Arabic heritage in the post-Abbasid period 9781527530270, 1527530272

Table of contents :
Intro
Dedication
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven

Citation preview

Arabic Heritage in the Post-Abbasid Period



Arabic Heritage in the Post-Abbasid Period Edited by

Imed Nsiri

Arabic Heritage in the Post-Abbasid Period Edited by Imed Nsiri This book first published 2019 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2019 by Imed Nsiri and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-1937-6 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-1937-4 Cover design by Sattar Izwaini

For my family

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to acknowledge my indebtedness to many people who helped me with this project. This work would not have been possible without the support of my colleagues and the administration at the American University of Sharjah. I am especially indebted to Aedan Lake for the hard work on helping me streamline the different texts. I would like to extend my thanks to Dr. Ishaq Tijani for his comments and suggestions. I also owe special gratitude to my family.

INTRODUCTION IMED NSIRI

This book was motivated by students’ need for a textbook on Arabic heritage, particularly from the thirteenth through the nineteenth centuries, an era broadly referred to as post-Abbasid. This period is often called “the age of decadence/decline” (ҵa‫܈‬r al-in‫ۊ‬i‫ܒ‬Ɨ‫)ܒ‬. This term has been used by some literary historians and critics to refer to the period based, principally, on a comparison between it and the preceding Abbasid period, which is commonly designated “the golden age” of Arab-Islamic civilization. 1 As Roger Allen notes, the application of the decadence “label to a substantial segment of the cultural production of the” Arabic speaking world in the post-Abbasid era has “resulted in the creation of a vicious circle, whereby an almost complete lack of sympathy for very different aesthetic forms has been converted into a tradition of scholarly indifference that has left us with enormous gaps in our understanding of the continuities involved.” 2 Some of the scholarly works published in the past few decades have provided not only detailed examinations of post-Abbasid Arabic literature and culture, but also convincing arguments that the era was not characterized by decadence or decline after all (as further discussed in chapters six and seven of this volume). 3 Nevertheless, most of such scholarly volumes are too cumbersome for undergraduate students—Arabs and non-Arabs alike—to grasp. Hence, the necessity of a volume such as this that presents the subject in a concise and simplified manner for an English-speaking audience. This book aims to introduce the reader to the period not only in the area of 1

For more on the debate on whether Arabic culture declined or not during the post Abbasid period see, for example, J. Brugman, An Introduction to the History of Modern Arabic Literature in Egypt (Leiden: Brill, 1984); H. A. R. Gibb, Studies on the Civilization of Islam. Reprint (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016). 2 Roger Allen, “The Post-Classical Period: Parameters and Preliminaries,” in Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period, edited by Roger Allen and D. S. Richards (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 2. 3 See, for example, Roger Allen and D. S. Richards (eds.), Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

xii

Introduction

literature—which has always deservedly been the focus of attention by scholars—but also in some other aspects of the heritage of the Arabic speaking peoples. The Arabic term for heritage is WXUƗWK, a word that derives from irth or PƯUƗWK, meaning “inheritance.” 4 Arabic heritage, in its various forms, has been the product of the hard work of many personalities from diverse backgrounds since a least the sixth century CE, a period that marks the emergence of Arab recorded history. This volume places an emphasis on “Arabic heritage,” rather than “Arab heritage,” because not all the people who contributed to it were Arabs by origin. Thus, Arabic heritage is used herein to refer to any work, oral or written, produced using the medium of the Arabic language. Also, at some points in the volume, the reader will find references to phrases such as “Arabic-Islamic,” “Arab-Muslim,” and “ArabIslamic” since many of the people who contributed to Arabic heritage were not Muslims just as many of them were not Arabs, going by their ethnic backgrounds, as earlier noted. The volume comprises seven chapters, in addition to this introduction. The chapters provide, individually and collectively, the artistic, linguistic, cultural, historical, religious/theological, philosophical, and scientific productions that today constitute parts of what can be designated ArabicIslamic heritage. In chapter one, Mary C. Wilson examines the difference between heritage and history, both of which are different ways of thinking about the past. Heritage values what remains the same over generations, and can be used to create an idealized past that is often shaped as much by present-day socio-political concerns as it is by history. In the case of Arab societies, the idea of heritage coalesced around the Arabic language, the unifying factor in an otherwise widespread and diverse culture. The chapter looks at how Arab heritage was shaped by Ottoman rule, international trade, Sufism, the Nah‫ڲ‬a or renaissance, European colonization and, finally, independence in the second half of the twentieth century. The chapter serves as an introduction to both Arab heritage—albeit, presented solely from an historical-chronological perspective—and to the entire volume. In chapter two, Sattar Izwaini provides a general overview of the Arabic language and its development from pre-Islamic times to date. Islam plays a critical role in creating a unified or standard form of Arabic known as alfu‫ۊ܈‬Ɨ, which spreads simultaneously with Islam across Arabia and beyond. Modern Standard Arabic, or al-fu‫ۊ܈‬Ɨ, emerged alongside the new colloquial forms, as a preserved but somewhat transformed version of Classical 4 For more on the meanings of WXUƗWK see, for example, The Encyclopaedia of Islam. Third edition (Leiden: Brill, 2007).

Arabic Heritage in the Post-Abbasid Period

xiii

Arabic. The chapter also explains some of the basics of Arabic phonology and graphology, morphology, lexis and syntax, before providing an examination of the impact of translation on Arabic and the challenges facing the language today. The chapter is replete with many examples written in the Arabic script accompanied by their transliterations and translations. Chapter three, by Florinda Ruiz, examines the radical changes experienced by Muslims in al-Andalus, or the Muslim domain in the Iberian Peninsula, from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries, at a time when the Muslim kingdoms in the region were being re-conquered by Christian states. Many symbols of Arab heritage in al-Andalus remain intact to date, including the famous Qa‫܈‬r al-‫ۊ‬DPUƗҴ (Alhambra Palace), the powerhouse of the last Arab kingdom, which fell to the Christians in 1492. The chapter encapsulates the processes of how the identities of the Muslims in Spain underwent repeated changes, from citizens of independent states (otherwise called 0XOnjN al-‫ܒ‬DZƗҴLI) to Muslim subjects under Christian rule, and then to forced conversion and, eventually, exile, through the so-called crusade wars. The chapter emphasizes the everlasting impacts of Arab-Islamic civilization on not only what is now proudly regarded as the Spanish Golden Age but also on the so-called European Renaissance. Nidhal Guessoum begins, in chapter four, with a discussion of the current revival of interest in Islamic science. He provides some definitions of the relevant terms in the field and challenges the received wisdom that the Islamic world made few and limited contributions to science and that the Arab-Muslim scholars merely translated classical Greek knowledge as a means of preserving it. On the contrary, it is on record that, over a longer period of time and wider geographical range, science had flourished in both the Mashriq (East) and the Maghrib (West) of the Islamic world, with major developments in various fields of science, including mathematics, optics, medicine, astronomy, physics, and so on. The chapter provides short biographies of the key Muslim scientists and their most important scientific achievements in terms of theoretical, explanatory, and experimental works and inventions. In chapter five, Meis al-Kaisi examines the many movements that flourished in the Islamic world from the thirteenth century onward. The Shi’a, which had emerged earlier in the seventh century, split into multiple factions, some militant and others quiescent. Other Islamic movements or groups that further developed include the Sunni schools of law and jurisprudence (PDGKƗKLE), Sufism or Islamic mysticism, which was to diverge into brotherhoods (‫ܒ‬DUƯTDs) spread in different locations throughout the Muslim world to date. In the early modern period, there emerged a most significant movement to tackle the other groups and movements by

xiv

Introduction

preaching the strict adherence to the Islamic religious doctrines and practices of the salaf ‫܈‬ƗOL‫( ۊ‬the righteous earliest generation of Muslims). That is Wahhabism, otherwise called the Wahhabi movement, founded by Muhammad ‫ޏ‬Abd al-:DKKƗE of central Arabia in the eighteenth century with the political backing of Muhammad ibn Saud, the first founder of the Saudi state. The chapter ends with the emergence in the twentieth century of another Salafist politico-religious movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, which continues to exert some influence in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab and Islamic worlds. In chapter six, I provide an overview of the Arabic literary tradition in the post-Abbasid period from the thirteenth century to the al-Nah‫ڲ‬a (modern Arab resurgence) era in the nineteenth century. The chapter discusses Andalusian literature and culture, focusing specifically on the strophic forms known as the muwashsha‫ ۊ‬and zajal. Also discussed is the development of the PDTƗPƗW—pursuant to the Abbasid al-+DPDGKƗQƯ and al-ণDUƯUƯ¶V legacies—in the post-classical period, ending the topic with the contribution of 1ƗৢƯI al-FRPSOHWHO\@HIIDFHG ZLWKDOOWKHZHDYLQJRIWKHZLQGIURPVRXWKDQGQRUWK

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2

Chapter One

scale built, sculpted or painted objects. Natural heritage is biological and geological formations and the habitats of threatened species of flora and fauna. Intangible heritage includes oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals and festive events, knowledge and beliefs concerning nature and the universe, and traditional craftsmanship. I do not include natural heritage in what follows but I do attempt to give examples of cultural and intangible heritage as they help to illustrate the relationship between historical change and heritage. I am not sure where or if written works fit into UNESCO’s definition but I regard written products to be of primary importance in considerations of heritage. UNESCO also established a Memory of the World Programme in 1992, which thus far lists 427 documents, including films and photographs. Although some of these may be regarded as heritage, documents per se are in the realm of evidence used by historians in order to understand past events. Each period of Arab history has contributed to a body of creative activity that may be deemed heritage, but the concept of heritage itself did not emerge until the nineteenth century. ‘Heritage’ was part and parcel of another new idea: nationalism. In the Arabic-speaking world the intellectual movement known as the nah‫ڲ‬a arose along with the idea of an Arab nation identified by language. The nah‫ڲ‬a came about as the revolution in communications and production powered the growing armed and economic might of Europe, which in turn enabled European military, economic and cultural domination of the Arab world. France began its conquest of Algeria in 1830 and in 1880 it added Tunisia to its empire; Britain occupied Aden in 1839 and Egypt in 1882; France, Britain and Russia interfered in the affairs of Lebanon and Palestine from 1840 on. In this context, heritage provided an idealized Arab past that could be used to counter European attitudes of superiority that came with imperialism. What follows is a brief history of the Arab world to provide context for the creation of the arts and sciences, the artifacts and learning that could comprise heritage. “Could” is appropriate here because what constitutes heritage depends on who chooses what cultural products constitute heritage and why these particular products are chosen.

