Download PDF | A Social and Economic History of the Near East in the Middle Ages-University of California Press (1976).
384 Pages
Preface
A bibliophile interested in the history of the Moslem East could easily fill a large library. Many great scholars who had a profound knowledge of Oriental languages have indeed written voluminous works on Arabic civilisation and the vicissitudes of the Caliphate. What justification is there for a new book on this subject? The purpose of the present book is very different from most learned treatises to be found in Western libraries.
The scholars who have hitherto undertaken research into the history of the Near East in the middle ages have had recourse to the rich historical literature of the Arabs and the Persians which provides copious materials for Oriental history. But, alas, the old Oriental writers tell the story of the aristocracy: their books are focused on the courts of the princes and on the achievements of their armies. The Orientalists themselves, with few exceptions, have always been mainly interested in the spiritual life of the Moslems, in Islam and in Arabic literature. So many texts which indeed refer to social and economic life have been overlooked or misunderstood by scholars to whom these problems meant nothing. But very often such texts, e.g. reports on revolutionary movements, are obscure, contradictory and incomplete, so that it is very difficult to harmonise them or to see the wood for the trees. All the scholars who have written on Moslem civilisation have dwelt on the great progress made by the Arabs in the days of the caliphs, but they have omitted to show why there was later a technological stand-still and what the consequences of it were. The risings of the lower strata of society are described as riots, but probably some of them had far-reaching aims.
This book aims to show that the Near East was in the middle ages not at all a static, unchanging society. On the contrary, the attempt will be made to disclose momentous changes in the social framework of the Near Eastern population and to delineate great social movements. It will be argued that even in the Near East the bourgeois played a great role in political history and that there were strong revolutionary movements, though different from those known to Western history. To narrate once more the story of the Turkish sultans and to discuss the achievements of Arab and Persian poets and philosophers is no part of the book’s intention. In this it will be quite distinct from the numerous reference books available in the Western world.
Trying to sum up various essays and my own research in an overall synthesis of the social and economic development of the Near East in the course of nine hundred years is bold, if not rash. But even if it will only serve as a challenge for further research, it will have fulfilled an important task.
Some conjectures and conclusions may prove to be mistaken, but the author can honestly say that he has drawn them from the sources. This book is based on the study of many Arabic chronicles, not a few of them still unpublished and hidden in the great libraries of London and Oxford. A great number of Judaeo-Arabic geniza documents have been used, as have numerous documents in the archives of Venice and other towns of Italy which traded with the Near East in the middle ages. These latter documents were unknown to Heyd, when he wrote his excellent History of Levantine trade in the middle ages. It goes without saying that printed documents have not been neglected, so far as they were known to the author.
To a certain extent the present book summarises the results of the author’s published research. The findings have been often corrected and modified, and new materials have been added to them. As far as possible the author has abstained from polemics, as this book is meant for the general reader, not as a scholarly treatise. For the same reason quite often European translations of Oriental sources have been quoted.
In submitting his results to the reader, the author asks for the indulgence generally shown to an attempt at research in a field hitherto very much neglected.
Zurich, October 1972 E. Ashtor
The Kingdom of the Arabs
The Orientalists have dealt with the origins of Islam, elucidating the Christian and Jewish influences on Mohammed. They have tried to explain the victories of the Arabs, who conquered almost the whole of the Near East and defeated within a decade the experienced armies of Persia and Byzantium. Sociologists have elaborated theories about the factors which brought about the emigration of Bedouin tribes from Arabia and their settlement in other countries.
The interest of the economic historian will be focused on the effects of the Moslem conquests on the economy of the Near East and on social conditions in the countries ruled by Mohammed’s successors ever since.
Did the conquest of these countries by the Arabs bring about a social upheaval, or were the armies of occupation rather superimposed on the old strata of society? Did the conquest result in a change of the social system? Were the Arabs within a short time absorbed by the autochthonous society, as had been the fate of so many invaders?
a) The settlement of the Arabs
Students of history have always been impressed by the vigour of the Arab conquerors and above all by the exceptional rapidity of their advance.
In a first wave of conquests, lasting from 633 to 656, they subdued Syria, Babylonia, Persia and Egypt. The fate of Palestine and Syria was sealed by the battle on the river Yarmuk in 636, that of Babylonia by that of al-Kadisiyya in 637. In the years 638-40 the Arabs took the fortified towns which still offered resistance in Palestine, overran Upper Mesopotamia and invaded Khuzistan, the province of Persia bordering on south-eastern Babylonia. The conquest of Egypt begun in 639 was complete in 642, when the capital, Alexandria, surrendered. Thereupon the victorious Arabs penetrated into the countries east of Babylonia and west of Egypt. The last great Persian army was defeated in the battle of Nihawend in 642, and in the following years the Moslems conquered most provinces of Media and Adherbeidjan. There followed the conquest of Fats and Khurasan, so that in 651 the Oxus was reached. All this was achieved by expeditionary forces of limited size. The Arabs who invaded Irak in 633 were no more than 2-3,000, and in the decisive battle of al-Kadisiyya they numbered no more than 6-7,000. In the battle on the Yarmuk the number of the Arabs probably did not exceed 25,000. The conquest of Persia was achieved by 35-—40,000. Egypt was first invaded by 4,000 men, who were later reinforced by 6,000 more. While the numbers of the Persian and Byzantine armies should not be overestimated either, they were certainly superior to those of the Arabs.1 Nor did the Arabs use weapons unknown by their enemies. On the other hand, they encountered armies which were well trained and whose commanders distinguished themselves by great strategic skill.
The great military achievements of the Arabs have rightly been explained by the exhaustion of both the Persian and the Byzantine empites, which had been at war with each other for twenty-five years. The two empires were also weakened by internal dissensions, the Persian empire by feudal disintegration, and the Byzantine empire by the strife between the Eastern churches. The contest between the orthodoxy upheld by the Byzantine emperor and the Monophysites became identified in Egypt and in Syria with the antagonism between the Greek rulers and the indigenous populations. So the inhabitants of these countries did not regard the Arab invaders as enemies, but welcomed them as liberators, or at least remained neutral. Two famous Orientalists, the Italian Leone Principe di Caetani, and the German C. H. Becker, considered the Moslem conquests to be mainly the consequence of the economic conditions in the Arabian peninsula. According to Caetani they were brought about by climatic changes which had begun many centuries before. The aridity of Arabia had been growing during long ages. Where once great streams had flowed and glaciers had covered the slopes of the mountains there were now deserts and steppes which could not feed an ever-increasing population. The discrepancy between the worsening conditions and the increase of the population had resulted in periodical migratory movements. The first of these began about s000 B.C. After 3800 B.C. emigration from Arabia gathered such force that the Sumerian civilisation in Mesopotamia was semitised. About 2500 B.C. a true Arab dynasty, that of Hammurabi, sprang up in Babylonia. There followed the migratory movements of the Aramaeans and that of the Chaldaeans which engendered the dynasty of Nebuchadnezzar. That shortage of grazing land and food through increasing desiccation drove the Bedouins to a policy of military expansion was also the opinion of C. H. Becker. The Arab conquests were not the realisation of ideas conceived by the Moslem leaders. On the contrary, the roving Arab tribes on the borders of Babylonia began the invasion and later applied for help to the Moslem leaders at Medina. Becker admitted, however, that Islam supplied the essential unity and the central power. Although hunger and avarice were the driving forces, the new religion was the rallying factor.?
