophet's masjid (mosque).
Across Arabia, Bakr's powers remained doubtful as here and there people believed that with the death of Muhammad they were no longer bound to authority from Medina. Those who had only superficially or reluctantly converted to Islam failed to recognize Bakr's authority. So too did some others, on the grounds that they had not participated in choosing Bakr as Muhammad's successor. And some persons claimed that they had received messages from God and were new prophets and successors to Muhammad.
The new prophets would need sufficient military strength if their view of God's work was to succeed, and a few tried to organize a military following. But Bakr and his supporters gathered together the greatest military force Arabia ever had. They divided the force into eleven columns, which fought across Arabia for several months, each column responsible for suppressing rebellion in a different region. In Medina, Bakr was barely able to defeat an assault from nearby nomads. But, against the fragmented and scattered rebels elsewhere, Bakr's forces managed easier victories. In 633 they defeated the Hanifa tribe in central Arabia, which had supported a new prophet called Musailima, who lost his life in the fighting, Musailima going down in history as a false prophet. Oman was pacified in the winter of 632-33. And Yemen was pacified in the spring of 633.
The Conquest of Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine
The momentum generated by victories against dissidents and breakaway regions left Islamic warriors restless and aggressive. Moreover, Arabia was in an economic recession, trade having come to a standstill with ten years of war, and some of Islam's warriors were hungry for booty. They began making raids into Mesopotamia -- an alternative to raiding "the faithful" in Arabia. Mesopotamia was still nominally under the rule by the Persian Sassanid dynasty. It was three years since Constantinople and the Persians had ended their ruinous war. Anarchy reigned in the Sassanid Empire. The Muslim raiders into Mesopotamia found little resistance, and success encouraged more and bigger raids, launching one of the greatest imperialism of all time. The caliph, Abu Bakr, went along with it. Finding Islam's warriors joyous with their victories, he declared a holy war on their behalf.
Bakr sent troops northwest into Palestine, and in 634, at Ajnadia, about twenty miles west of Jerusalem, in another of history's great battles, Islam's army defeated an army sent by Constantinople -- the Muslim army benefiting from their higher morale and superior mobility.
Bakr died without learning of the great victory in Palestine, and the successor he had chosen, Umar ibn-al-Khattab, became caliph.
Umar had been an early convert to Islam and had been one of Muhammad's closest companions. Like Bakr, Umar lived in frugally. He owned only one shirt and slept on a bed of palm leaves. He would be an able leader who would appoint men skilled not only in warfare but in trade. His succession had been a recommendation to the Islamic community, and from that community came a ratification of sorts but without any established mechanism for expression of popular will.
Umar's rule began with the siege of Damascus. Six months later, in September 635, Damascus capitulated, and the usual treaty of empires was made with the city, the conquerors promising the people of Damascus protection in exchange for taxes.
Against Muslim warriors in Mesopotamia, the Persians sent an army that included elephants, and they defeated the Muslims. But in subsequent battles Islamic warriors overcame their fear of Persia's elephants. The Muslim warriors had greater mobility, moving swiftly on horses and camels. They had unity and the belief that dying in battle would take them to heaven. They bypassed fortresses and defeated Sassanid armies. After their victory at the Battle of Kadisiyya, the Muslim army was able to move across the whole of Mesopotamia. In 638 they captured Ctesiphon, the Sassanid capital. Also in 638 Muslim warriors overran Jerusalem. On the coast of Palestine, 50 miles north of Jerusalem, they overran Caesarea. In only three years, the Arabs had conquered Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia.
In Palestine and Syria, Umar's army had created the impression that they were warring against Constantinople rather than against local people. Generally the Islamic forces had been disciplined, while fighting on empty stomachs and depending upon plunder for their meals. The conquerors had taken over the land and houses abandoned by those fleeing to Constantinople. They had plundered the wealthy, while in general the common people (who had little to plunder) found them well behaved. With conquest by the Muslims had come no missionaries attempting to interfere with the religious beliefs and practices of local people. People could worship as they pleased, but they were given the choice of converting to Islam or paying taxes. If they both refused to pay taxes and refused to convert to Islam they were subject to the penalty of death.