Arab and Islamic History Arab and Islamic history are closely intertwined yet, as `Imru’ al-Qays’ poem demonstrates, there are cultural artifacts attributed to Arabs that predate Islam. From inscriptions, linguists believe that Nabateans who carved the stone city of Petra out of rock spoke a form of Arabic, as did the population of the great trading city of Palmyra and its queen, Zenobia. The

Arab Heritage and Arab History

3

Roman Emperor, Marcus Julius Philippus known as Philip the Arab, ruled the empire from 244-249CE. He was from the Hawran. Arabic was widely spoken in the Fertile Crescent well before the Islamic conquest owing to repeated waves of migrants from the Arabian Peninsula. Arabic was important enough that around 570 the Byzantines inscribed a stone marker in the Taurus foothills (what is today northern Syria) in the three languages of the area at that time: Greek, Aramaic and Arabic. During the Umayyad Caliphate the appellation “Arab” was narrowly guarded and referred only to those Arabic speakers who had come with the Muslim conquerors. Writers of the time divided Arabic speakers into two groups, al-`arab al-`Ɨriba and al-`arab al-musta`riba, genuine Arabs and those who had been Arabized. That distinction began to disappear as time passed, though even today some Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula may still use it. Later, as city people came to dominate both cultural production and power, the term `arab in the mouths of urbanites came to refer only to nomads and carried a detrimental connotation as opposed to ‫ۊ‬a‫ڲ‬ar, “civilized”. Later still, and especially in the writings of the nah‫ڲ‬a intellectuals in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, `arab became an identity that encompassed all Arabic speakers defined by a culture to be proud of.

The Arab Caliphates 632-1258 After the Arab-Islamic conquest the use of Arabic spread quickly among the inhabitants of Greater Syria and Iraq owing to its similarity to Aramaic, the colloquial language of the place and time. It spread less readily into Persia and across North Africa where the dominant languages, Persian and Berber, were not related to Arabic, although Persian adopted the Arabic script. Conversion to Islam proceeded more slowly and well beyond what has come to be called the Arab world, although study of the Qur`an and Hadith established Arabic as the language of the learned; for all Muslims, Arabic was the language of prayer. The first four Caliphs were largely occupied with conquest and with setting up the rudiments of governance. The development of arts and architecture that could be called Arab was left to the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphs and the military dynasties that exercised power in the name of the Abbasids. The institution of waqf (endowment or benefice) encouraged the building and maintenance of anything that contributed to the proper practice of Islam and the well-being of the umma. In practice awqƗf were established by Christians and Jews as well as by Muslims. Rich and poor alike made such gifts, which could range from endowing a

4

Chapter One

supply of candles to light places of worship to endowing major religious complexes including mosques, libraries, schools, hospitals, and soup kitchens. Rulers, their courts and the wealthy patronized artists, writers, and architects in order to glorify God and to demonstrate their own power and standing. According to the tenth century geographer al-MuqdisƯ, the Umayyad Caliph al-WalƯd (r. 705-715): “beheld Syria to be a country that had long been occupied by Christians, and he noted there the beautiful churches… So he sought to build for the Muslims a mosque that should prevent their gazing at these [churches] and that should be unique and a wonder to the world.” 4

The Umayyad mosque in Damascus endowed by al-WalƯd is among the earliest Islamic buildings still standing, although it has been grievously damaged in the current war in Syria. The earliest extant Islamic building is the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. The Umayyad mosques in Damascus and Aleppo established the basics of Islamic architecture: a domed roof spanning a large interior decorated with verses from the Qur`an in elegant calligraphy, a courtyard with a fountain, a minaret or several, a minbar and a mi‫ۊ‬rƗb. Since buildings in particular advertised the change of power from Greek-speaking Byzantines and Persian-speaking Sasanians to Arabic-speaking Muslims, the Umayyad ruling elite built mosques in every city that came under Umayyad rule as the empire expanded across North Africa and Spain to the west of the Islamic heartland and Persia and Central Asia to the east. In 750 CE the Abbasids defeated the Umayyads and moved the seat of the caliphate to Baghdad. At the same time a grandson of the Umayyad Caliph HishƗm began to create a government based in Cordoba with the aid of Berber tribes from North Africa. In the tenth century yet a third caliphate emerged, the Fatimid Caliphate with its capital in Cairo. Just as the Umayyads had embellished their capital Damascus, the Abbasids, the Andalusian Umayyads and the Fatimids began to turn their capitals into showplaces of imperial splendor and learning. From this period came the classic works of science, medicine, philosophy, theology, jurisprudence, and poetry in addition to the architecture that graced every city. Yet they all, built as well as written works, raise the question: how “Arab” does a building or an idea, or a system of thought need to be to be considered “Arab”? The Dome of the Rock and its mosaic calligraphy was in the tradition of Byzantine art and architecture and was most probably built by Aramaic- or Greek-speaking builders and artisans. The Umayyad mosque 4

Al-Muqaddasi, quoted in Grabar, 1996: 53.

Arab Heritage and Arab History

5

in Damascus was built on the footprint of the basilica of St John, which was itself built on the footprint of a temple to the pagan god Hadad. The builders used stone already cut and columns from earlier churches and temples, and the workmen, like the workmen who built and embellished the Dome of the Rock, spoke languages other than Arabic and used Byzantine methods of design and embellishment. The great mosque of alQayrawƗn, originally built when the city was founded in 670 and rebuilt successively by new rulers, had columns with Corinthian capitals from nearby Carthage. Written work raises the same question. For example, Ibn SƯnƗ (d. 1037) was born in Bukhara and never lived west of Isfahan, he wrote in Arabic and Persian and Persian was his mother tongue. Who gets to claim his work as heritage—Arabs, Persians, both? Debates about the ethnic labeling of heritage demonstrate the problems with such identifications. Cultural products the world over are influenced and shaped by other cultures. Can one group’s heritage also be the heritage of another group? The United Nations has addressed this question by creating a list of world heritage sites, which includes natural sites like Wadi Rum in Jordan, built environments such as the aflƗj irrigation systems of Oman, parts of cities like the Kasbah of Algiers, and specific structures such as Crac des Chevaliers and Qal‫ޏ‬at Salah El-Din in Syria. States choose the sites they wish to be considered for the list but the final choice is left to a UNESCO committee. It is noteworthy that less than half the sites listed in the Arab states date from after the Arab Islamic conquest. Egypt, for example, has seven designated heritage sites but only one of them could be said to be Arab, historic Cairo. By comparison, in France’s list of 44 sites well over half were built after 1000 CE. Should we conclude from such a list that in terms of built environments the Arab world has little worth designation as world heritage? Or may this dearth suggest bias on the part of the UNESCO committee or lack of initiative by Arab governments? Written works, whether included in UNESCO categories of heritage or not, have pride of place as evidence for Arab intellectual history and as Arab heritage. In this case we would certainly start with the Qur`an, which is Arabic, Islamic and world heritage, no category precluding another. Qur`anic studies led to a desire to understand and systematize Arabic so that those who were not native speakers could learn it in a comprehensive manner. As the languages of conquered peoples melded with Arabic, scholars attempted to authenticate words, syntax, and grammar by collecting the pre-Islamic poetry of Arabian tribes. Kufa and Basra were the first centers of such linguistic study and since they were relatively close to the tribal lands of Arabia scholars traveled to oases and

6

Chapter One

campgrounds to gather meanings and pronunciations from what they considered to be pure Arabic. From Kufa and Basra the center of language and literature study moved to the Abbasid capital Baghdad where intellectual life blossomed. The libraries of Baghdad were so extensive that when the Mongols sacked the city in 1258, it is said the Tigris ran black with ink. Cities were the centers of government and high culture and all dynasties, whether caliphal or military, broadcast their greatness and justified their legitimacy as Muslim rulers through magnificent building projects and the patronage of intellectuals and artisans. The Fatimids founded Al-Azhar and DƗr al-`Ulnjm in Cairo. Like Bayt al-ণikma in Baghdad they were libraries and centers for the study and propagation of ideas favored by the rulers—Isma`ili thought in Cairo, the rational sciences in Baghdad. From the beginning of the ninth century papermaking techniques brought from China helped to expand the production and availability of written works. Across the Arabic speaking world all the way to Spain the powerful built mosques and their attendant libraries, schools and hospitals. Styles of architecture adopted local materials and styles. The great mosque of Cordoba, for example, had Visigothic and Romanesque elements. Out of the Andalusian amalgam of Arabic, Berber and Spanish styles and Muslim, Christian and Jewish learning came the brilliant culture of Andalusia, which spawned the poetry of Ibn ণazm (994-1064), the development of Aristotelian thought by Ibn Rushd (1126-1198), the Guide for the Perplexed by the Jewish thinker Maimonides (1135-1204), and the poetry of Ibn ‫ޏ‬$UDEƯ (1165-1240). By the year 1000 Arabic was the dominant language across North Africa, up the Nile Valley, and in the Fertile Crescent in addition to the Arabian Peninsula. It was also the language of law, religion, and learning well beyond these regions. One of the great written works of the fourteenth century, the Ri‫ۊ‬la of Ibn Ba৬৬nj৬a (d. 1377), described his travels from his hometown of Tangier to the Far East and back. Throughout his travels in Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and beyond, his skills in the Arabic language and his training in Islamic jurisprudence won him friends, protectors, and sponsors. His recollections, compiled in the wellestablished genre of ri‫ۊ‬la (travel) literature, were unprecedented in world literature for his attention to the individuals he encountered along the way and their lifestyles and cultures. Fifty years after Ibn Ba৬৬nj৬a recorded his travels, Ibn .KDOGnjQ (d. 1406) developed a unique theory of historical change. Rather than writing in the familiar form of a chronicle, in which event succeeded event with little explanation, he sought to understand causation: what were the

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sources of dynastic power and why did dynasties rise and fall? He developed his ideas based on his knowledge of Greek, Roman and Islamic history, and on what he saw during his lifetime of the political rivalries that made Andalusia subject to conquest and North Africa unable to aid in its defense. In the Muqaddima, written as an introduction to his universal history, KitƗb al-`Ibar, he developed a theory of historical change resting on the socio-economic division between rural and urban dwellers and the notion of `asabiyya, group cohesion. He saw nomadic peoples as having both a natural `a‫܈‬abiyya and the martial skills bred of the harsh circumstances of their lives. This cohesiveness allowed them to conquer the seats of power in cities. Once ensconced in urban luxury, however, they lost their `asabiyya and fell prey to discord and conquest by other tribes fresh from the desert with the martial skills and uncorrupted `a‫܈‬abiyya bred by their harsh lives According to Ibn .KDOGnjQ, the inevitable problem for tribal conquerors was how to maintain tribal cohesiveness once they had conquered and settled in cities. The chief way, he argued, was through a common belief, which in his day meant religion; in our day a common belief system could stem from religion, or from a particular political ideology, a form of government, a shared understanding of human rights, or any combination of these and other alternatives. Ibn .KDOGnjQ was born in Tunis in 1332, where his family had moved from Seville as the Christian reconquista of Spain gathered force. He received a superior education in Qur`an and Hadith, Arabic grammar, jurisprudence, law, mathematics, logic, and philosophy at the al-Zaytnjna mosque and madrassa, which had the richest libraries in North Africa. Like Ibn Ba৬৬nj৬a, Ibn .KDOGnjQ found employment thanks to his education and in particular to his knowledge of jurisprudence. He served various emirs in North African cities, moving from one to another as power changed hands. He returned to Spain briefly to serve the ruler of Granada and died in Cairo where he served the Mamlnjk Sul৬Ɨn al-਋ƗKLU al-Barqnjq. Today, scholars worldwide consider Ibn .KDOGnjQ the founder of the social sciences for his analysis of the social causes of political change. One of the cataclysmic events that influenced his writing was the breakup of Islamic Spain. He did not live to see the fall of Granada in 1492, when Christian forces burnt the archives and library of the palace, Alhambra. Throughout Andalusia, it is said, the Christian conquerors burnt a million Arabic books. The new rulers of Spain also expelled Jews and Muslims, many of whom fled to North Africa and further east to 0DPOnjN and Ottoman realms (see below), taking their skills with them. The remembrance of Islamic Spain and the cultural achievements of Muslim,

8

Chapter One

Christian, and Jewish intellectuals who lived there or who came from there remains a high-point of Arab cultural history. Today the Andalusia that produced such heights of art and intellect has become an important part of Arab heritage and an implicit critique of recent and current wars in the region and the use of religion to identify and mobilize an “us” against a “them”.

The Mamlnjks In the Eastern Mediterranean the spirit of the reconquista manifested itself in the Crusades, which began in 1095. At roughly the same time Abbasid lands in the east faced new invaders, the Mongols. A new order of warriors, called mamlnjks owing to their slave origins, saved the ArabIslamic heartland from these invaders coming from West and East. At the time of Ibn Ba৬৬nj৬a’s travels, 0DPOnjNV ruled the core of the Arabicspeaking world from their capitals in Cairo and Damascus. They were military slaves, from north and east of the Black Sea, first recruited by ৡDOƗত al-'ƯQ al-AyynjbƯ to fight Crusaders. They deposed the last of ৡDOƗত al-DƯn’s descendants, the Ayyubids, and became rulers in their own right in the 1250s. Neither ৡDOƗত al-'ƯQ nor the 0DPOnjNV spoke Arabic as a mother tongue, but without them, Arab cultural achievements would be much diminished. ৡDOƗত al-'ƯQ reconquered Jerusalem from the Crusaders, and although he was of Kurdish origin, tales of his valor and chivalry have made him a stock figure of Arab heritage. The 0DPOnjNV stopped the Mongol advance in 1260 at ‫ޏ‬Ayn -DOnjW in the Galilee, saving the Arab cities of geographic Syria (al-6KƗP) from the fate of Baghdad. Thirty years later in 1291 0DPOnjN soldiers ejected the last Crusaders from Acre. The last ruler that Ibn .KDOGnjQ served was the Mamlnjk Sul৬Ɨn al%DUTnjT. At that time Mamlnjk realms faced a new conqueror from the East, Tamerlane (Timur i Lenk). At the behest of al-%DUTnjT, Ibn .KDOGnjQ went to Tamerlane, who was encamped outside of Damascus, and reportedly convinced him that Egypt and North Africa were not worth invading. Tamerlane did not go further into Arabic-speaking lands although he robbed Damascus of its skilled artisans and builders in order to make Samarqand a capital worthy of a great ruler. Does that make Samarqand a part of Arab heritage? Mamlnjks were especially known for their fortifications, but after they defeated Crusaders and Mongols they created other building projects in cities under their control. For example, they moved the city of Tripoli in today’s Lebanon about a mile away from the coastline to protect it from Christian pirates/crusaders and rebuilt it to provide all the institutions

Arab Heritage and Arab History

9

necessary to Islamic learning and practice. Until its recent destruction it was a showcase of Mamlnjk design and architecture. Cairo still has a Mamlnjk core mostly inside the walls built by ৡDOƗত al'ƯQ. The fifteenth-century historian, al-MaqrƯzƯ wrote a detailed account of this Cairo where the Mamlnjks turned al-Azhar into a center of Sunni learning and created a vast cemetery outside the walls for their rulers’ tombs. In the twentieth century this cemetery became an integral part of Cairo and the tombs dwelling places for the urban poor. Throughout their vast empire Mamlnjks awqaf to fund the building and upkeep of institutions that advertised their power and their Muslim piety, perhaps to justify their legitimacy given their original slave status and recent conversion to Islam.

Enter the Ottomans The same year that Granada fell, Christopher Columbus set off westward, looking for a new route to the Indies. Since Arabic was the lingua franca of the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean trade circuit, Columbus took along an Arabic-speaking Spanish Jew, Luis de Torres, to serve as a translator. He did not find the Indies but rather what he considered a new world where no one spoke Arabic. This discovery eventually shifted the center of world trade from the Mediterranean-Indian Ocean region to the Atlantic, and resulted, centuries later, in shifting the center of world trade away from the Middle East where a new power was emerging: the Ottoman Empire. As Ibn Khaldnjn had theorized, the Turkic tribes that comprised Ottoman forces had come from the harsh conditions of the Central Asian plains with a strong `a‫܈‬abiyya made stronger by the common belief system that they had adopted, Islam. By chance, Ibn Ba৬৬nj৬a had seen the beginnings of Ottoman power as he journeyed through western Anatolia in the 1330s: “The Sultan of Bursa is Orkhan [Orhan] Bek, son of Othman Chuk. He is the greatest of the Turkmen kings and the richest [sic] in wealth, lands, and military forces, and possesses nearly a hundred fortresses which he is continually visiting for inspection and putting to rights.” 5 Othman’s descendants and followers conquered Constantinople in 1453; they called it Istanbul and made it their capital. In 1516-1517, the Ottomans defeated the 0DPOnjNs and came to rule geographic Syria, Egypt, and the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Within the century, they also added North Africa and Iraq to their empire, tripling the size of Ottoman realms. 5

Ibn Ba৬৬nj৬a, 1929: 136-137.

10

Chapter One

The extension of Ottoman power did not bring undue destruction to Arab cities and many of the cultural products that would later be deemed heritage survived. Ibn IyƗs, a chronicler of the period, described the conquest of geographic Syria, (al-sham): Selim Sultan seized the town and the citadel of Aleppo without having to besiege it… Then he went to Damascus, which capitulated… The towns of Hama, Homs and Baalbek did not resist. From Damascus he set out for Egypt after taking Tripoli, Safad, Gaza, Jerusalem, and Jebel Nablus… The whole country was occupied without fighting and no one contemplated defending it, something that had never been seen for any ruler before Selim. 6

Except for Morocco and parts of the Arabian Peninsula, the Ottomans ruled most of the Arabic-speaking world for 400 years. Bringing Arab lands under Ottoman control arguably had more impact on the Ottoman Empire than the reverse. Until 1517 there were more Christians in the empire than Muslims. Arab lands contained the most important centers of Islamic learning: al-Zaytnjna in Tunis and al-Azhar in Cairo, and the schools of Aleppo, Damascus, Baghdad, Basra, Medina, and Mecca. Moreover, Ottoman sultans gained a new title, guardian of the two holy places (khƗdim al-‫ۊ‬aramayn), which raised them above other Muslim rulers internationally. The most important of the sultan’s new religious duties was to protect and facilitate the pilgrimage to Mecca. The ‫ۊ‬ajj created a rich architectural heritage as wealthy patrons, women as well as men, endowed caravansarays, orphanages, madrasas, and fountains along the ‫ۊ‬ajj route. For example, shortly after the conquest, Sultan 6XOD\PƗQ (r. 1520-1566) ordered his chief architect Sinan to build a taqiyya to provide for pilgrims in Damascus. Built outside the walls of Damascus, the Taqiyya 6XOD\PƗQL\\D comprised several structures: mosque, school, hospice, soup kitchen, courtyard and fountain all built in the imperial style then in vogue in Istanbul. Yet even in this most Ottoman of buildings with its wide domes and pencil minarets, the local style of alternate black and white stone stripes graced the walls. Although only Muslims make the pilgrimage to Mecca, Arab lands had many sites of pilgrimage shared by Muslims, Christians and Jews. The most famous of these is Jerusalem. For Jews, it is the site of the first and second temples, for Christians, it is the place of Jesus’ martyrdom and resurrection, for Muslims, it is where the miracle of the Prophet’s journey to heaven occurred. Under Muslim rule, Jerusalem was open to all. 6

Ibn Iyas, 1960: 145-146.

Arab Heritage and Arab History

11

Alongside internationally known religious sites, local sites also attracted a variety of believers. The Muslim jurist Ibn ৫XOnjQ (d. 1546) evokes the culture of shared reverence by describing the tomb of Shaykh ArslƗn, a Muslim holy man, in Damascus: Muslims, Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians believe in him and go to him with votive offerings, such as oil, candles, dirhams and dinars [coins] for the sake of getting near [to God], and whoever seeks him at an occasion of great importance or severe affliction and seeks the intercession of God the Exalted through him, his need is fulfilled. 7

Arab cities grew under the Ottoman rule. Estimates put Cairo at 150,000 people in 1517 and twice that in 1800. Aleppo and Damascus also doubled in population. Ibn Khaldnjn had noted rulers’ penchant for displaying their power and glory through buildings, and the Ottomans followed suit. In Jerusalem Süleyman’s consort Hürrem, known to Europeans as Roxelana, endowed a mosque complex including an inn, hospice, school, and kitchen for pilgrims and students. The Sultan had the Dome of the Rock restored and its outer walls embellished with faience tiles and marble facing. The Ottoman governor of Aleppo province, Khusru Pasha, endowed a complex of mosque, school, and caravansaray, the first structure in Aleppo to bear the distinctive Ottoman profile. It was completed in 1546. Urban architecture throughout the Ottoman Empire blended local styles with Ottoman conventions. In Cairo, Ottoman builders added pencil minarets and wooden ceilings to 0DPOnjN mosques with their flat roofs and austere facades. In Tunis, the mosque and mausoleum of Yusuf Dey built in 1616 had a green tile pyramid-shaped roof, which evoked Granada rather than Istanbul. In Algiers, the Ottoman military leaders built the alJadƯd Mosque with Ottoman style domes but the square minaret and smooth stucco finish characteristic of North African buildings. In Aleppo, the UthmƗniyya madrasa (1730) with its domes and minaret is clearly Ottoman, yet it also has two iwans, reception rooms that give onto an open courtyard in the style of Syrian domestic architecture. In Iraqi cities, Ottoman architectural styles are entirely absent because Iraq, on the frontier with Persia, was very far away from Istanbul and changed hands frequently. Architecture in Iraq adopted Persian styles. Blue tile work dominated Baghdad and brick decoration characterized mosques built in Mosul both before and during the Ottoman period.

7

Meri, 2002: 99.

12

Chapter One

At the center of urban life in the Ottoman period as before stood the configuration of Friday mosque and central marketplace. Since the chief judge of a province regulated supply, price and quality of goods in the central market, he rather than the Ottoman governor served as the target of urban unrest. In any case, Ottoman rule was not regarded as foreign rule at the time, and by the eighteenth century local elites were increasingly drawn into the Ottoman bureaucracy as tax farmers, judges, and governors. Locally elected heads of guilds and quarters in cities and the customary leadership of villages served the security, tax collecting, and regulating needs of the state. Bedouin had the advantage of being able to move their herds out of range of tax collectors; they collected taxes in the form of produce from villages in their orbit. They also, at times, served Ottoman needs as auxiliary forces and were paid not to raid the hajj caravan. The Pax-Ottomana made trade routes more secure; Ottoman officials built khans to house caravans and wholesalers. Once the spice trade declined in the 1600s, thanks to sea routes around Africa and the plantation economy in the West Indies, three products were especially profitable: silk, pearls and coffee. Silk cocoons and fiber from Iran provided the raw material for spinners and weavers in Syrian cities, and in Mount Lebanon and the mountains behind Lattaqia peasants began to grow their own cocoons. Heavy patterned silk cloth made in Syria was known as damask in Europe. Textile merchants in Aleppo made fortunes selling silk cloth to European traders in exchange for fine English woolens. Types of cloth, methods of weaving and embroidery have been recognized as heritage since the mid-twentieth century. Pearls from the Arabian Gulf region graced the gowns of Queen Elizabeth I of England and the clothing of other European nobility and are today recognized as national symbols in the Gulf. Coffee changed everybody’s life, rich and poor alike. Its use spread northward from Ethiopia and Yemen in the sixteenth century. As coffee consumption spread, coffee merchants in Cairo built multi-storied homes with the fortunes they amassed. Two Damascene entrepreneurs established the first coffeehouse in Istanbul and from there, coffee drinking spread to Europe and beyond. Coffeehouses in the Arab world ranged from tiny holes-in-the-wall to spacious pleasure gardens along riverbanks. Offering and accepting coffee signaled amity and hospitality and became a custom that smoothed social and commercial relations. The probate list of one merchant in Nablus in the eighteenth century lists 80 coffee cups. 8 There 8

Doumani, 1995: 86.

Arab Heritage and Arab History

13

were two main types of coffee, “Turkish” that leaves sediment in the cup and “Arabic” that is infused with cardamom and leaves no sediment. The former gave rise to the custom of telling fortunes by the pattern of sediment. Coffee houses were male spaces where 4XU‫ގ‬Ɨn readers, storytellers, musicians, puppeteers, poets, and games like chess and backgammon provided entertainment. Women drank coffee and told fortunes with their friends in public baths as they looked for brides for their brothers, sons, and nephews. Arguments about coffee’s legality raged amongst the ҵulamƗҴ. Coffee’s detractors equated it with wine due to its mind-altering properties; Sufi devotees argued for its acceptance on the basis of its qualities as a stimulant, which allowed them to pray all night. Sultans and governors feared the sociability and talk that coffee-inspired, and they banned it and closed cafes from time to time using religion as a justification. Yet coffee drinking proved impervious to official or religious dictates, and coffee and the rituals of making and serving it could be considered a part of Arab heritage. Sufi practices gained respectability and popularity under Ottoman rule. The Ottomans revered Ibn ‫ޏ‬ArabƯ (1165-1240) since they believed he had foretold their rise. Sultan Selim (r. 1512-1520) built a tomb to mark his grave in Damascus shortly after the conquest. ‫ޏ‬Abd al-GhanƯ al-NƗbulsƯ (1641-1731), one of the most famous Sufi thinkers of the seventeenth century, popularized Ibn `Arabi’s ideas. Al-1ƗEXOVƯ¶V intellectual range spanned the elite world of Islamic jurisprudence and the world of popular culture. He wrote a compendium of dreams, which assigned meanings to particular types of dreams and objects that appeared in dreams. Three centuries later Freud attempted to do the same thing. Al-Nabulsi was a controversial thinker amongst the ҵulamƗҴ, but when he died at age 90 everyday activity in Damascus came to a halt and huge crowds gathered for his burial close to the mausoleum of Ibn `ArabƯ. The Arab world is famous for its cities’ age, architecture, and functionality. It is also famous for its deserts and the nomadic tribes that were able to make them productive. Camel herders were the nobility of the desert since camels allowed them the greatest degree of independence from urban-based governments. They regarded urban-based government with contempt: “it is a flabby serpent and has no venom.” 9 The contempt was mutual. Nonetheless cities depended on nomads. Epidemics or natural disasters could and did wipe out half and more of an urban population at a time. Baghdad, in particular, was known as a “devourer” of people; in the 9

Batatu, 1978: 14.

14

Chapter One

seventeenth century famine, flood, and plague hit at least five times at irregular intervals. Combined catastrophes in 1831 reduced its population from around 80,000 to around 27,000. 10 Its population eventually recovered with the help of tribal immigrants. By the mid-nineteenth century, public health measures helped to stabilize its population. Cities were dependent on Bedouins in other ways too. All major Arab cities were located on long-distance trade routes: Aleppo and Damascus at the meeting point of the north-south hajj route and the east-west silk road; Baghdad on the Tigris connected the Arabian Gulf to the silk road and points north; Cairo on the Nile was at the crossroads of African, Red Sea and Mediterranean trade, and Tunis and Tripoli (Lebanon) were major entrepots between the land and sea trade that connected the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. Long distance trade depended on camels and the Bedouin who knew their way across the deserts. As Ibn .KDOGnjQ noted: When sedentary people mix with them [Bedouins] in the desert or associate with them on a journey, they depend on them. They [sedentary people] cannot do anything for themselves without them…even to the knowledge of the country, the directions, watering places, and crossroads. 11

Bedouin bred and trained camels and horses. Arabian horses, known for their speed and elegance of form, were highly prized but needed too much fodder and water to be good pack animals. In cities their use was limited to urban rulers and elite military forces. In the deserts nomads prized them for their speed, needed for raiding, but the development of new forms of transport in the twentieth century reduced both camels and horses to the racing circuit. Bedouin used land differently from farmers, which created friction between them even though they were interdependent. Peasants stayed put to sow and reap; they developed their land by building irrigation systems and replenishing the soil. Nomadic herders needed huge tracts of land, called dƯra, through which they could move their herds as the seasons changed. Tribes came together in the dry season at a perennial source of water; in the rainy season they dispersed to graze their herds on grass produced by limited rainfall. When herds passed by fields, crops and all the labor that went into planting and irrigation could be inadvertently destroyed. A British traveller in the Hawran in 1909 described village fields where “The Anezeh had come and gone, leaving not a trace of green 10 11

Ibid., 15. Ibn Khaldun, 1974: 95.

Arab Heritage and Arab History

15

in the fields, for the hungry camels had eaten every blade…down to the ground.” 12 Thus different land usage created an in-built struggle between farmers and herders, and competition for agricultural products, especially wheat, pitted all three main sectors of the economy, urban, agricultural, and transhumant against each other despite their interdependence. By the end of the eighteenth century, the effects of the European “discovery” of the Americas mentioned at the beginning of this section could be felt. Spice and coffee plantations and slave labor in the Dutch, English, French, and Spanish overseas empires in Indonesia and the Americas destroyed the monopoly of production enjoyed by Ethiopia and Yemen and brought ruin to spice merchants in Aleppo and coffee merchants in Cairo and Damascus. Given Europe’s Atlantic empires, sailing technology and boat building advanced such that British and French ships controlled the Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf, and the Indian Ocean by the 1800s. In 1798, a French fleet bombarded Alexandria and marched up the Nile to Cairo. Writing in the historical form of a chronicle, al-JabartƯ, one of the foremost ҵulamƗ in Cairo at the time, described the French conquerors. He had much to criticize about them— for example, he was horrified that they wore shoes inside—but he recognized their military discipline as far superior to that of local troops: “They follow the orders of their commander and faithfully obey their leader… They have signs and signals among themselves which they all obey to the letter.” 13 Al-JabartƯ’s chronicle is one of the greatest of a long line of Arab chronicles, the prevalent form of history writing in the Arab world until the late nineteenth century. The French occupation of Egypt, 1798-1801, was a three-year introduction to a future of European conquest and domination. The Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the political and economic upheaval that facilitated it, gave European powers a major advantage in their dealings throughout the world. While Istanbul and Cairo struggled to reform their armies along European lines, France began its conquest of Algeria in 1830, Britain occupied Aden in 1839, Tunisia became a French Protectorate in 1881, Britain occupied Egypt in 1882, Morocco became a French protectorate and Italy conquered Libya in 1912. On the Arabian Gulf, so-called Trucial States (which would become the present-day UAE) existed by virtue of agreements between local merchant families and Britain that established Britain’s right of access to their shores in return for payment and the promise of British protection 12 13

Lewis, 2000: 38. al--DEDUWƯ 2004: 36.

16

Chapter One

from rivals. Similar agreements between leading local families and Britain cut Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait adrift from the Ottoman Empire. No European power had dominated Oman since the Portuguese in the seventeenth century, although British and Saudi interests shaped its borders in the twentieth century. Saudi Arabia is the only Arab state not to have experienced a period of foreign domination, although there too British interests in Iraq, Jordan, Oman and the Gulf states limited its territories.

The great turn: 1850 to 1950 The Ottoman Empire is often described as being in decline from the seventeenth century on. But in the central portion of the Arab world Ottoman rule grew stronger and more efficient in its last 70 years thanks to new means of communication and transport. The first steamships appeared in Ottoman waters in the 1830s and telegraph lines crisscrossed Ottoman lands from the 1850s on. Ships with sails, newly engineered for speed and capacity, carried bulky cargos that could match steamships for speed, but steamships could maintain a regular schedule since they were much less dependent on weather and season. Railways built by European companies transported cotton in the Nile Valley by the 1840s and crossed the coastal mountains in geographic Syria in the 1890s. The last Ottoman railroad project was the Hijaz Railway from Damascus to Medina; completed in 1908 it was built largely by Ottoman engineers and workmen. It never reached Mecca because the Sharif of Mecca saw it as a threat to his autonomy, which it was. Speedier and more reliable communications allowed Istanbul to establish a greater and more uniform presence as the empire grew smaller owing to European conquests in the Balkans and across North Africa. The exception to this pattern of increased Ottoman centralization was Egypt. There Muতammad ‫ޏ‬$OƯ, an Ottoman soldier from Albania, built his own army and established a hereditary governorship such that Cairo was virtually independent of Istanbul. He and his successors built state institutions as a corollary of their creation of an army built on a European model. They introduced conscription, which called for regular censuses, public health measures, education and a system of taxation that was more uniform and less abusive. His descendant, the Khedive IsmƗ`Ưl, came to an agreement with France to build the Suez Canal, completed in 1869. Egypt’s virtual independence from Istanbul, and the importance of the Suez Canal to British imperial communications made it an easier and a far more tempting territory for Britain to occupy in 1882. Formally still part

Arab Heritage and Arab History

17

of the Ottoman Empire, Egypt continued to pay tribute to Istanbul until the First World War; Britain held the reins of power from 1882 on, however. Istanbul followed Cairo’s lead in creating a new army, although, change emanating from Istanbul followed a different path from Egypt. In 1839, the sultan proclaimed a royal edict, the hatt-i sharif of Gülhane, which established a new basis for Ottoman rule, and new means of communication allowed the institutional reforms that followed, called collectively the Tanzimat, some degree of enforcement and continuity. The hatt-i sharif established a contract between the Ottoman state and its inhabitants: the state would protect life, honor, and property for everyone—Muslims and non-Muslims alike—in return for taxes and military service. Levels of taxation would be gauged according to means, and conscription would be regulated to maintain agricultural and artisanal productivity. Most important perhaps, the hatt-i sharif explicitly put everyone, government officials included, under the rule of law and established the principle of public hearings and uniform sentences. With this declaration, the process of turning Ottoman subjects into Ottoman citizens began. Although Istanbul never perfectly achieved its announced goals, it made headway. In 1876, a male franchise defined by age and property ownership elected representatives to a constituent assembly. The first Ottoman parliament, with a large contingent from the Arab provinces, proved remarkably lively—too lively for the sultan, who used the excuse of the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877-78 to close it down and suspend the constitution. Empire-wide elections were not held again until after the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, which despite its name had Arab participants and supporters. Arab history thus includes practices that today would be called democratic, from choosing guild and quarter leaders to electing city and provincial councils and an empire-wide parliament. The better communications that allowed the Ottoman state to engage more directly with its citizens proved to be a double-edged sword, however. While they made possible a more ubiquitous Ottoman presence throughout the empire, they also created increased European interest and intervention in Ottoman and Egyptian affairs. The same technology that went into better communications, especially steam power, also increased the pace of cloth production in factories such that Britain and France came to dominate the textile trade. The industrial revolution turned India, the largest producer of cotton textiles in 1800, into a provider of raw cotton for British mills. Egypt also became a major producer of raw cotton. As cotton exports increased and prices rose, especially during the American civil war that temporarily destroyed American cotton production, so too

18

Chapter One

did the size of estates producing cotton. Although there had always been rich and poor in Egypt, cotton production encouraged the creation of huge estates and a wealthy landowning class, none wealthier than the descendants of Muhammad `Ali. The Egyptian revolution of 1952 ousted his descendant, King Faruq, and led to a more equitable distribution of land. In the nineteenth century Tunisia, Egypt and the Ottoman Empire introduced new schools with European-style curricula. Tunisia and Egypt were still part of the Ottoman Empire, but they had such a degree of autonomy that they set up their own school systems. Arab urban elites increasingly sent their sons to be educated in the new schools and particularly to the new Ottoman school of administration, the Mulkiyye. Ottoman military academies throughout the empire provided secondary schooling that was subsidized by the state so students from middling families often chose them and went on to the Harbiyye, the war college in Istanbul. In return they were expected to serve in the Ottoman army as officers. Mülkiyye students wore European styles of dress, which the Tanzimat decreed for the Ottoman bureaucracy. Harbiyye students wore European style uniforms. All learned how to use forks and spoons and other accouterments of European culture. They returned home with a command of the Ottoman language and the patina of the cosmopolitanism of the capital, and sometimes with Turkish wives. Suq Saruja, the quarter of Damascus where many of these Ottomanized elites lived became known as Little Istanbul. In the early twentieth century Sultan Abdulhamid established a special school for the sons of tribal shaykhs; students there were forced to cut their hair and wear pants. The school was free but the students were expected to help integrate their tribes into the empire. All of these schools, those in Istanbul and those in provincial capitals ushered in new ways of life. Old-style education based on religion grew less popular, at least with families ambitious to join an expanding Ottoman bureaucratic hierarchy. The consequences of European power varied in the Arab world. Britain and France patronized local minorities in countries that they did not occupy outright until the First World War. For example, in al-Sham France believed that Islam by definition “threatened” local Catholics and Maronites, and intervened on their behalf. Thanks to French patronage, some Christians escaped the leveling policies of the Tanzimat, but that created animosity. By the mid-nineteenth century, as weavers in Damascus and Aleppo lost out in competition with European textiles, rioters attacked some Christian quarters in both cities whose inhabitants, they believed, had benefited from French favoritism in the textile trade. Thus, the

Arab Heritage and Arab History

19

beginnings of political sectarianism do not lie simply in the existence of the many different religious groups in Arab lands. Rather they lie in the manipulation of such identities for political and economic gain. Other consequences of European domination of the textile market can be seen most clearly in Egypt. Given the growing hunger of European mills for raw cotton, food production suffered and by 1900 Egypt became a net importer of food. Worse for the peasantry, the extended irrigation demanded by expanding cotton production meant that fields were never dry and bilharzia, carried by a snail that lives in warm wet soil, became an endemic disease that debilitated the Egyptian peasantry. Steam-powered transportation heralded the eventual decline of the camel economy and of the nomadic tribes that depended on it. Before the completion of the Suez Canal in 1869 overland passage from Istanbul to Damascus took some 43 days and between Damascus and Medina some 49 days. Afterward, steamships from Beirut could make it to Jidda via the canal in three or so days. As pilgrims took to steamboats, merchants along the overland routes felt the pinch; one Christian merchant in Damascus complained that the “abundant streams of gold” Muslim pilgrims brought with them had dried up. 14 The Hijaz Railway shortened the journey between Damascus and Medina to three days in 1908, but the overland pilgrim traffic did not revive. While Damascus, Cairo, and the desert routes south and east of them lost pilgrims, Jerusalem benefited from increased numbers of European pilgrims who could take a steamer to Jaffa and a train from Jaffa to Jerusalem. The largest number of pilgrims were Russian Orthodox who walked to Black Sea ports and then embarked on steamers to Jaffa. Bethlehem grew rich making and selling olive wood and inlay souvenirs to Christian visitors. The faster pace of trade caused Arab cities to expand in population and area after 1850. Cities on the Mediterranean exploded with activity. Beirut’s minuscule Christian community burgeoned after the 1860 war between Druzes and Maronites in Mount Lebanon and by the 1880s Beirut had grown from a fishing village to a port second only to Alexandria in the Eastern Mediterranean. Greeks, Italians and Syrians (mainly from what is today Lebanon) flooded Alexandria, and to a lesser extent Cairo, to take advantage of the cotton boom. Syrians who went to Egypt founded newspapers, journals and, in the twentieth century, the Egyptian film industry. The expansion of Arab cities coupled with new means of communication and new ideas about urban living created what scholars refer to as a dual city. For example, Cairo’s old city center was a mud14

Issawi, 2008: 47.

20

Chapter One

colored labyrinth of unpaved passageways without light or running water surrounded by the walls built by ৡDOƗত al-'ƯQ. The new quarters outside the walls had broad, straight paved streets that met at right angles, gaslights, running water and sanitation facilities. Squares with flowerbeds and trees pruned into squares or gumdrops, and sometimes with a statue at the center, added to the beauty and spaciousness of the new city. The narrow streets of the old city could be traversed only by foot, camel, or donkey. The new city had a railroad station and wide straight streets suitable for horse-drawn carriages and later cars. 15 As the better-off moved outside the walls to the spaciousness and conveniences of the new city, the poor moved into the old city center and its fabric, half a millennium old already, deteriorated further. By the end of the nineteenth century Cairo was two cities, symbiotic but separate, with a combined population that had grown from around 300,000 in 1840 to around 590,000. Islamic academies of the old city centers like al-Azhar in Cairo as well as a growing number of missionary and Ottoman schools in the more spacious suburbs fed what George Antonius called in his 1938 book of the same name, an “Arab awakening”. The groundwork for the nah‫ڲ‬a, as it came to be called, was laid by an explosion of Arabic printing. In the 1860s Bu৬rus al-BustƗnƯ (1819-1883) in Beirut set about creating an expository style that was faithful to the idioms and grammar of classical Arabic but able to express nineteenth-century ideas simply, precisely and directly. He wrote an Arabic dictionary, al-Mu‫ۊ‬Ư‫ܒ‬, and an Arabic encyclopedia, DƗ’irat al-ma`Ɨrif, as models of his new style. Newspapers and journals using the new style proliferated in the 1870s and 80s. New literary forms, like novels and plays also came into fashion. Zaynab FawwƗz (1846-1914), originally from Jabal `Amil in what is today southern Lebanon, learned to read and write in her birthplace, emigrated to Cairo, and published articles in the Egyptian journal al-Nil (The Nile). She also wrote one of the first novels in Arabic, ‫ۉ‬usn al-`awƗqib (Fine Consequences), set in the context of the struggles between peasants and lords in her homeland and published in 1899. Another early novelist JurjƯ ZaydƗn (1861-1914) grew up in Beirut but moved to Cairo when he was expelled from the Syrian Protestant College School of Medicine for advocating Darwinism. In Cairo, he founded a press and a journal, alHilƗl, and wrote novels that presented heroic tales of Arab history in a way that engaged a wide reading public. The al-Azhar-educated mufti of Egypt, Muতammad `Abduh, (1849-1905) took on the task of showing that Islam could be reconciled with modern thought. Like his nah‫ڲ‬a contemporaries 15

Abu Lughod, 1971: 98.

Arab Heritage and Arab History

21

he also focused on reforming Arabic. TƗhƗ ণusayn (1889-1973), also educated at al-Azhar, became the leading literary modernist in the Arab world. The nah‫ڲ‬a was the first conscious effort by Arab intellectuals to identify a body of knowledge and literature that could be labeled Arab heritage. Their presses published classics like the poetry of al-MutannabƯ and Ibn .KDOGnjQ’s al-Muqadimma, which European scholars had unearthed after centuries of neglect in the Arabic-speaking world. Nahঌa intellectuals largely ignored folk tales, as did all elite literary figures, although JurjƯ ZaydƗn heard narrative epic cycles over and over at his father’s café in Beirut. “The narrator related, usually during the course of the year, the four stories that were in those days the most famous ones: Fairuz Shah, ‫ޏ‬Antar, as-ZƯr, and ‫ޏ‬AlƯ Zaibaq. When the year came to its end, he came back to the first one again.” 16 Folktales are now considered heritage, although they were rarely written down until anthropologists and other scholars began to study them in the twentieth century. Intellectuals ignored folk tales in part because they did not accept the vernacular as a proper medium for written expression, with a few exceptions. The highly educated ‫ޏ‬Ɩ`isha al-Taymnjr wrote in Arabic, Persian and Turkish, but also in the vernacular of Egypt. Yet a generation later TƗhƗ ণusayn, a leading advocate of modern forms of literature, absolutely refused to countenance the use of colloquial Arabic in written work. In the twenty-first century writing in colloquial Arabic is still a topic of debate although most authors use it for dialogue in plays and novels, and of course in the scripts for movies and television series. Recently UNESCO accepted for its intangible heritage list the still recited narrative cycle of Abnj Zayd al-HilƗlƯ who fought the North African ZanƗta tribe on behalf of the Fatimid ruler of Cairo in the eleventh century. In the spirit of the nah‫ڲ‬a, Cairo’s Museum of Arab Art opened in 1881 with a collection of objects gathered from mosques and mausoleums across Egypt. Its founders, who included the Khedive of Egypt, wished to provide a counterbalance to the European focus on Pharaonic and Hellenic Egypt. Today the museum, renamed the Museum of Islamic Art, has over 100,000 objects, and its collection of Arab arts and artifacts from the 0DPOnjN period is the best in the world. In the past few decades other countries have founded similar museums, for example the al-Sabah collection of Islamic Art opened its doors in the Kuwait National Museum in 1983. Novels, journals and museums may have been European forms of

16 =D\GƗQ

1990: 142-43.

22

Chapter One

presenting culture, but they were adopted and used well in the Arab world to foster an Arab identity to be proud of. The nah‫ڲ‬a provided the cultural basis for Arab nationalism, which became the main political ideology in the Arab world after World War I, when Britain and France came to rule most of the Arabic-speaking world. At that time the 1919 Revolution in Egypt forced Britain to accord Egyptians limited independence. In 1920, a rebellion against British rule in Iraq forced Britain to modify its plans from direct to indirect rule. The Great Syrian Revolt of 1925-27 did not lead to a modification of French rule in Syria and Lebanon, but it did force the French to come to some sort of accommodation with urban leadership. The Arab Rebellion in Palestine from 1936-1939 coupled with the onset of World War II led to an alteration of British policy in Palestine that promised future Palestinian independence. This change of policy, however, did not survive World War II and the international wave of guilt created by the Nazi destruction of European Jewish communities in the Holocaust. Religion played a part in these rebellions, but not in a sectarian manner. Notably in the Iraqi rebellion Sunni and Shi`i were united in their opposition to British rule. Arab Christians and Jews played important roles in fostering Arab nationalism. A generation earlier the strongest resistance to European imperialism in North Africa and the Sudan had come from Sufi and Salafi brotherhoods. In Algeria, ‫ޏ‬Abd al-QƗdir al--D]Ɨ‫ގ‬LUL, head of the local branch of the QƗdirƯ order, fought the French for ten years before being forced to submit in 1847. In 1871, a second major Algerian rebellion began in which the RaতmƗniyya order played a central part. In Sudan, the self-proclaimed mahdƯ Muতammad Aতmad drew inspiration from his Sufi training to lead resistance to Egyptian/British rule. Though trained in the practices of Sufism, his movement was orthodox in inspiration since he, like the Wahhabis in central Arabia, claimed to be reinstituting the practice of the Prophet and the first community of Muslims. He created a state with Omdurman as its capital that lasted for 15 years until its conquest by British and Egyptian troops in 1898. Except for Palestine, all Arab states gained independence in the period 1945 to 1971. Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Tunisia, and Morocco received independence immediately after World War II. Egypt, nominally independent since 1923, gained real independence from Britain only after the 1952 revolution. Similarly Iraq, which had been nominally independent since 1932, gained real independence in 1958 following the revolution that overthrew the British-supported monarchy. Britain recognized the independence of the Arab Gulf principalities and the Aden

Arab Heritage and Arab History

23

Protectorate in the early 1970s. Algeria and Palestine were subject to European colonization of long duration, which made their struggle for independence more difficult than elsewhere. Algerians won independence in 1964 after ten years of armed struggle against French soldiers and settlers. Palestinians are still in limbo. The newly independent states, especially those in the Fertile Crescent, faced two major problems; their borders and governmental structures were the products of European imperialism. The population within the new borders did not necessarily see any difference between themselves and Arabs on the other side of the border. All of the newly independent governments have worked to identify a body of heritage to justify a unique national identity.

The preservation of Arab heritage, 1945 to the present After independence, Arab states dramatically expanded access to schooling. By doing so they aimed to create an educated workforce able to meet state development needs; public education also served as an engine of identity by promulgating common understandings of the past and shared hopes for the future. Egypt, Syria, and Iraq nationalized their school systems after the coups d’etat of the 1950s ousted the leaders and governments originally created by Britain and France. In other Arab states, Lebanon for example, private schools attracted so many students that no shared idea of what citizenship meant and no shared vision of what the state was or should be could be fostered. In Iraq and Syria under the %D‫ޏ‬WK Party, the common understandings of the past and shared hopes for the future fostered in state schools were so rigid as to kill creative thinking. Since creative thinking fostered the art, literature, science, philosophy and architecture that make up Arab heritage today, such rigid educational systems have created a problem—in two hundred years what will be outstanding enough to be deemed heritage? Rapid change since the 1950s has created a longing for “the good old days” that an idealized vision of the past offers, and the technological means to disseminate the images, tales, ethics and knowledge that constitute heritage. In this day of the internet, we forget the importance of radio, cinema, and television in spreading ideas, information, and cultural standards. The nah‫ڲ‬a intellectuals wrote an idealized past to appeal to a growing audience of literate Arabs; by the 1950s radio and cinema reached an exponentially larger audience. First the phonograph and then ‫܇‬awt alҵArab (the Voice of the Arabs) broadcast from Cairo, made Umm Kulthnjm the most popular singer in the Arab world. Without radio, music would

24

Chapter One

have remained largely local. Television, which became widespread in the 1960s, broadcast series with heroic visions of the Arab past and created an idea of a shared history. Today, programs like “Who wants to be a millionaire” with its question and answer format create common expectations of what everyone should know about Arab history and culture. While new media promoted a vision of Arab culture, the creation of new states after World War I and their international recognition after World War II promoted new identities. The peoples of geographic Syria have become Lebanese, Syrian, Jordanian, and Palestinian. The peoples of Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra have become Iraqis. The peoples of the Arabian Peninsula, once identified by family and tribal affiliations that stretched from Yemen to geographic Syria and Iraq, have become Saudis, Qataris, Bahrainis, Kuwaitis, Emiratis and Yemenis. The cities and tribes of North Africa that once animated Ibn .KDOGnjQ’s theories of dynastic change have been divided by France and Italy into Algerians, Tunisians, and Libyans. Egypt, Oman and Morocco may be considered historical states, but as with all the other Arab states their ideas of citizenship, borders, passports, import and export licenses, and work permits are certainly new. Heritage has become a strategy to underline state identity. Every Arab country has created museums to preserve local arts and crafts and historic sites to celebrate local lifeways and encourage the idea of a national identity. Individuals also have spearheaded heritage projects. For example, in the 1950s Wissa Wassef, an Egyptian engineer and architect, created a weaving village outside of Cairo. He built his village in a traditional style out of mud brick, brought in master weavers to teach a new generation the art of weaving, and encouraged students to invent new designs so that an old craft would remain alive. Other private and regional associations have since created similar institutions to preserve traditional crafts and technologies. In 1983 the Gulf Cooperation Council created the Arab Gulf States Folklore Centre in Doha to preserve regional folklore. In Kuwait, the al-Sadu Society, founded in 1978, preserves the traditional craft of weaving practiced by Bedouin of the region and in 2011 al-Sadu in the United Arab Emirates was put on UNESCO’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage in need of protection. Collections of Palestinian embroidered clothing like that at the Bethlehem Palestinian Heritage Center are important evidence of the Palestinian past and, given the lack of a Palestinian state, private collectors have been especially important in preserving this evidence of the past. Women in refugee camps still

Arab Heritage and Arab History

25

produce magnificent embroidery adapted to uses other than clothing and sold to support their families and communities. As elsewhere, heritage in the Arab world has become an industry. Tourism has breathed new life into old city centers, but restoration projects to shore up old buildings and make them more accessible to tourists have sometimes done more harm than good. In Cairo for example, the Historic Cairo Restoration Project built new roads, widened old ones and added parks with trees to the old city, all of which have destroyed its fabric and feel. 17 Some historical features, like mashrabiya, have simply been removed. The mosque of `Amr ibn al`Ɩৢ, the oldest mosque in Egypt, has been completely rebuilt without using authentic materials and without oversight by professional restorers. In Damascus the citadel of ৡDOƗত al'ƯQ has been given a roofline directly out of medieval Europe. Some of the traditional courtyard homes in old Damascus had been turned into boutique hotels and restaurants by private businessmen. Giving old structures new use is a way of keeping them alive, but these particular structures have since been destroyed in the Syrian civil war. The central marketplace of Mamlnjk Cairo, Khan al-Khalili, now produces and sells Egyptian crafts and clothing inspired by traditional forms but made for a tourist market. The bazaars of Marrakesh are famous for rugs and leather goods, sometimes made by hand according to folk patterns, but also copied from expensive designer handbags. In the U.A.E. ministries of culture build heritage villages where Bedouin or once-upon-a-time Bedouin give camel rides or cook special treats over a fire for tourists. Bedouin life, like old city centers, has become a tourist attraction along with camel rides. No place in the Arab world has felt the impact of sudden change more than the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. Who, today, can imagine wealth in the form of camel herds as described by a British traveler in Jordan in 1909? [Camels] extended to the eastward as far as the eye could see, and field glasses failed to discover the eastern flank, which must have been miles away…The solid dark brown creeping stream…flowed steadily past…the rear guard went by eight hours after we had first seen them. 18

Just as camels have ceased being a major source of wealth, so have pearls thanks to the cultured pearl industry developed in Japan after the First 17 18

Williams, 2002: 457-475 Lewis, 2000: 38.

26

Chapter One

World War. Yet pearls live on as a symbol of national identity in Gulf countries where huge concrete balls representing pearls adorn the main squares of capital cities. The oil industry has radically shifted the political and economic weight of the Arab world from Cairo, Damascus, and Baghdad, to Riyadh, Doha, and Abu Dhabi. Beirut, the regional center of consumer imports in the 1950s and 60s, has been outpaced by Dubai. Cairo’s news outlets, alAhram and ‫܇‬awt al-`Arab, which once dominated the news of the Arab world are nothing now compared to Al-Jazeera, broadcast from Doha, or its Riyadh-based rival al-Arabiya, not to mention internet sources. People in the Arabian Peninsula who lived in camel hair tents three generations ago now live in apartment buildings and sprawling villas. Camels and horses are bred for racing and hunting with falcons is a leisure activity. Yemen never developed much of a tourist industry, although it has a dramatic landscape and Sana`a has a unique style of domestic architecture at least 1000 years old. Fueled by earnings of Yemeni workers in Saudi Arabia, Sana`a grew from about 55,000 in 1970 to 250,000 in 1982 and those who lived in the old city and had enough money preferred new structures outside of town accessible by car. Thus, in a dozen years Sana`a became the type of dual city that it took Cairo half a century to develop. Owing to Yemen’s political troubles in the twentieth century, no one invested in the old city’s upkeep and few made a living from the tourist industry. And yet, the sad fact is that perhaps the maintenance or nonmaintenance of historic city centers across the region would have made little difference given recent wars and the destruction that accompanies war. Perhaps all these old city centers will become like Andalusia, no longer a living part of Arab heritage, but simply remembered and reremembered as a symbol of an idealized past.

A few last words Heritage, although it is different from history, is very much historically bound. First, the idea of heritage itself came into being in the historical circumstances of nineteenth-century imperialism and technological development. Second, the cultural products that comprise heritage were and are created in particular historical circumstances. Third, the cultural products that comprise particular heritages are chosen in particular historical circumstances. Fourth, heritage is appreciated differently in different historical circumstances. To illustrate points two, three and four let us go back to my first example of the poem by `Imru‫ ގ‬al-Qays, which I think is universally regarded as heritage in the Arab world. It was written in the context of a

Arab Heritage and Arab History

27

life on the move where landscapes and loved ones are left behind and cannot be regained. Loss is a universal theme and thus this poem gains meaning in both personal and historical circumstances of loss. While it may always have served poets as a model of Arabic poetics, when specific historical events gave it specific meaning it served to invoke and lament a historic loss, Andalusia or Palestine for example. In other words, and this is where history comes in, although heritage seems unchanging, it changes meaning all the time. Heritage can comprise many things, but because it appears to be timeless we forget that someone or some group, UNESCO committees, intellectuals, or state governments for example, chooses what to consider and safeguard as heritage. And those who choose what constitutes heritage, choose for particular reasons: aesthetic reasons, intellectual reasons, or political reasons. UNESCO chooses in an effort to protect what it believes is world heritage, nah‫ڲ‬a intellectuals chose to foster a sense of pride in Arabness to counter the European arrogance that denigrated it, state governments choose in order to foster a loyal citizenry and to educate. At its best heritage can inspire curiosity and the desire to know more about the creative process, the mechanics of writing, decorating, weaving, building, or about the historical context of both creativity and destruction. Heritage can give enjoyment, awe and comfort, even perhaps a purpose to life. But the glories of heritage can also be a balm that leads to quiescence. At its worst, heritage can narrow aesthetic and intellectual appreciation to a limited range of achievements. It can create a false sense of pride that undergirds cultural arrogance and justifies conflict. An example of the latter is the belief that we are in the midst of “a conflict of civilizations.” Can our experiences as humans really be divided so neatly into an “us” and a “them”? Or is the conflict of civilizations a way to justify or ignore a conflict far less grandiose over resources or over a division of wealth? Heritage today seems more important than ever as resistance to globalization. You may well ask, what is being created today that might, in a century’s time, help to define Arab heritage?

Bibliography Abu Lughod, J. Cairo: 1001 Years of the City Victorious. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971. Al--DEDUWƯ A. Napoleon in Egypt: Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle of the French Occupation 1798, translated by Shmuel Moreh. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 2004.

28

Chapter One

Antonius, G. The Arab Awakening. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1938. Batatu, H. The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978. Doumani, B. Rediscovering Palestine: merchants and peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995. Grabar, O. The Shape of the Holy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1996 Hourani, A. Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age. London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1962 Hourani, A. A History of the Arab Peoples. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. Hudson, L. Transforming Damascus. London: I. B. Tauris, 2008. Ibn Ba৬৬nj৬a. Travels in Asia and Africa 1325-1354. Translated and edited by H. A. R. Gibb. London: Broadway House, 1929. Ibn Iyas. Journal d’un bourgeois du Caire. Chronique d’Ibn Iyas, Vol. 2, Translated by G. Wiet. Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1960. Ibn .KDOGnjQ. The Muqaddimah. Translated by Franz Rosenthal, edited by N.J. Dawood. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974. Issawi, C. “British Trade and the Rise of Beirut.” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 8:1 (1977): 91-101. Accessed April 04, 2017. doi.org/10.1017/S0020743800026775. Jones, A. Early Arabic Poetry. Reading, England: Ithaca, 1996. Lewis, N. “The Syrian Steppe during the Last Century of Ottoman Rule: Hawran and the Palmyra.” In B. Musallam & M. Mundy (eds.). The Transformation of Nomadic Society in the Arab East. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Menocal, M. R. The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain. Boston, Little Brown: 2002. Meri, J. The Cult of Saints among Muslims and Jews in Medieval Syria. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Williams, C. “Transforming the Old: Cairo’s New Medieval City.” Middle East Journal, Summer 2002, pp. 457-475. ZaydƗn, J. Autobiography of Jurji Zaydan. Translated by Thomas Philipp. Washington, DC: Three Continents Press, 1990.

CHAPTER TWO A GENERAL OUTLINE OF THE ARABIC LANGUAGE SATTAR IZWAINI

Introduction Arabic is the official language of 22 countries in the Middle East and North Africa, with a combined population of more than 300 million. Arabic is also recognized either as a second official language or is studied in school curriculum in many Muslim-majority countries. It is spoken by minorities in countries such as Cyprus, Iran, Turkey and several central African countries, as well as some areas in the former Soviet Union. 1 Arabic is the native language of many immigrant communities in North and South America, Europe, and Australia. And it is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. This chapter provides a general overview of the Arabic language, outlining its development and characteristics—phonology, morphology, lexis and syntax—as well as its varieties and the impact of translation on it. Arabic is classified as one of a group of languages that are spoken in the north of the Arabian Peninsula (North Arabian language), and belongs to a larger group that is the southern branch of a family of languages called Semitic languages (after Sam (Shem), son of Noah) that includes Aramaic, Akkadian and Hebrew. Its earliest writing forms can be traced in scripts that go back to a period between 250 AD and 328 AD. 2 These scripts (or fragmentary scripts) are found at tombs and ruins, and in papyri. Before and after the advent of Islam, Arabic was largely spoken. Written texts at that time were the exception to the rule of oral tradition. They were used for limited purposes such as treaties, commercial contracts, religious scripts and 1 2

See Bakalla, 1984 and Versteegh, 1995. Versteegh, 1995: 30-31.

30

Chapter Two

some exceptional poems. The Holy Qur’an and poetry are our main sources of the kind of Arabic spoken at that time. Arabic had different geographical dialects in the Arabian Peninsula that had distinct phonetic and morphological features. One dialect used shƯn ε especially for the feminine pronoun (what is called kashkashah), for example ζΑ ϼϫ΃ ahlan bish (welcome to you FEM 3) in contrast to ˶Ϛ˶Α biki. Another dialect used ‘am as a definite article instead of al, e.g. ήϔδϣ΍ imsafar (the-travelling) in contrast to ήϔδϟ΍ al-safar. The Hijazi dialect of Qureish, for example, did not in general use the hamza as illustrated in the table below. Islam played a significant role in creating a unified form of Arabic (ϰΤμϔϟ΍ fu‫ۊ܈‬Ɨ). The Qur’an basically standardized Arabic as it uses a combination of different dialects, mainly those of Quraysh and 7DPƯm. Table 1: A comparison between words from HijƗzƯ and TamƯmƯ dialects (examples taken from al-AntakƯ, 1969) 4

3

+LMƗ]Ư Qureishi dialect ΚϴΣ তD\Wh

7DPƯPƯ dialect

Meaning

ΙϮΣ তDZWh

ϚϟΫ GKƗlika

ϙ΍Ϋ GKƗka

where (adverb of place) that MASC 5

ϚϠΗ tilka

ϙΎΗ tƗka

that FEM

Ϧϳάϟ΍ al-ODGKƯna

ϥϭάϠϟ΍ al-ODGKnjna

who plural MASC

άϨϣ mundhu

άϣ mudh

since

Ϊϫ ˴ί zahada

Ϊ˶˰ϫί zahida

to be ascetic (verb)

ϰϘΗ· LWWDTƗ

ϰϘΗ WDTƗ

to fear

˯΍ήΑ EDUƗ‫ގ‬

˯ϱήΑ EDUƯ‫ގ‬

innocent

Feminine ΚϧΆϣ Al-Antaki, 1969: 90-91. 5 Masculine ήϛ ˷ άϣ˵ 4

A General Outline of the Arabic Language

31

Ϊϛ˷ ϭ wakkada

Ϊϛ˷ ΃ akkada

to emphasize

ΩΎμ˶˰Σ তiৢƗd

ΩΎμ˴˰Σ তDৢƗd

harvest

ϦϳΪϣ PDGƯn

ϥϮϳΪϣ PDGL\njn

borrower

Δϫ΍ήϛ NDUƗKD

Δϴϫ΍ήϛ NDUƗhiya

hatred

ήϴΑ EƯr

ήΌΑ bi‫ގ‬r

water well

ΏΎΒϟ΍ Ϊλϭ΃ DZৢDGD al-EƗba ϚΗϮλ Ϧϣ ξπϏ΃ DJKঌLঌ min ৢawtik

ΏΎΒϟ΍ Ϊλ΁ Ɨৢada al-EƗba ϚΗϮλ Ϧϣ ξϏ JKLঌ min ৢawtik

he closed the door lower your voice

With the spread of Islam and non-Arab nations embracing it, the linguistic contact influenced the right pronunciation and correct use in those regions far away from Arabia. To take care of the right pronunciation, especially when the Qur’an was recited, scholars started to refer to the Arabs of the desert as the authority of the language, and recorded their linguistic usage to adopt it in their teaching, books and dictionaries. With the different varieties of Classical Arabic (CA) and the expansion of the Islamic rule, dialects of different tribes continued to be used in the new countries, contributing to different geographical spoken varieties of Arabic in later eras. After the invasion of Baghdad by Hulagu in the thirteenth century and the fall of Arab rule of Andalusia in the fifteenth century, Arabic experienced a long period of stagnation when its teaching was limited to the Qur’an, and its use in governmental administrations switched to other languages such as Spanish, Persian and Turkish. Moreover, while Arabic was the language of culture, civilization and scientific scholarship during the long centuries of prosperous Islamic rule prior to this period, books and scientific articles now were written on a very limited scale and mostly within religious studies, leading to the stagnation of Arabic. By the nineteenth century, when the establishment of Arab independent rule began, national education systems were set up with Arabic as the language of teaching, which was in some cases abandoned for foreign languages such English and French in response to the policy of the foreign rule. With that period of stagnation, very limited education, the use of Arabic by Muslims who were non-native speakers, and contact with other

32

Chapter Two

languages such as English and French, spoken Arabic started to develop away from ϰΤμϔϟ΍ IX‫ۊ܈‬Ɨ (Classical Arabic), in particular in different countries that are geographically distant from each other. The Arabic renaissance (ΔπϬϨϟ΍ ήμϋ) and the system of education taking the momentum of national governments as well as using Arabic as an official language, all contributed to the flourishing of Arabic in modern times. The kind of Arabic that developed and has been used in formal settings, books and the media is what is called Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). ‘Standard’ refers to the unified variety of language that is mainly written, not spoken. It is important to highlight the fact that modern standard Arabic is inherently IX‫ۊ܈‬Ɨ, because despite the huge development it witnessed, its lexical stock and structures are in general those of Classical Arabic (see Varieties of Arabic below). It is worth noting that translation has contributed greatly to MSA by introducing new terms from other cultures and civilizations, western in particular.

Varieties of Arabic Arabic is usually categorised as Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). The former refers to the Arabic whose earliest texts goes back to the third century. Its sources are mainly the Holy Qur’an and pre-Islamic poetry. It remained as the official and literary language until some time after the capture of Baghdad by Hulagu in the thirteenth century. CA is the language of the Qur’an, classical literary and non-literary works. It is characterised by its rich vocabulary and very elaborate grammar. It developed and flourished when the Islamic civilization prospered and experienced a movement of research and high education, including the large-scale institutionalized translation of different works of sciences and humanities. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), on the other hand, is used to refer to the modern written Arabic that functions as a formal medium of communication in the Arab world. MSA is a preserved CA that evolved under the influence of a long period of stagnation, translation activity, and modern style. It is mainly a written variety (see Table 2 below). There are also different labels used to refer to modern Arabic such as literary Arabic and contemporary Arabic. 6 Arabic is also looked at as having at least two varieties: the eloquent variety (IX‫ۊ܈‬Ɨ) where the line between CA and MSA is blurred, and the vernacular or colloquial (ΔϴϣΎόϟ΍ ҵƗmmiya or ΔΟέ΍Ϊϟ΍ dƗrija), which is mainly 6

See Bakalla, 1984: 85; Holes, 1995: 4; and Abd Al-$]Ư]1998: 143-163.

A General Outline of the Arabic Language

33

spoken. Table 2 below provides a comparison of the features of these two main categories. It is important to note that these features should be looked at as “mainly” not “solely”. The colloquial variety can also be used in formal context and thus it moves towards the standard variety. In the case of advertisements, the written form of the colloquial variety is used for the sake of simplicity and to reach wider audience, especially when they are initially broadcast on TV or radio. Table 2: A comparison of Standard Arabic and Colloquial Arabic Standard Formal Pan-Arab Spoken: official meetings, speeches, sermons, rituals, ceremonies, media (news bulletins, TV & radio broadcasting), advertisements & announcements. Written: books, literary works, essays, research papers, the printed press (newspapers and magazines), advertisements & announcements, and formal computer-mediated communication (emails, text messages, blogs, internet forums, and online social networking).

Colloquial Informal Geographical dialects Spoken: everyday interaction.

Written as if spoken: dialogues (in literary works, films, drama, and plays), folk poetry, song lyrics, advertisements, TV & radio shows, and informal computer-mediated communication (emails, chatting, text messaging, blogs, internet forums, and online social networking).

The vocabulary of a spoken variety is inherently linked to CA and MSA. The huge gap between the standard and spoken varieties has led to a somewhat diglossic situation in the Arab world 7, that is to say, the distinction is so great that the varieties of Arabic can be thought of as two different languages. The gap between MSA and colloquial varieties is wider than that found in other languages due to a number of reasons such as historical developments, lack or availability of education, and level of exposure to CA. The IX‫ۊ܈‬Ɨ vs. colloquial paradigm can be best be looked at as a continuum where there are different levels in between. These can be

7

Ferguson, 1959: 325-340; and Zaghoul, 1980: 201-217.

34

Chapter Two

categorized as proposed by Elsaid Badawi 8: 1. Ι΍ήΘϟ΍ ϰΤμϓ IX‫ۊ܈‬Ɨ al-WXUƗWh Classical Arabic 2. ήμόϟ΍ ϰΤμϓ IX‫ۊ܈‬Ɨ al-ҵD‫܈‬r Modern Standard Arabic: the standard form of the language which is mainly the written form as described in Table 2 above. 3. ϦϴϔϘΜϤϟ΍ ΔϴϣΎϋ ҵƗmmiyat al-muthaqqafƯn colloquial of the intellectuals: the formal spoken language of educated people. 4. ϦϳέϮϨΘϤϟ΍ ΔϴϣΎϋ ҵƗmmiyat al-mutanawZUƯn colloquial of the literate: the informal spoken language of educated people. 5. ϦϴϴϣϷ΍ ΔϴϣΎϋ ҵƗmmiyat al-umiy\Ưn colloquial of the illiterate: the language in which the illiterate talk. The variety number 4 is probably better called ϦϴϤϠόΘϤϟ΍ ΔϴϣΎϋ ҵƗmmiyat almutaҵlimƯn to refer to the kind of language spoken by those who have attained some level of education. It is worth noting here that features of standard Arabic can be widely found in the spoken varieties of different Arabic dialects on different levels. Apart from words, this includes particles, nunation (tanwƯn, see Definiteness below), verb forms, and accusatives. For example, qad Ϊϗ (pronounced gad) and the response expression labayk ϚϴΒϟ as well as nunation are all used in some Gulf dialects. The use of kashkashah (using the shƯn ε for the feminine pronoun as discussed above), for example, ζΑ ϼϫ΃ ahlan bish (welcome to you FEM) in contrast to ˶Ϛ˶Α biki is still a feature of some regional dialects in Arabia. In the Iraqi dialect, the absolute object (ϖϠτϤϟ΍ ϝϮόϔϤϟ΍) and the ‘double biconsonatal’ verbs (and their corresponding nouns) are both used to indicate the intensity of action and, e.g. y‫ܒ‬ag‫ܒ‬ig ϖτϘτϳ (to click repeatedly) and ykasrah takseer ήϴδϜΗ ϩήδϜϳ (to break it into many pieces). The term dialect is basically geographical in nature and is usually associated with a certain country, though many dialects can be found in different regions, cities, towns and even villages in that particular country. Furthermore, a dialect of a certain country is usually linked to the one of the capital that people from other countries are familiar with, for example, the Cairo dialect is the one referred to as Egyptian dialect, the Iraqi dialect is that of Baghdad, and the Syrian dialect is that of Damascus. Hence, one can talk about macro-dialects and micro-dialects where the former is that of the country-capital, and the latter of other cities or regions of the same country. Arabic has also been subject to the influence of foreign languages 8

Badawi, 2011: 119.

A General Outline of the Arabic Language

35

throughout its history. Initially it borrowed mainly from Greek and Persian. In modern times, it has borrowed from European languages, English and French in particular. Spoken Arabic of different dialects has also borrowed from English, French, Italian, Persian and Turkish. The two varieties of Arabic (standard and colloquial) led some writers, Arab and non-Arab, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to call for abandoning the standard language and use the colloquial. Some of them even called for replacing the Arabic script with the Latin script to copy the Turkish model. Their argument was that in order to modernize the Arab world, the language needed to be modernized first. There have been calls to change the way Arabic is used and written. Some writers called for using the spoken dialects as standard official languages in countries such as Egypt and Lebanon. These include William Willcocks, Karl Vollers, and Wilhelm Spitta in late nineteenth century, and Selden Willmore and SalƗma MnjsƗ in the early twentieth century, and $তPDG /X৬fƯ al-Sayyid in the mid-twentieth century who called for using the Egyptian dialect instead of standard Arabic in Egypt, arguing that Arabic was complicated and unable to deal with science and modern technology. There was also a trend of using Latin letters in writing Arabic as a way of modernization. This was advocated by Spitta, Abdel Azeez Fahmi, Anis Fraiha and Saeed Aql, arguing that Arabic would be easier to handle and to follow the modern world. A counter-trend launched a magazine in Egypt that published scientific articles in MSA. Some reasons why Arabs, in general, have been keen on preserving the standard language is because it is intertwined with Islam and the Qur’an as well as its representation of Arabic identity.

Phonology and graphology The sounds of Arabic are made of 28 consonants, six vowels and two diphthongs. A consonant is the production of the sound with an obstruction of the air flow at some point by the articulatory organs (tongue, teeth, palate, glottis etc.). The consonants should be differentiated from the letters (alphabet) where the latter is the written representation of sounds, and the former is phonological, i.e. sounds. Arabic does not allow consonant clusters of two consonants in the initial position. 9 Consonant clusters are the sequence of two or more consonants without a vowel in between. Consonant clusters of up to two consonants can occur in middle or final positions. Cases of initial clusters, however, can be found in spoken varieties, for 9

ϙήΤΘϤΑ ϲϬΘϨΗ ϻϭ ˬϦϛΎδΑ ΃ΪΒΗ ϻ ΔϴΑήόϟ΍

36

Chapter Two

example, the pronunciation of the name Ϊϴό˸γ (s‫ޏ‬Ưd) in Emirati dialect where the first two consonants are adjacent in an initial position, i.e. there is no vowel after the first consonant. Vowels are those sounds that are produced with no obstruction of the air flow is involved. Arabic has three long vowels Ɨ, nj, Ư (represented by the letters ϒϟ΃, ϭ΍ϭ, and ˯Ύϳ respectively) which are the long versions of the short vowels that are represented by the ‫ۊ‬arakƗt (diacritics), fat‫ۊ‬a (a), ‫ڲ‬amma (u), and kasra (i) respectively (see Table 3 below). The letters ϭ (waw) and ϱ (yƗ‫ )ގ‬are also used to represent two consonants that are semi-vowels since they sound like vowels, which makes these two letters serve a double role as vowels and as consonants. Arabic semi-vowels usually occur initially as in Ϊϟϭ walad (boy) and έΎδϳ yasƗr (left) (see Table 4 below). These are phonologically different form the long vowels nj ϭ΍ϭ as in έϮϧ nnjr (light) and Ư ˯Ύϴϟ΍ like ϢϳΪϗ qadƯm (old). Table 3: Long and short vowels of Arabic Long Vowel Ɨ ϒϟ΃ nj ϭ΍ϭ Ư ˯Ύϳ

Written Form ΍ ϭ ϱ

Example qƗla ϝ ˴ Ύϗ snjr έϮγ salƯm ϢϴϠγ

Corresponding Short Vowel a (IDWতD) ΔΤΘϓ u (ঌDPPD) ΔϤο i (kasra) Γήδϛ

Written Form ˰˰˴˰˰˰ ˰˰˵˰˰˰ ˰˶˰˰˰

Table 4: Semi vowels of Arabic w ϭ΍ϭ y ˯Ύϳ

Written Form ϭ ϱ

Example wazƯr ήϳίϭ yaqnjl ϝϮϘϳ

One aspect of the Arabic writing system is the diacritic forms (‫ۊ‬arakƗt or tashkƯl) of its three short vowels, which are not usually written since word pronunciation can be easily recognized by native speakers (see Table 3 above). However, short vowels are fully represented in the Qur’an and children’s books to ensure correct pronunciation, and elsewhere to clarify the difference in meaning, for example, ή˰ ˶ϤόΘδϣ˵ mustaҵmir (colonizer) and ή˰Ϥ˴ όΘδϣ˵ mustaҵmar (colonized). While not having actual characters to represent the short vowels can be problematic in getting the right meaning of words, especially in natural language processing and machine translation, Arabic writing is thus economical in that words are much shorter than a written form with the vowels represented as actual letters. Being represented by diacritics, short vowels are inaccurately looked at as secondary to the

A General Outline of the Arabic Language

37

other sounds (consonants and long vowels) since the latter are written as letters. Sometimes people are misled by the written form into the thinking that the alif ϒϟ΃, wƗw ϭ΍ϭ, and yƗҴ ˯Ύϴϟ΍ are the only vowels of Arabic. Arabic has two diphthongs which are a combination of two vowels. These are ai as in Ζϴ˴Α bait (home) and aw as in ϡϮ˴ϧ nawm (sleeping). Gemination in Arabic is having a double consonant sound which is represented by the diacritic (˰˷˰˰) as in darrasa αέΩ ˷ (to teach). When words that start with one of a group of 14 consonants (called shamsƯ letters ΔϴδϤθϟ΍ ϑήΣϷ΍) are definite (by adding ϒϳήόΘϟ΍ ϝ΃ al at the beginning), the l sound of the definite article changes into that first consonant of that word and assimilates with it to produce a double sound. For example, the definite form of βϤη shams (sun) is ashshams. The 14 consonants are ί έ Ϋ Ω Ι Ε ϥ ϝ υ ρ ν ι ε α. The Arabic alphabet is made of 29 letters including the hamza (glottal stop) which is usually neglected or confused with the alif only because it is mostly written along with an alif. Arabic writing used to use no signs for vowels, which were added along with letter dots in the eighth century. Some letters, especially the alif, are still not written in words such as ϦϜϟ lƗkin (but) and ϩ˶άϫ hƗdhihi (this FEM). The final tƗ’ (tƗ’ marbnjtah) when at the end of a word is written as a tƗ’, but pronounced as a hƗ’ (˰ϫ) and thus called ϒϗϮϟ΍ ˯Ύϫ (roughly the pause hƗ’), for example ΔΒϴϘΣ ‫ۊ‬aqƯba (bag). When it is in the first word of a construct (compound of two elements), it is usually pronounced as tƗ’ /t/, as in ΪϟϮϟ΍ ΔΒϴϘΣ ