A History of the Middle East Read Online Free Page B

and politics and no concept of a secular state. The Holy Koran, which for Muslims is the literal word of God, is the continuing inspiration for all Muslim thought and actions, but it is not a comprehensive code of law. Muslims have therefore looked also to the example of the Prophet and his companions. Their words and deeds, known as their
sunnah
or habitual modes of thought and action, were collected in the
hadith
, or traditions of the Prophet, which were handed down through a line or reliable witnesses. Together the Koran and the
sunnah
form the sources of the Islamic
sharia
. This is normally translated as ‘Islamic law’, but it is much more than this. It is neithercanonical law (Islam has no priesthood) nor secular law, because no such concept exists in Islam: it is rather a whole system of social morality, prescribing the ways in which man should live if he is to act according to God’s will. If he contravenes the
sharia
, his offence is against God and not the state.
    This is the ideal. Since the earliest times, Arab and Muslim rulers have assumed secular powers to some degree – and none more so than those of today – but the ideal continues to have a powerful influence on the hearts and minds of all Muslims. It accounts for the potent force of utopianism among Arabs – the belief that if they were to return to the ways of the Prophet and his companions the triumph of Islam in this world would be assured. In the West this is usually described as fundamentalism, but in a real sense all Muslim believers are fundamentalist, because they know that the Holy Koran was God’s final message to mankind. The triumph of the West in the last two or three centuries is seen by Muslims as an aberration of history.
    It is not surprising that the Arabs of today are still inspired to the point of obsession by the story of the first achievements of Islam. When, at the age of forty, Muhammad underwent the religious experience which turned him into a prophet and leader, the Arabian peninsula was a conglomeration of petty autonomous states grouped around tribal confederations. The largely nomadic people were mainly animists by religion, worshipping a variety of spirits who were often based in a particular rock or shrine. They had no written codes of laws; crimes were restrained by the lasting fears of vengeance. No such restraints applied to communal acts of violence, however, and the frequent inter-tribal disputes could be settled only by reference to an arbiter, a wise authority on tribal customs. This was not a high culture which could remotely be compared with that of Byzantium or Persia, but it had a matchless asset in the Arabic language, with its limitless power and flexibility and the supreme artistic achievement of its poetry.
    Although proud and independent, the people of Arabia were not immune to outside influences. Through their contacts with theChristian Byzantines and Abyssinians, and Zoroastrian Persians, they had begun to acquire some monotheistic ideas when Muhammad began his mission. By the time he died, in his early sixties, the new faith had been accepted throughout most of Arabia. In one generation he had succeeded in welding the scattered and idolatrous tribes of the peninsula into one nation worshipping a single, all-powerful god.
    If the achievements of the Islamic faith in the lifetime of Muhammad were remarkable, those during the brief rule of his three successors, or caliphs – the Rashidoun or Rightly Guided Ones – were even more astonishing. The small forces of the faithful went on to challenge the two great empires of Byzantium and Persia. Within ten years they had defeated the Sassanid Persians, captured their capital Ctesiphon on the Tigris and driven them out of Mesopotamia. They then turned their attention to the Byzantine provinces of Syria and Egypt. The Arab army swept on through North Africa, and within another fifty years, in AD 711, had crossed into Spain.
    After the conquest of Syria and