Into Egypt and Persia
In the year 638 a general named Amr asked Umar for permission to invade Egypt -- which was still nominally a part of Constantinople's empire. Amr described Egypt as rich and defenseless. Umar reluctantly approved, and in late 639 Amr made a swift raid into Egypt's Delta region to test the strength of Constantinople's defenses there. At the city of Heliopolis he routed Constantinople's forces, and then he overran open country. But without heavy siege weapons he was unable to take the city of Alexandria, and his army set up at a fortified camp six or seven miles northeast from Heliopolis, a spot that would eventually grow into the city of Cairo.
In Egypt, Constantinople's Catholic authorities had persecuted, flogged, tortured and executed Monophysite Christians, and the Monophysites saw the Arabs as liberators. So too did Egypt's peasants, who had felt oppressed by tyrannical, mostly Greek, landlords. In 642 Alexandria finally fell to the forces under Amr, with Constantinople's troops and officials there fleeing Egypt, as did many merchants and landowners, who took with them what gold coins they could. Amr welcomed the return from hiding of Benjamin, the patriarch of the local Monophysite Christians, and he assured Benjamin that in the future his people would enjoy religious liberty.
Conquests were a source of wealth for the Arabs, and, motivated by gain in wealth, the Arabs invaded Armenia and Persia. They conquered Armenia in 642, making the people there subjects of Umar, but in name only as the Armenians, protected by their mountainous terrain, remained virtually self-governing and zealously Christian.
In 645 Constantinople tried to regain control over Egypt, transporting an army across the Mediterranean Sea. But Constantinople's army was easily defeated, with the native Monophysite Christians fighting alongside the Muslims. By 646 the Muslims conquered all of Egypt, turning Egypt into a colony. The Muslims mitigated friction between themselves and local people by putting local administration and tax collecting into local hands and leaving the Egyptians with control over their agricultural lands.
Conquering Persia was harder than conquering Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine. Persians saw the Arabs as barbarians and as enemies rather than liberators. They saw themselves as a superior people, and they were willing to fight to defend their homeland. Islam's warriors ran into resistance led by local Persian leaders.
To resist the Arabs, the last of the Sassanid kings, Yezdegird III, raised an army of 150,000 men. But with victory in Egypt, the Muslims were able to send reinforcements at a critical moment. At the Battle of Nihawand, 30,000 Muslims routed Yezdegird's army, the Muslims catching and massacring the Persians in narrow gorges. Muslims saw this as their greatest victory, and it was decided that all of Persia should be subdued. Umar was able to concentrate on this conquest. Yezdegird III fled eastward, and in 652, near Merv, he was murdered by local thieves for his jewelry. Sassanid Persia had come to an end, but it would be many years before Islam would be able to subdue Persia as far as its eastern border.
In Persia, Zoroastrianism was doomed as a great religion. In response to conquest by Islam's armies, the Zoroastrians would foment rebellions, and the conquering Muslims responded. In many provinces the Muslims forced Zoroastrians to convert to Islam, while many Zoroastrians adopted Nestorian Christianity instead. Here and there Zoroastrianism would survive. But in the coming centuries conversions to Islam would leave Zoroastrians a small minority.
Wealth, Succession, the Quran, and Assassination
From Umar's conquests came wealth from booty -- much of it from Persia . Eighty percent of this wealth went to the warriors -- the traditional incentive for fighting -- and the remaining twenty percent went to the state and to others with influence or connections.
Muhammad had proclaimed that Islam was to be one brotherhood, but tribal identity and clan rivalry remained. Umar's clan, the Umayyads (a branch of the Quraysh) were growing in wealth more rapidly than other clans. Some among them scorned the puritanism and asceticism of those devoted to Islamic principals. Opportunistic members of the Umayyad clan had flocked to Medina to benefit from their relationship with Umar. Seeking people he could trust, Umar had appointed them as governors and to other administrative positions.