New research has substantiated the ideas of Caetani and Becker. In a seties recently published by Altheim-Stiehl, a group of scholars has collected and discussed much informative material on the expansion of the Arabs into the lands of the Fertile Crescent and in other regions of the Near East before Islam. They have shown that the immigration of the Arabs in Syria came to an apogee in Seleucid times. It was then that the old Edessa was founded by an Arab tribe. Edessa was an Arab kingdom in the second half of the second century B.C. Even in some regions of Upper Mesopotamia, such as the district of Sindjar, Arabs were in control in the first two centuries B.C. At the same time Arab tribesmen founded a kingdom in Mesene, east of the lower Tigris, a state which flourished for about 300 years. In Transjordan Arab tribes were to be found at the time of the campaigns of Antiochus IIT against Egypt in 218-7 B.C. The Ituraeans, an Arab people, built a kingdom in Central Syria in the first century B.C. Since the Swiss traveller J.-L. Burckhardt discovered the ruins of Petra in.1812, our knowledge of the kingdom of the Nabataeans has steadily increased. It is now known that this Arab people occupied the south of Transjordan at the beginning of the sixth century B.C., and later built a rich and strong state in Palestine and Southern Syria. Another Arab tribe which penetrated Syria were the Safaites, who settled east and south-east of Damascus. They left in these regions many thousands of Arabic inscriptions which date from the first century B.C. to the beginning of the fourth century A.D.
Of all the principalities which Arab tribes founded before Islam in the lands of the Fertile Crescent, the strongest was the kingdom of Palmyra, by the middle of the third century the greatest power in the Near East. Arab immigration in the Fertile Crescent went on under the reign of the later Roman and the Byzantine emperors, and in the fifth century Upper Mesopotamia was called by Syriac writers Bet Arbaye the Land of the Arabs. In the south-western borderland of Babylonia the Lakhmids had founded, with the help of the Persian kings, the kingdom of al-Hira, a buffer state, destined to defend the Persian dominions against the Byzantines. From the middle of the fourth to the middle of the sixth century the kings of al-Hira were in control of the region between the Euphrates and the fertile provinces of Central Syria. The Byzantines, on the other hand, created a similar Arab buffer state, the principality of the Ghassanids, who ruled over the Hauran, Phoenicia, Northern Transjordan and Palestine. Egypt too had a numerous Arab population long before the Moslem conquests. According to Herodotus, its eastern provinces were called Arabia in the fifth century B.C.
So when the Moslems invaded the lands of the Fertile Crescent and Egypt they found everywhere large numbers of Arabs, most of them nomads or only half-sedentary. Several Arab tribes were living on the banks of the Euphrates, the North Arabian tribes of the Banu Taghlib, Tamim, Numair, Idjl and Rabia. The Banu Iyad were in control of al-Anbar and the surrounding district. Many of the Arab tribesmen had become peasants, as is borne out by old and reliable texts. al-Hira was a relatively big Arab town, numbering about 50,000 inhabitants.® In short, the Moslem conquests were a new stage in a series of migratory movements. Economic necessity was the main driving force. When the perennial nomadic aggression was set in motion partly by a religious impulse it became an overwhelming power to which the old eastern empires succumbed.
In order to estimate the impact of the Moslem conquests and the role which the Arabs were to play in the social framework of the old Near Eastern societies, one would like to know the numbers of the conquerors who settled in the conquered countries.
A. Miller has concluded that in the year 636 the total of the Arab forces outside Arabia was perhaps 80,000. In the days of the caliph Uthman (644-56) the Moslem armies, from Eastern Persia to Carthage, numbered according to him, 250-300,000 men. The accounts which the Arabic historians give of the battle of Siffin in 657 would be in keeping with these estimates. For the old Arabic authors say that for this decisive battle in the first civil war in the Moslem empire 150,000 men were mobilised. But all these figures are probably exaggerated. The Egyptian historian al-Makrizi, on the other hand, found in one of his sources that in the days of the caliph Muawiya (661-80) there were 40,000 Arabs in Egypt. However, the number of the Arabs increased steadily. According to the conjecture of H. Lammens in about 720 they numbered in Syria 200,000 altogether, against a total of four million inhabitants. Other scholars are inclined to suppose that the number of the Arabs was much greater, amounting to 300-400,000, whereas the total of Syria’s population was smaller.‘ However that may have been, the Arabs, the newcomers together with those coming earlier, were in the period subsequent to the conquests a small minority everywhere.
But invaders who settle in the conquered countries are always minorities. So it is far more important to establish the social stratification of the new rulers of the Near East. A mere glance at the old Arabic sources is enough to bring home to the reader that the Arab conquests resulted in considerable changes in the composition of Near Eastern populations. A part of the Arab tribes who lived in Syria before the conquest and had embraced Christianity would not accept Mosletn rule, and left for Byzantium. Old Arabic authors relate that Djabala b. al-Aiham, the prince of the Banu Ghassan, went to Asia Minor with 30,000 men. The exodus of Greek-speaking town-dwellers must have been massive. Byzantine officials and traders, and also natives of Syria and Egypt who had been brought up in the Greek culture and were faithful to Orthodox Christianity, could not bear living under the rule of people whom they regarded as pure barbarians. So many thousands of the inhabitants of the coastal towns of Syria and Phoenicia went to Byzantium. al-Baladhuri says that this happened in the towns of Sidon, Beirut, Byblos, Arka and Tripoli. The same happened in Alexandria. An Arab author of the ninth century narrates that 200,000 inhabitants of this town emigrated to Byzantium. Although this number must be greatly exaggerated, it points to the fact that the exodus of the Greeks was a sizable phenomenon. But also agriculturalists who were imbued with Byzantine culture abandoned their old homes. An old Arab historian speaks about the emigration of the inhabitants of the small towns of Balis and Kasirin in Northern Syria. Certainly we are not mistaken when supposing that they were landlords of estates in the surrounding districts. In Babylonia too there was probably a similar phenomenon: many Persians left the country during the Arab invasion and subsequently. But it goes without saying that not all Greeks and Persians abandoned theit towns and villages. An Arab author, writing in the second half of the ninth century, says that the big villages on the route from Baghdad to Kufa were in his days inhabited by Persians and Arabs.®
The Moslem rulers were aware of the consequences which must follow the exodus of the Greeks and the Persians, and tried to check the decline of the abandoned towns by the settlement of other towndwellers. They brought Persians and Jews to the towns of Syria and Palestine which had been abandoned by their former inhabitants. According to al-Yakubi, who wrote in the ninth century, the Persians were a sizable group in the populations of the provinces of Damascus, Jordan and Palestine. There were many Persians in the towns of Baalbek and Arka, while Jews were settled in Tripoli, which had been abandoned by the Greek population.®
The great majority of the people who settled in the lands conquered by the Moslems were, however, Arab Bedouin. It is true that some of the sources of data concerning the Arab tribes under the reign of the caliphs belong to the second half of the ninth century, a period when the distribution of the Arabs over the countries of the Near East had changed to a certain extent. We are probably not mistaken, however, in supposing that a great part of the Arab tribes mentioned there had been living in the same regions since the Moslem conquests.
Among the Arabs who settled in Southern Irak almost all the tribes of Northern and Southern Arabia were represented. There were Kais, Tamim and Bakr b. Wail, all of them hailing from Northern Arabia, and clans of Asad, Hamdan, Kudaa, Madhhidj and other South Arabians. On the banks of the Euphrates there were numerous clans of Kais, while Upper Mesopotamia was divided between Mudar, Bakr and Rabia, all of them Northern Arabians. But also the Banu Ukail, Numair and Habib played a great role in this region. Most of these tribesmen led the life of nomads, as had done their ancestors in the Arabian peninsula, though others had gone over to a half-settled life.