Benefiting from the new wealth, some of them built impressive homes. Umar viewed the increased appetite for luxury with sadness, while many who were not of the Umayyad clan resented Umayyad wealth and opportunism.
In 644, while the conquest of Egypt and Persia were in progress, a captive Persian Christian, who had been made a slave and taken to Medina, managed to assassinate Umar while he was leading prayers at Medina's masjid (mosque). It was the duty of six men whom Umar had selected as a council called the Eminent Companions to choose his successor. Muhammad's son-in-law, Ali, now about forty-four, again sought the position, but the Eminent Companions rejected his offer after he refused to promise that he would follow the policies of the previous caliphs, Bakr and Umar. The council turned instead to someone they thought would: Affan ibn Uthman. Uthman was an Umayyad, a former merchant and an early convert to Islam who had married two of Muhammad's daughters.
Unlike Muhammad, Bakr and Umar, Uthman lived in luxury. But like Umar he appointed his relatives as governors to the provinces and to other administrative positions. In the first half of his eleven-year reign he was popular enough, but paying for continuing wars against resistance in Persia and Armenia while receiving no compensation in the form of booty or increased taxation drained his government's treasury. Building a navy with which to protect Islam's rule in Syria and Egypt was also costly, as was his successful naval operation that seized the island of Cyprus and delivered defeats to Constantinople's navy.
While annoying some with his nepotism, Uthman annoyed more of his countrymen by his move to collect Muhammad's messages into a standard work -- the Quran. During a campaign in Armenia , Islamic troops from Syria and Mesopotamia had argued with each other over conflicting versions of Muhammad's sayings, which led to outbursts of violence between them. Uthman wanted to resolve the conflicting interpretations and to preserve what was memory in the tradition of oral history. Some who remembered Muhammad were dying in battle and some were dying from old age.
Uthman appointed a committee, which collected what they could of Muhammad’s teachings -- a third attempt, one from each of the two previous caliphs. Uthman's ordered the destruction of rival collections that differed in any way from his committee’s work, which brought upon him the wrath of various people and communities across Arabia who had become wedded to rival interpretations. Many argued that Uthman did not have the religious authority to establish an official version of Muhammad's teachings. And one of Muhammad's oldest companions charged that the version produced by Uthman’s committee was false and incomplete.3b
Dissatisfaction with Uthman grew as he pushed for an increase in authority in areas of decision making that traditionally belonged within a tribe or clan. And adding to the dissatisfaction was a rise in prices – resulting from more money in circulation chasing no increase in goods and services.
In 656, five hundred Arab warriors from the garrison town of Kufa in Mesopotamia arrived in Medina. They claimed to be following God's instructions to war against the enemy within. They claimed that Ali was Muhammad's only legitimate successor, that Uthman had usurped power. And they had a new myth -- myth-making of a sort common to humanity -- at odds with Uthman’s views. They claimed that Muhammad would return to life.
The rebels surrounded Uthman's residence and demanded that he resign. Uthman, the ruler of the mightiest empire on earth, had no army or guard to protect him at his residence. And the common people of Medina did not rush to Uthman’s home to protect him. From Damascus, Uthman's cousin, Mu'awiyah, the governor of Syria, headed toward Medina with an army to rescue Uthman, but before they arrived the rebels assassinated Uthman, and cut off the fingers of his wife, leaving the people of Medina stunned for about five days, while frightened relatives of Uthman fled the city.
Caliph Ali Replaces the Umayyads
The leaders of the sect that assassinated Uthman proclaimed Ali as caliph. Ali accepted, and across much of the empire people gave Ali their support, satisfying those who had argued that rule should come from within Muhammad's family, the Hashimites, rather than from the Umayyads. Ali, now short, fat and in his late fifties, won recognition as the new caliph, but not among people in Syria. He appointed new governors everywhere but in Syria, where Uthman's cousin Mu'awiyah refused to resign and where it was claimed that assassination was not a legitimate means of attaining power. Mu'awiyah, who was now the head of the Umayyad clan, was obliged by Arab custom to avenge the murder of his kinsman, Uthman. To arouse anger against Ali's regime, Mu'awiyah displayed in Damascus the bloodied shirt of Uthman and the severed fingers of his wife, which had been smuggled out of Medina.
Ali did not disassociate himself from Uthman's assassins, and rather than pursue a policy of accommodation he created enemies by dismissing all those who had been officials under Uthman. A couple of Ali's highly respected and influential supporters, Talha and Zubair, quarreled with him and returned to Mecca. There they joined forces with Muhammad's widow, Aisha, now forty-five and a bitter foe of Ali's from years before when he had questioned her chastity. In December, 656, Ali fought a battle against forces led by Talha, Zubair and Aisha. Ten thousand are said to have died. Ali won the battle. Many mourned the death of Talha and Zubair, and they were inclined to blame Ali for the bloodshed.
Many in Islam's cities had begun to fear Ali's alliance with rural Bedouin tribesmen. Support for Ali was waning, while in Damascus Mu'awiyah waited, making no claim to be caliph, merely asserting his right to avenge the death of his kinsman. Mu'awiyah governed a stable province, Syria, where Christians enjoyed full freedom of worship and equal treatment. In order to free his Syrian military forces for struggle against his enemies within Islam he made a truce with Constantinople, and he moved his army into Mesopotamia.
Ali responded by leading his in battle against Mu'awiyah's army. Mu'awiyah's forces faired worse in the battle, but, according to reports, Amr, the conqueror of Egypt, who had allied himself with Mu'awiyah, had his troops fix pages of the Quran to the tips of their lances and cry "the Law of God, the law of God! Let that decide between us!" In both armies were a number of reciters of the Quran who wished to adhere to the principle of Muslim not killing Muslim. And rather than fight, both sides agreed to arbitration. There followed much searching through the Quran, searching for the answer to why God had allowed Muhammad's followers to make war against each other. Some argued against arbiters, claiming that the decision belonged to God alone, a judgment they thought could be expressed by referendum by the entire Muslim nation. And to some, Ali looked foolish for having accepted arbitration while claiming wisdom and authority in all matters affecting Islam.
The arbiters became a group of as many as four hundred, and months passed by as they felt no sense of urgency to come to a decision. During these months Ali's coalition began to collapse. Leaders of his coalition took their troops and returned to their home areas, determined to pursue their own interests. With those loyal to him, Ali went after these deserters, and he convinced some of them to return, while others he engaged in combat, and many were massacred.
Some of those who turned against Ali were those who had come to believe that the caliph should be elected by the people. Some others rejected all government, believing that they should follow God's laws only, and some of them denounced the worldliness and the luxury of the well-to-do. One group that believed in a theocratic republic became known as the Seceders, and they fought Ali, and many of them died.
Ali returned to his base, the city of Kufa, to reorganize his support and await the decision of the arbiters, who were not to meet for another year. Meanwhile, Mu'awiyah was extending his support. The former conqueror of Egypt, Amr, returned to there and was received as a hero, and Amr led Egypt in support of Mu'awiyah. Then in 660 Jerusalem also proclaimed Mu'awiyah as caliph.
Finally the arbiters decided that Ali was the usurper of power. But arbitration no longer mattered. Ali had lost too much support. The defeated sect called the Seceders had turned to terrorism and had decided to rid Islam of Ali, Mu'awiyah and Amr. They killed Amr's deputy instead of Amr, only slightly wounded Mu'awiyah as he prayed in the masjid (mosque) at Damascus, but they gravely wounded Ali as he was entering the masjid at Kufa, and in January, 661, Ali died of his injuries.
A few poets had ridiculed Ali for having been fat and unwieldy in figure, but many Muslims remembered him for his eloquence as an orator, his bravery and his morality, including his opposition to the growing luxury and corruption of his time. Ali left behind many admirers and followers. Believing in rule by dynasty and the Hashimite family, Ali's supporters recognized Ali's son as his successor, and they became that branch of Islam known as Shi'a.
Return of the Umayyads and Expansion
Mu'awiyah or someone of his clan bribed Ali's son to give up his claim as caliph. This for the time being ended the challenge for the caliphate from the Hashimites. Mu'awiyah shifted his rule from the town to Medina to the town of Damascus in Syria, ending forever Arabia's primacy over Islam. Medina was being absorbed by its own empire -- as had Rome by its conquests.
In an attempt to reunite Islam's demoralized and decentralized empire, Mu'awiyah posed as a champion of Islam, but unlike Ali he claimed no religious authority. His rule in Syria rested on the loyalty of Christians and Syrian Arabs, most of whom had lived in Syria for centuries and were accustomed to state authority -- unlike Arab tribesmen. Mu'awiyah's influential financial counselor was a Christian, and his favorite wife was both a Christian and an Arab. Mu'awiyah was ruling over an integrated Syria, where Christians and Muslims sometimes worshiped together.
Mu'awiyah tried to rule the empire with more of the concern for agreement of an old sheik (chieftain) rather than the authority of an eastern despot. He discussed his measures with members of the nobility, with whom he met regularly at his palace. He received delegations from the provinces in order to accept complaints and smooth over differences between tribes. He displayed mild composure and self-control. He used persuasion and compromise, managing the empire through capable governors and maintaining personal relations with local leaders. Wealthy and influential Umayyads bribed and cultivated the friendship of various sheiks, whom they made responsible for the behavior of their people. Criticized for the gifts he distributed, Mu'awiyah replied that civil war would cost more. He gave Arabs participation in rule by creating a council of sheiks as a consultative body with local executive powers, and he created another consultative body representing tribes. He began replacing kinship ties with identity to the broader Islamic community. Amid all this creation for consultation, he surrounded himself with splendor and ceremony to increase the prestige of his office, taking as his model Constantinople's emperors. Many of the former opponents to Umayyad rule were made friends. Others opponents were humbled.
Mu'awiyah re-established the taxes that had been paid to the central treasury by the provinces, and he saw to it that they were collected regularly. In the area around Medina and Mecca he supported projects that improved methods of agriculture. He reorganized his army, abandoning tribal units and modeling the army instead on Constantinople's armies. At his army's core were Christians, Muslims, Syrian Arabs and Yemenites. And he began building a new navy.
Expansion Under Mu'awiyah
The end of civil war within Islam made further expansion of Islam possible, and Mu'awiyah and the Umayyads began to extend their empire, beginning with raids from Egypt westward across the Mediterranean coast of North Africa. Constantinople's emperor sent a force across the Mediterranean to defend what he thought was still his territory, and, in 664, the Muslims defeated them in a limited engagement. Constantinople's army withdrew, but Constantinople's officialdom and navy remained in North Africa -- the navy stationed at Tunis. And there, Latin speaking people remained from Roman times. Pursuing his war against Constantinople, in 668 Mu'awiyah sent his navy north to Constantinople, and in the spring of 669 he began a siege there. In 670 the Muslims built a military colony at Kairawan, near Tunis -- the first attempt at colonizing rather than merely raiding west of Egypt. The Berbers indigenous to the area were hostile toward the colony and, in response to Berber attacks, Muslim warriors from Kairawan began making assaults against them.
In 671 Mu'awiyah resettled fifty thousand families in Khurasan -- families from the old garrison towns of Kufa and Basra in Mesopotamia, where support for Ali had been strong. From Khurasan, Arab men were obliged to join annual expeditions across the Oxus River into the Turkish east, from which they returned only during winter months. These expeditions brought booty to the Arabs and extended Umayyad rule in Transoxiana, where principalities became Arab protectorates. In 672 the Muslims took control of the island of Rhodes, which they used as an base of operations in their continuing war against Constantinople. In 674 they took the island of Crete. Meanwhile the siege of Constantinople was going poorly. In 674 Mu'awiyah sent a greater force against it, but Constantinople's fortifications were too strong, and in 677 Mu'awiyah abandoned the project and made peace with Constantinople.
In: http://www.fsmitha.com/. Edited to be posted by Leopoldo Costa
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