The Arab tribes who lived in Syria before the Moslem conquest were mostly South Arabians, and even after the conquest these clans still represented an important sector of the Arab population. Kalbites lived in the oasis of Tadmor, Tayy, Kinda, Himyar, Kalb and Hamdan in the province of Hims, Bahra in the districts surrounding Hamath. Yemenites were also to be found near Kafrtab and Lattakia, Kinda in the districts of Shaizar and Antartus. In the neighbourhood of Damascus there were Ghassan, Kudaa, Kalb and Lakhm, besides Rabia from Northern Arabia. In Palestine there were many clans of Lakhm, Djudham and Kinda. But in the wake of the Arab invasion many North Arabian clans came to Syria and spread all over the country. Kaisites lived in the districts surrounding Damascus, in the Hauran, the Bathaniyya, the Golan, near Jericho and in Southern Palestine. However, the South Arabian tribes were also joined by newcomers, such as the Amila who gave their name to a great part of Galilee. So the Arab population of Syria and Palestine was a very chequered one. The successive waves of Arab immigrants who settled in the conquered countries brought to Egypt also a variegated population of Bedouin tribesmen. After the conquest many Yemenites had settled in Egypt and later other groups of Southern Arabs joined them. In the year 673 Ziyad, the mighty viceroy of Irak, transplanted numerous clans of Kudaa, Tudjib, Lakhm and Djudham to Egypt. But there were in Egypt also Himyar, Madhhidj, Ghutaif, Walan, Maafir, Khaulan and other South Arabians. Later, in the days of the caliph Hisham, there began a systematic settlement of North Arabian clans. According to Arabic sources, upon the request of the governor of Egypt, the caliph sent him in the year 727 3,000 Kaisites. They were settled in the northeastern province called al-Hauf, south of Tinnis and east of Bilbais. The government obliged them to engage in agriculture, but they had also the monopoly of transporting Egyptian grains to the shores of the Red Sea, whence it was sent to the Hidjaz. In the middle of the eighth century new clans of Kaisites, who had heard about the good fortune of their brethren, joined them. Meanwhile the Arabs had begun to spread over the countryside and to settle everywhere in the villages. Before long they imposed their language on most provinces of Egypt. That was undoubtedly the consequence of the slow but steady spontaneous immigration of Bedouins who lived from cattle breeding and exchanged their products against those of the native peasants. The Arab tribesmen pitched their tents on the border of the cultivated land, on both sides of the Nile valley, and advanced slowly to the south. The scale of the Bedouin immigration is indicated by the fact that its surplus was sufficient to scatter Arab nomads in the eastern Sudan.’
b) Bedouinisation and acculturation
The settlement of the Arabs in the conquered countries had two important consequences for social and economic life. There began two phenomena which look at the first glance contradictory, but are in fact two sides of the same process, i.e. the clash of the Arabs with the autochthonous population. In fact, the Arab invaders split into two gteat sectors, whose attitudes towards the autochthonous population and their civilisation were very different. The tribesmen proved to be a very harmful factor in the economic life of the fertile regions of the Near East whose mainstay was agriculture. On the other hand, the Arabs who went over to settled life came under the influence of the old Oriental civilisations which were alive in the autochthonous populations, and in course of time a recombination of different civilisations ensued. The result was the birth of a splendid Arab syncretism. This new Arabic civilisation came into being in the Moslem towns where the inhabitants’ way of life was quite different from and opposed to that of their Bedouin ancestors.
Some Arabs who had been husbandmen in their old fatherland founded villages in the lands of the Fertile Crescent and elsewhere. There were also nomads who changed their way of life and became peasants. This happened, for instance, in Southern Lebanon, where Arab tribesmen went over to a sedentary life. But there can be no doubt that the number of these Bedouin was rather limited. The caliphal government had indeed no interest in their becoming husbandmen, since Arabs paid less in taxes than the native peasants. So these were protected by the government, which did its best to prevent encroachment on their property by the Arab tribes. Furthermore, the first caliphs cherished the idea of keeping the Arab warriors as a caste apart. Becoming peasants, they probably believed, the Arabs would lose their military qualities. Nevertheless it happened that Arab warriors left the camp-towns and settled in villages where they engaged in agriculture. But settlement in the countryside did not always prove a success. Quite often it was a failure and the Arabs returned to the nomadic way of life.8
Thus a great part of the Arabs who had left Arabia for the lands of the Fertile Crescent and for other regions remained Bedouins. The number of nomadic tribes roving in the conquered countries must have increased considerably, since the overwhelming majority of the conquering armies consisted of Bedouins. As most of these Bedouin warriors had no experience of settled life and had a rather negative attitude towards husbandry, their presence must have been more than detrimental to agricultural activities in many regions. Progressive bedouinisation became a major phenomenon in the economic and social life of the lands of the Fertile Crescent and of other Moslem countries. This was all the more serious as sedentary life had probably been declining in many regions of the Near East a long time before the Moslem conquests. The districts south of the part of the limes stretching from Constantine (in Northern Syria) to Nisibis had been the land of the nomads already in the fifth and sixth centuries A.D.
The migrations of the Bedouins wrought havoc on the agricultural activities of the settled population in various ways. The overgrazing of goats and camels, a typical feature of Bedouin life, had a devastating effect on natural vegetation. Areas of land which had formerly been cultivated were abandoned. Pasture land increased at the expense of arable fields. When the former inhabitants, experienced peasants, had left, Bedouins began to engage in agriculture, but in their own primitive way. Small holdings of land were tilled artificially, yielded 2 modest crop and were then abandoned for some years. Often the Bedouins committed acts of robbery, carrying away the sheep flocks of the peasants or causing damage in other ways. Arabic geographers, writing in the tenth century, were aware of the connection between the encroachment of the Bedouins and the decline of agriculture.
The open plains and deforested hills were much more exposed to the disastrous consequences of the Bedouin intrusion, whereas mountains and wooded regions were relatively safe. As these latter regions did not provide the Bedouins with suitable pasture for their sheep and camels, they steered clear of them. Cold regions were also spared the ravages of the Bedouins. Even marshy land was an obstacle to their migrations, although to a lesser extent than mountainous regions. In the swamp land of Southern Irak, for example, remnants of old autochthonous populations could maintain themselves. But the highlands became the refuges of the sedentary populations. The mountainous ranges in Syria are the best example of this phenomenon. All the highlands, from the north to the south, became refuges where dissident religious groups could withstand the onslaught of the Moslems. So the Djabal Ansariyya became the land of the Alauites, the Lebanon that of the Maronites, the mountainous regions of southern Lebanon the retreat of the Druses and the Metwalis. In the course of the long centuries of Moslem rule, the distribution of these sects over the various parts of the mountain ranges has changed, but it is an undeniable fact that they served as havens of refuge from the beginnings of the Moslem period. It was not till the ninth century that Arab tribes penetrated into this region, and most of them went over to sedentary life. The concentration and growing density of the settled population in the mountainous regions and other refuges sometimes had very detrimental consequences for their agriculture. The remnants of the woods were cut down, and the fertile slopes were no longer sufficient to nourish the increasing population.
However, not all the mountainous regions of the Near Hast wete spared the intrusion of the Bedouins. The heights of Transjordan and even parts of the Hauran were overrun by the Arab tribes. The population of the oases succumbed to them almost completely and became wholly dependent upon them. Either the Bedouins supplanted the old inhabitants, or these were obliged to adapt their activities to the needs and wishes of the Bedouins. The fate of the oasis of Palmyra is an example of this phenomenon. The regions where agriculture was carried on without artificial irrigation were particularly exposed to the incursions of the Bedouins. On the other hand, in the districts neighbouring the towns agriculture could successfully resist.* Bedouinisation in the Near East was a phenomenon particularly perceptible in the later middle ages, but it began very soon after the Arab conquests. It was the outcome of the immigration of nomadic tribes which continued to be the mainstay of the various dynasties ruling over this part of the world, a class which led a largely independent life, recklessly exploiting the sedentary population.
A great part of the regiments which formed the invading Arab armies was however prevented from maintaining the Bedouin way of life. For the caliphal government settled them, together with their families, in big camp-towns, the so-called amsar. At the beginning these camps were destined to serve as abodes for the intervals between campaigns, but in course of time they became permanent settlements and developed into large towns. As many non-Arabs from the surrounding districts and even from distant regions flocked to these camp-towns, where there was plenty of work, the population became a mixed one, half Arab and half non-Arab. So the amsar were the foci of cultural fusion.
In Irak, as Babylonia was called after the Arab conquest, there were two big camp-towns, Basra and Kufa, both of them founded in the year 638. Basra was destined to accommodate strong forces controlling the approaches to Irak from the south and the routes to the south-western provinces of Persia. It was populated mainly by people hailing from Eastern Arabia. Kufa, not far from the western bank of the Euphrates, had a mixed population of Arabs from the north and the south of the peninsula. In Syria al-Djabiya was at the beginning of the Moslem period the main camp of the Arab army. It had been the principal residence of the Ghassanids, the Arab princes who had ruled before the Moslem conquests over Southern Syria and Transjordan. It lay in the Golan, a day’s journey south-east of Damascus. After the conquest of Syria the caliph Omar came there and held the Day of al-Djabiya, famous in Moslem history as the great diet where the foundations of the caliphate were laid. But later, when the Arabs began the invasions of Asia Minor, the camp of Dabik, north of Aleppo, became their headquarters. For several reasons al-Djabiya did not develop into a big town, as did Basta and Kufa. In fact, many Arabs who had come to Syria and Palestine with the invading armies or subsequently, settled in the old towns, where many houses were left empty after the exodus of the Greek Christians. Another big camp was in the village of Emmaus, in the plain of Judaea at the foot of the mountains. In Egypt the Arab camp before Babylon, the old Byzantine fortress, became a big town. It kept the name which it was given by the Egyptians — Fostat, which means a camp surrounded by a ditch. ,
The records embodied in the writings of the old Arabic authors enable us to follow step by step the transformation of the camps into real towns and their role in the development of Arabic civilisation. At the beginning Basra and Kufa were no more than agglomerations of huts made of rushes. Later these simple cabins were replaced by tents aligned in long rows, and finally, in about 670, houses of baked bricks were built. Basra was also enclosed by a rampart of dried earth and a ditch. The changes in the inner organisation of the amsar are characteristic of the adaptation of the Arab invaders to town life. Kufa was after its foundation divided into asba, seven districts each populated mainly by people belonging to one confederation of tribes. Basra was divided into five quarters, called accordingly akhmas. Later, in 670, the asba of Kufa were replaced by four districts which no longer had any connection with particular tribes. So camps which began as rallying points of warriors became towns.
It is worthwhile to stress the role which the Yemenites played in the development of the amsar. In contradistinction to the Arabs from Central and Northern Arabia most Yemenites had some experience or knowledge of town life. Some had been living, before their emigration from Arabia, in urban settlements, and others had been in more or less close touch with them. Thanks to their tradition of urban life, the Yemenites could more easily adapt themselves to the necessities of town life in the conquered countries, and so they became in some way the protagonists of urbanisation. That they played this role is borne out by texts referring to their appointment to high-ranking municipal posts and by other records. Settlers belonging to various Yemenite tribes took the lead in the urbanisation of Kufa, South Arabians were prominent in the first stages of the development of Fostat, and even the Arabian populations of Damascus and Jerusalem were in the period after the conquest almost exclusively Yemenite colonies. People who had become accustomed to town life in Basra, Kufa and other amsar played a great role in the development of Arab town life in other agglomerations. Arab geographers of the caliphal period relate that Arabs from Basra settled later in Mosul and, further, that Arabs from Mosul went to live in other towns of Upper Mesopotamia.1¢
Owing to the immigration of many non-Arabs in the amsar, the Arabs came there in close contact with the autochthonous civilisation. The symbiosis of non-Arabs and Arabs in the towns and mainly in the amsar resulted in the latter’s acculturation and gave birth to the Arabic civilisation. That was a long and sometimes painful process, which may be traced by the modern historian who has a sociological outlook.
It is clear a priori that the settlement of the Arabs amidst populations which had inherited the millenary tradition of the old Oriental civilisation would result in their adaptation to other ways of life and to recombination of the different cultural traditions. That was the destiny of all conquerors who settled in civilised countries. But the question is to what extent the conquerors accepted the civilisation of the autochthonous populations. Which tradition, the Arab or the nonArab, was to become the primary factor in the syncretic civilisation that developed?
As in all similar cases, the Arabs were torn by contradictory motives. They were attracted by the civilised way of life which was offered them by the Persians, Syrians and Egyptians. They soon became aware of the fact that the customs and institutions of these non-Arab populations were superior to those of their Bedouin ancestors. On the other hand, they longed for the freedom of the steppes and deserts of the Arabian peninsula, They suffered from the narrowness and closeness of life in the town, and believed that it made them ill, whereas life in the desert was healthy. The simple food of the Bedouins seemed to them incomparably preferable to that of the townspeople. The education given by the Bedouins to their children was considered much more suitable for the sons of free men than that of the townsfolk. The men of the rank and file who were settled in the big camp-towns insisted that they should have pasture land, where they could go in the spring with their horses and live with their herds of sheep (rabi wa-laban). Arabs belong- ing to the higher strata of society much preferred to live, as far as possible, in the countryside, and if possible on the edge of the desert. There they built for themselves castles, the so-called badiyas, or adapted for that purpose old Roman fortresses. But, characteristically enough, they installed baths there — a Greek fashion. So the life of the first Arab generations after the conquests was the bi-culturism of a transition period.
The numerical predominance of Bedouins or descendants of Bedouins in the amsar operated against acculturation. The strong influence of the noble families of the old Arab tribes, the buyutat, was another factor which was bourd to slow down the adaptation of the Arabs to the ancient Oriental civilisations. The experience of town life which the Yemenites brought with them, on the other hand, rendered acculturation easier.
Whereas these factors more or less balanced each other, intermarriage and imitation caused the Arabs progressively to succumb to the strong influence of the autochthonous civilisations. The autochthonous tradition predominated in modes of food, dress and furniture. But a thorough study of the way of life adopted by the Arabs shows that it did not reflect a donor-receiver relation. The upper strata of Arab society were mote inclined to take over the fashions of the old autochthonous civilisations, while the lower, poorer classes stuck to the old Arab customs. The rich and high-ranking Arabs would use beds, but the poor would sleep on the floor like their Bedouin ancestors. The tich ate on tables like ours, the poor from dishes put on Bedouin tables of leather. It appears from inventories of dowries dating from the period of the Crusades that couples belonging to the lower strata of society still slept on mattresses. They had no beds.4
Whereas the autochthonous tradition prevailed in matters of material civilisation, the Arabs gave to the new syncretical civilisation their language and their religion. It goes without saying that these two elements almost outweighed all that other traditions bequeathed to the Moslem civilisation. In fact, the Arabic language, the koiné, which became the vehicle of the brilliant new culture, came into being in the amsar, where people of all Arab tribes lived together.
It was, however, 2 long time before the Arabic language was commonly used for written documents and for literary expression. According to the prevailing tradition it was the caliph Abdalmalik (685-705) who made Arabic the official language of the administration, replacing the Persian and Greek languages which had been used before.
There are however contradictory accounts of the great change, indicating probably that the reform was a gradual one and that it was not undertaken at the same time in all Moslem countries. In Egypt Arabic was introduced in 706, whereas it had already become the official language in Irak in 699. But one would be mistaken in believing that from these dates Arabic alone was used. Arabic became one of the languages used, the others being retained for a very long time.
At the same time as Arabic became the official language of the new Moslem empire, the Arabs began to use it for literary expression. They had long had their own poetry, but in the middle of the eighth century, a hundred years after their settlement in the lands of the Fertile Crescent, they began also to write works on Arabic philology and on history.
That the birth of the Arabic civilisation was a typical recombination of different cultural traditions is clearly shown by the development of Moslem law, which resulted from the adaptation by the Arabs of Byzantine and Persian administrative and judicial practice to their specific needs and their religious ideas. As a result of the fusion, Byzantine and Persian institutions were transformed into Moslem. The piae causae became the wakf, an institution considered as typically Moslem. The agoranomos was transformed into the muhtasib (chief of market-police) whom the Moslems reckoned as holder of a religious post. But also principles of juridical argumentation, norms and even terms were taken over from Persian, Byzantine and Jewish casuistry. In the middle of the eighth century the Arabs began also to write the first books on law.
Before long the fusion of the cultural traditions was so complete that Arabs began to identify themselves with the historical heritage of their new countries and to glorify their achievements.!?
c) Arabs and non-Arabs: social tension
The caliph Omar, Mohammed’s second successor and the real founder of the Moslem empire, conceived the idea of a state consisting of a dominant Arab military class, and working classes, to which would belong the native non-Arabs and non-Moslems. The Arabs would live apart and be maintained by taxes paid by the subjects of the Moslem state. Every Arab would get from the Treasury a pension, the so-called ata. That was the basic idea of the régime of which Omar laid the foundations.
He was not far-sighted, for he did not take into consideration that the non-Arab subjects would progressively become Moslem and that consequently a state built on religious principles would eventually be incapable of preserving the privileges of the ruling nation. His failure to realise that the non-Arab converts would claim the same rights as the Arab Moslems was a fatal error which later caused revolts and civil wars, resulting in much bloodshed. But four generations of Arabs enjoyed the privileges which the régime of Omar bestowed upon them. The descendants of poor Bedouin became the ruling class of a great empire, a kind of rich military aristocracy. The antagonism between these Arab warriors and the non-Arab working classes was from the outset the major problem of the caliphate.
The lowest rate of the ata was, at the beginning of Moslem rule, 14, 27's or 2 dinars a month, but most Arab soldiers got from 4 to 8 dinars. The veterans who had served in the armies invading Syria and Irak even got double this latter sum. In the second half of the seventh and the first half of the eighth century the majority of the Syrian regiments had apparently a monthly wage of 8 dinars, the warriors belonging to some tribes even 16 dinars. The ata of the army in Irak was however lower. There an Arab soldier received no more than 2-4 dinars a month. In order to estimate the economic and social standing which such a wage guaranteed to an Arab warrior, one should compare it with the income of a skilled craftsman or with the pay of the Byzantine military. Probably one is not mistaken in concluding from the rather fragmentary records from the early Moslem period that military pay amounted to double the average income of a highly qualified craftsman. The Byzantine soldier (private), on the other hand, got, at the same time, no more than 14 nomisma (the same as a dinar) a month. This sum was equal to the income of a qualified worker in the most developed provinces of Byzantium." In other words, the Moslem régime was from the beginning, in economic terms, the rule of a military aristocracy.
But the wealth of the Arab military, in the golden prime of Moslem rule, derived also from the warrior’s share in the booty. Even allowing for a great deal of exaggeration in the accounts of the old Arabic writers, one must conclude that fabulous amounts of money and enormous treasures were distributed among the warriors who took part in the wars of conquest. According to the Arabic sources, the booty taken at Ctesiphon was estimated at 900 m dirhams, the share of every Arab warrior amounting to 12,000. After a successful campaign in North Africa, undertaken by the general Abdallah b. Abi Sarh, every Arab horseman got 3,000 mithkal (4.46 grammes) of gold.
It goes without saying that those who held high posts had many opportunities to enrich themselves, and some of them became indeed very rich. Mughira b. Shuba, the ill-famed governor of Kufa and Basra, was only one of them. Governors and even caliphs engaged in various speculations, withholding the pay due to the military or hoarding great quantities of wheat, so that the prices should rise, and hindering others from selling their grain. In fact, several of the high-ranking companions of the Moslem prophet and the Arab governors were great merchants. It seems, however, that the estates they acquired in various ways yielded them even greater sums and were the main source of their great riches.
Their riches enabled the Arab chieftains to lead a luxurious life. In the amsar, the camp-towns, and in their tents in the countryside, the chiefs of the tribes lived in great luxury. The contrast between the lower classes of society and the ‘nobles’, the ashraf, must have been very great. This contrast too became from that time a characteristic feature of the Moslem world and even of those civilisations which have succeeded to it and inherited its social framework. Arabic writers teferring to the early Moslem period mention the noble families in the amsar, the al-Mahaliba in Basra, the Masamia, chiefs of the Bakr in Kufa, the Djarudiya, chiefs of the Abdalkais in the same town, the Ashaitha, chiefs of the Kinda. All these passages point to the great influence in the amsar of the noble families. Seldom does one find in the old Arabic sources details about the riches of these families, but undoubtedly they were very rich. They had a great income from their estates and lived together with many slaves, servants and clients. The number of the slaves must have been considerable, since the supply from the African slave-markets was always sufficient. The slaves were occupied in various services, as servants and as assistants in workshops, while the women were concubines."
Most Arabic authors of the middle ages did not dwell on the economic state of the different classes or on that of individuals. But some of them collected data on this subject, no doubt expecting them to arouse curiosity and amusement though for the modern scholar they are materials illustrating the glaring contrast between the riches of the upper strata and the misery of the lower strata of the caliphal society. Let us quote some of these passages.
The third successor of Mohammed, the caliph Uthman (644-56) is said to have left estates worth 100,000 or even 200,000 dinars. Further, he left with his treasurer, in cash, 150,000 dinars and a million dirhams. The riches of Abdarrahman b. Auf, a close friend of Mohammed, were proverbial. He left ingots of gold to the value of 400,000 dinars. He was a great merchant and also possessed large estates. Talha b. Ubaidallah, one of the earliest converts to Islam and one of those to whom Mohammed promised a place in Patadise, was the proprietor of many estates in Irak and in Transjordan. He left, according to some authorities, 200,000 dinars and 2,200,000 dirhams. These figures refer to the money in cash. The estates and the merchandise which he left amounted to 30 m dirhams. The crops of his estates in Irak alone yielded him every year 100,000 dirhams — and all this without ever holding a post in the Moslem government. Abdallah, the son of the caliph Omar, was avery rich man too. He could well afford to be generous and was known to make a single gift of alms amounting to 20,000 or 30,000 dirhams. Abbas, an uncle of Mohammed, was very wealthy and well known as a usurer. His activities were denounced by Mohammed publicly, but like so many other companions of his he did not neglect this world for the sake of the other. al-Zubair b. al-Awwam, called ‘the Apostle’, was also one of the early converts to Islam and took part in all Mohammed’s battles. He loved luxury and obtained from Mohammed the permission to wear silken garments, which are forbidden by Moslem law. The value of the property he left was estimated at 35.2 or even at 52 m dirhams. He had indeed houses and even whole quarters in Medina, Basra, Kufa, Fostat and Alexandria. As one reads in the Arabic sources that he also left claims, one must conclude that he also engaged in commerce. Whence the riches of Zaid b. Thabit had been derived is not very difficult to guess. He had been the secretary of Mohammed and recorded his revelations. After the Prophet’s death he was entrusted with the government of Medina and accompanied Omar on his journey to Syria. After the battle on the Yarmuk he distributed the booty and later he was finance minister of the caliph Uthman. The Arabic authors narrate that he left estates and merchandise worth 100,000 dinars and beside these many big ingots of gold which had to be divided by hoes. Yala b. Murra (or Munya), a companion of Mohammed, left 50,000 dinars in cash, claims and plots of land whose value was 300,000 dinars. One should stress the fact that this man held not at all a high rank in the hierarchy of the new Moslem state. Khabbab b. al-Aratt, who had been once a poor craftsman, left 40,000 dirhams, al-Mikdad b. Amr b. Thalaba, known as al-Mikdad ‘the Black’, was one of the first Moslems. He could afford to build a splendid house in the vicinity of Medina. Sad b. Abi Wakkas, who had won the battle of al-Kadisiyya, did not die a poor man either. He too had built a fashionable house in al-Akik, a country-seat near Medina,where many other rich people had built their houses. All these data refer to the first Moslem generation. With all the reserve due to Oriental exaggeration, they leave no doubt as to the legendary riches amassed by the companions of Mohammed. Needless to say that the highranking Moslems of the following generations, the governors and generals, followed in their footsteps. What the Arabic historian atTabari says about Khalid al-Kasri, governor of Irak (724-38), sheds a bright light on their situation. He had brought under cultivation virgin land and acquired estates so that he had a yearly income of 20 m dirhams.
The wealth and luxury of the rich, it goes without saying, aroused envy and bitterness among the poor. The rank and file asked whence these riches had come and felt themselves cheated by the distribution of the booty. A poet expressed their disappointment in concise verses:
We set out with them for battle and with them we return from the field, But they have riches, we do not.15
Although the impact of Mohatnmed’s preaching was tremendous and Islam had become a very important factor in the social and political life of a great part of the world, the worldliness of the upper strata of the Moslem society was a phenomenon characteristic of the new caliphal empire. Surely it was not by chance that the Umayyads, a family of rich merchants from Mecca, who had vigorously opposed Mohammed, supplanted his companions and became the first dynasty of caliphs. Placed at the apex of the social pyramid of the new empire, they represented Arab nationalism, rather than Moslem zeal. They built a state which should realise the aspirations of the Arabs for rule over other peoples. The caliphate of the Umayyads was a true Arab kingdom. Their reign brought the Arabs great military achievements, but internal dissensions, caused by the contradictions upon which their régime was founded, necessarily brought about its fall within a period of no more than 90 years.
The Umayyad power was founded by Muawiya (661-80), who had been governor of Syria, and from that time Syria was the seat of the government. The Umayyads kept the tradition of the old tribal kings of Arabia, and the great Arab tribes who had come thence to Syria were their mainstay. These tribes had come into contact with the Arabs who lived in Syria before the Moslem conquests and had become acquainted with the Byzantine civilisation. So dynastic rule was an institution familiar to the Syrian Arabs, and in contradistinction to the first four caliphs the Umayyads could bequeath the throne to their descendants.
The rule of the Umayyads, however, encountered from the outset bitter enmity from several sides. The supporters of the family of Ali, the son-in-law of Mohammed, did not waive the claims of his descendants on the caliphate, but plotted against the government and even rose in open revolt. There was also a strong party of faithful Moslems who distrusted the Umayyads, criticised their secularity and considered them to be usurpers. After the death of Muawiya, Abdallah b. az-Zubair, the son of an old companion of the Moslem prophet, rose in Medina as a rival caliph, and there followed a civil war which lasted thirteen years. Finally another branch of the Umayyad family succeeded in quelling the revolt. The great caliph Abdalmalik (685705) once more cemented the cracks. But the Arabs of Irak, where Ali had resided, could not acquiesce in the shift of the point of gravity of the caliphate to Syria, and in the year 7oo the Iraki general Abdarrahman b. al-Ashath, at the head of a great army, revolted against the Umayyads and refused to surrender, though the caliph had already defeated him and offered his soldiers the same pay as that of the Syrian army.
The days of Muawiya, Abdalmalik and the latter’s son and successor al-Walid I (7os-15) were the apogee of Arab power. In successive waves of conquest the armies of the caliphs enlarged the boundaries of the Moslem empire until it stretched from the valley of the Indus to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and from the banks of the Jaxartes to the edges of the Sahara.
Under the reign of Muawiya, the Moslem armies for the first time crossed the Oxus and invaded Bukhara. At the same time the Arabs overran all the countries of North Africa as far as the Atlantic Ocean. They did not, however, succeed in holding this vast region permanently, and when the great general Ukba b. Nafi was defeated and killed in a battle against the Berbers in 683, they were forced to retreat to Barca. Nor were the expeditions against the Byzantines successful. From the year 663 the Arabs began to make expeditions every year into Asia Minor, and in 672 they even laid siege on Constantinople. For seven years the capital of Byzantium was beleaguered, but the great effort made by the Moslems ended in failure. It was the technological superiority of the Byzantines which tipped the scales. The ravages made by Greek fire, then used by the Byzantines for the first time, compelled the Arabs to retreat.
When the great civil war came to an end in 693, there began a new wave of conquests, Hassan b. an-Numan led the Arabs to new victories in North Africa which resulted in the final conquest of Tunisia. The wars of conquest were continued under the reign of the caliph alWalid I. The Arab armies finally conquered the whole of North Africa, and in 711 they crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and subdued Spain. In the East, Kutaiba b. Muslim conquered Transoxiana and Ferghana and got as far as Kashghar, the borderland of China. At the same time an Arab expeditionary force established Moslem rule in the valley of the Indus. The Arabs also suffered setbacks, however. New onslaughts on Byzantium, such as the siege of Constantinople in 716-7, failed again and several expeditions beyond the Pyrenees into the kingdom of the Franks ended in disaster. Nevertheless, the Umayyads had become the rulers of an empire extending over three continents and containing apparently inexhaustible resources.
But the Arab tribes which were the backbone of the empire’s power were also the factor which sapped it. They stuck to the old tribal principles — unconditional faithfulness, mutual help and, first of all, revenge for the injuries done to brethren and ancestors. The obligation to side with clansmen was the foremost duty of the Arab. In course of time the antagonism between the two great confederations of tribes, the North Arabian Kaisites and the South Arabian Yemenites, became the main factor in political life. That was a new phenomenon, which had not existed in Arabia before Islam. It developed in Syria, where the Yemenite tribes who had lived in the country from a remote period suffered from the encroachment of the Kaisites, who came thither in the wake of the invading Moslem armies. Muawiya’s son and successor, Yazid I (680-3), was considered by the Kaisites to be the protector of the Yemenites, and after his death they supported Abdallah b. azZubair, the rival anti-Umayyad caliph. The battle of Mardj Rahit in 684, where they fought against the caliph Marwan I and were utterly defeated, poisoned the relations between the Arab tribes for a long time to come. The later Umayyad caliphs were drawn into the rivalry either by their maternal relationship or by the advisers who surrounded them. Some of them sided indeed with one of the rival group, others were looked on as partisans even when they were not. Under Yazid II (720- 4) the Kaisites had the upper hand; in the days of Hisham (724-43) the Yemenites were in control in Irak and in the neighbouring provinces; under al-Walid II (743-4) the Kaisites were once more in control, but under Yazid III (744) the Yemenites triumphed again. From Syria and Irak the long feud between the Kais and Yemen spread throughout all the countries where Arabs lived, to Persia in the East, to North Africa and Spain in the West. Mutual hatred increased and tribal particularism began to smother loyalty to the dynasty.1¢
Another grave problem of the Umayyad caliphate was the question of the mawali, the non-Arabs who had embraced Islam. The number of the converts to Islam grew steadily, even without a strong Moslem mission. The desire to belong to the ruling religion and to be regarded as a member of the ruling caste was a very strong incentive. According to the theocratic principle, upon which the Moslem state was founded, the status of a subject ought to be fixed by the religion. But in fact the non-Arab converts became ‘mawali’, clients of Arab tribes, without obtaining the full rights of citizens. They participated in military expeditions and fought valiantly against the heathen, but were not entered on the pay-roll, the diwan, they either had a meagre share in the booty or none at all, and - worst of all - they had to pay the poll tax, considered a token of inferiority. When the caliphal government distributed crown lands to meritorious Moslems, the mawali, who were often more pious than the Arabs, clamoured to share the lands with their fellows. But their demands were rejected.1” There were other kinds of discrimination. Often the Arabs fought on horseback, the mawali as foot-soldiers. Sometimes they were obliged to pray in separate mosques. They were given nicknames by the proud and overbearing Arabs. On the other hand, they were conscious of their high cultural standards, their numerical strength and their economic importance for the Moslem empire. Some groups of the mawali were descendants of the Persian knights and others too had noble status.18 Those descended from the peasantry were for a long time really persecuted. When, upon embracing Islam, they had left the villages and come to the town, they were forcibly sent back. That was the practice of al-Hadjdjadj, the famous viceroy of Irak under Abdalmalik and al-Walid I. The pious caliph Omar II (717~20) tried to solve this problem and gave orders to leave them in the towns, But it seems that after his death the old practice was once more put into operation. So the mawali became a disruptive force, ready to lead their arms to any rebel against the Umayyad dynasty.
d) Social revolts
The great cleavage between the upper and the lower strata of society, the contrast between the preaching of Mohammed and the rule of the Umayyad plutocracy, the contradiction between theocratic principles and administrative practice and the concentration of great numbers of second-class citizens, the mawali, in the big towns — all these problems meant that there were in the Umayyad caliphate really pre-revolutionary conditions. Discontent was widespread, and there were many groups which plotted against the caliphs of Damascus, eagerly looking for a propitious moment for open revolt.
Besides casual and isolated insurrections there were two main streams of opposition and rebellion, that of the Khawaridj and that of the mawali. Both of them produced dangerous revolts and finally brought about the downfall of the Umayyad caliphate.
The Khawaridj were both a sect and a social revolutionary movement or, more correctly, a sect of dissenters which aroused a great revolutionary movement. It had begun in 658 when some pious supporters of Ali, who fought the first civil war of Islam against Muawiya, opposed the idea of arbitration and held that the sword should decide. They were the champions of a true theocracy, but also staunch democrats, for they contended that any pious Moslem could hold the post of caliph. In the Arab society of those days, imbued with conservative ideas of patriarchal rule by noble chieftains (though not necessarily sons of former chieftains), this was a truly revolutionary principle. To claim the right of every Persian and Negro of becoming caliph, as did the Khawaridj, must have been shocking to most Arabs. They maintained also that a caliph who had transgressed the law of Islam had forfeited his right to hold the post and must be deposed. ‘That too was a principle totally contradicting the Islamic doctrine. For according to the teachings of the Moslem doctors one must obey the caliph and his governors even when they are sinners. As long as they do not command transgression of the Koranic law, a true Moslem is bound to obey the authorities.
It is not difficult to understand that a movement like this, proclaiming the quality of races, appealed strongly to many people who were not satisfied with the régime of the Umayyads. The Khawaridj belonged indeed to very different strata. Many of them were true proletarians, others were disappointed intellectuals. Among them there were Arab tribesmen and mawali. In consequence they were not a compact group,
and even their tenets were such that they engendered dissension among themselves. On the other hand, they were desperate radicals, people who would never give in, who would succeed or fight to the end.
Basra, the metropolis of Southern Irak, was a hotbed of Khawaridj discontent. Nowhere, indeed, was there in Umayyad times any place in the Near East where social antagonism was so strong. So began in 670 the long series of great Khawaridj revolts in Basra. About ten years later a Kharidjite leader in Basra, Abu Bilal Mirdas b. Udayya, left the town and started a revolt in the neighbouring province of Khuzistan. Although the number of his followers was very small, they defeated an army sent against them, only to be crushed by a second expeditionary force.
The most daring and tenacious Kharidjite rebel was Nafi b. al-Azrak. He was a true proletarian, the son of a manumitted blacksmith of Greek origin. According to his tenets a Kharidjite ought to not acquiesce in the rule of other Moslems. Moreover, the latter, being mortal sinners, should be exterminated together with their wives and their children. That was the principle they called istirad. So the permanent revolution and the merciless murder of their adversaries became the slogan of this group of Khawaridj. Nafi b. al-Azrak rose in the year 684 and fell a year later, but his followers and disciples continued the fight. Small groups of bold horsemen, experts in the tactics of hit and run, carried out a series of raids. They would appear somewhere, attack the government troops, set fire to the houses of peaceful citizens, and before reinforcements had come they were away. After Nafi b. alAzrak another capable commander, Katari b. al-Fudjaa, led the Khawatidj to many victories. His troops terrorised the districts between Basra and Khuzistan and succeeded in sacking several towns, such as al-Madain. When they were defeated they disappeared, reorganised their forces and came back to renew their attacks. When the great civil war was over and al-Hadjdjadj had become governor of Irak in 694, he entrusted the general al-Muhallab with the task of suppressing the Azrakites. For five years they resisted his forces, but were already hard pressed when dissension broke out within their camps. The Arabs fell out with the mawali. So even these inveterate democrats could not overcome their prejudice against the non-Arabs. It was the nemesis of Arab nationalism. In the year 699 Katari was killed and the remnants of his army were exterminated.
Before this revolt was quelled another Kharidjite group rose in Western Irak. Its first leader was Salih b. Musarrih, and after his death Shabib b. Yazid took over the leadership of these insurgents, who also belonged to the radical wing of the Khawaridj. Most of them were tribesmen like himself, many of them Shaibanites who had some time before emigrated from the banks of the lower Euphrates to Upper Mesopotamia. Shabib’s revolt was a typical guerrilla war. He was at once everywhere and nowhere. He defeated the generals of alHadjdjadj and sometimes conquered a town, but without holding it for long. He was slain in 697.
At the same tine the Khawaridj revolted also in other parts of the caliphal empire. In 685 they rose in Southern Arabia and succeeded in imposing their rule successively on various provinces of the region. In close alliance with strong Bedouin tribes they conquered also the Yamama, Hadramaut and the town of Taif. But in 692 even this movement was put down. From time to time there were other Kharidjite revolts, most of which were quelled within a short time. In the middle of the eighth century, however, when the Umayyad caliphate was already tottering, the subversive activities of the Khawaridj were one of the disruptive forces which shook the foundations of the régime and plunged it into anarchy.
Beside the Azrakites there were less radical groups of Khawaridj. Such a group was the so-called Sufriyya, founded by Abdallah b. asSaffar (the son of the coppersimith), a man of proletarian origin. These Khawaridj opposed the istirad, but nevertheless became involved in the movement of Salih b. Musatrih. They carried on an intense propaganda, in both the eastern and western parts of the Moslem empire.
A third branch of the Khawaridj was the Ibadiyya, whose centre was Basra. For a long time they tried to avoid bloodshed and to arrive at their goals by peaceful ways. They condemned the terroristic activities of the radical Azrakites, and their leader Abdallah b. Ibad entered upon friendly relations with the heads of the caliphal government. In the first two decades of the eighth century they adopted a rather quietist attitude, hoping to win over to their ideas the Umayyad government itself. But later, under the leadership of Abu Ubaida Muslim, they embarked on revolutionary activities on a very large scale. They established seminaries in Basra where missionaries were trained. Then they sent teams of these Khawaridj doctors to all parts of the Moslem world in order to rouse revolt. In Basra an Ibadi shadowgovernment was set up.
These activities had a great success at the middle of the eighth century. The Ibadites rebelled in Oman and at the same time they established their rule in Tripolitania. Both regions remained centres of Tbadi missions and also of independent Ibadi states for a long time to come.}®
So the moderate wing of the Khawaridj had much more success than the radicals. The principles of the Azrakites were indeed such that they could hardly make a foundation for a durable commonwealth. Their tenets could not fail to provoke splits within the movement itself. They attracted idealists and desperados, but they never won the support of a whole class. In certain moments the radical Khawaridj were joined by other malcontents, but probably only for a short time. The achievements of the moderate Khawatidj were much greater, because they were more realistic and because at least one social group could identify itself with them.
The Ibadiyya opposed the principle of istirad, but on the other hand held, like all other Khawaridj, that belief in the true religion does not justify the sinner. According to their doctrine it is deeds that count, not the belief. In consequence these Kharidjites (as others) must have been much more scrupulous in their dealings and must have believed that honest economic activities are meritorious. Just as the pious English Puritans could demonstrate their religious merits by their economic activities, and did not resort to lax interpretations of religious precepts, so the Ibadi was a very honest merchant, Surely it is not by chance that the Ibadi merchants had great success everywhere and became the protagonists of the worldwide Moslem trade. Probably they introduced new methods in the international trade of their time, just as the Puritans did many centuries later in other parts of the world — a curious parallel. In any case the merchants became the mainstay of the Ibadite comnounity everywhere, in Basra, in Oman, in East Africa and in Algeria. They helped the Ibadi missionaries and were themselves engaged in missionary work. The success of the moderate Khawaridj was, however, that of a religious sect, of a group of democratic dissenters. Even the democratic principles were enfeebled to a certain extent. However that may have been, the movement lost much of the social revolutionary character it had at the outset.
In estimating the successes and failures of this movement one should however distinguish between the Near East and other parts of the Moslem world. In the lands of the Fertile Crescent and in the adjacent countries of the Near East, the problem of the mawali was the crucial question, But the Khawaridj were, though egalitarians, still Arabs, They did not become the champions of the non-Arab Moslems.
However, the mawali found other champions. The most capable of them was a certain al-Mukhtar (‘the Chosen one’). Though an ambitious and unscrupulous man, he was a true leader and he probably fought sincerely for the equality of rights of all Moslems. He appeared as the prophet of the Saviour, the offspring of Ali, who would establish justice on earth. His revolt began in Kufa, the metropolis of Western Irak where Ali had resided and which was the bulwark of the Shia, the party upholding the rights of his descendants to the caliphate. On the other hand, the number of the mawali in Kufa was considerable and they readily lent al-Mukhtar their arms.
The preaching of al-Mukhtar, who was an excellent speaker, had gteat success among the Shiites of Kufa, and at the end of the year 685 he seized the strategic points, first of all the citadel. As a gifted leader he succeeded in winning the support of other capable men, and especially that of Ibrahim b. Malik al-Ashtar, a son of Ali’s famous general and himself a very capable commander. Most of the partisans of alMukhtar were mawali. Either he openly proclaimed their right to be considered equal to the Arab Moslems, or they felt instinctively that he fought for them. When they began to join him in large numbers, he bestowed upon them many rights which they had ardently desired. Even if he had been, at the outset, a Shiite leader like so many others, by force of circumstances he became in course of time the champion of the mawali, who alone sided with him. Indeed, it does not matter what his aims were at the beginning of his career. Whatever they were, he became the leader of a social revolt. According to the accounts of the old Arabic chronicler at-Tabari he was surrounded by mawali and most of his warriors were mawali.?° Characteristically enough they were called Kafir kubad - the cudgel bearers — in contrast to the caliphal army, which was well armed with swords and lances, The relations of al-Mukhtar with the ashraf, the noble Arabs of Kufa, were strained from the beginning. Although he claimed to be the envoy of Muhammad Ibn al-Hanafiya, a son of Ali, who led a retired life, the ‘nobles’, who were aware of his egalitarian ideas, mistrusted him. So they defended the governor of Kufa against al-Mukhtar. All his endeavours to win them over were in vain, all the more as they were less inclined to fight against the government, as rich people mostly are. They could not forgive his having given the mawali a share in the booty, a measure which they considered a terrible insult ‘to the Arab nation. They accused al-Mukhtar of having given the mawali horses and even of having liberated their slaves.?2 To them his revolt seemed to be a real social revolt, which to a great extent it really was.
The aims of al-Mukhtar were far-reaching. He aimed indeed at the overthrow of the caliphate and the establishment of a new social order in the whole of the Moslem empire. When his army had defeated the caliphal troops on the banks of the river Khazir in the year 686, almost the whole of Irak and a great part of Upper Mesopotamia and even Adherbeidjan fell to him and he appointed governors for all those provinces. But it was only for a short time that fortune smiled upon him. The nobles of Kufa left the town and joined the troops of the counter-caliph Ibn az-Zubair, who held Basra and the surrounding districts. The forces of his enemies put al-Mukhtar’s troops to rout in two battles, one on the banks of the Tigris and the other near Kufa. Then he was beleaguered in the citadel of Kufa. Four months he resisted, and then was abandoned by most of his men and fell in battle in the year 687.
al-Mukhtar’s rising had failed, but the mawali rose again. When Yazid b. al-Muhallab revolted in 720 against the caliph Yazid I, the mawali joined him, and at the end of the fifth decade of the eighth century they supported another rebel, Abdallah b. Muawiya. This latter revolt spread to many provinces of the Moslem empire and paved the way for another revolutionary movement which finally overthrew the Umayyad caliphate.
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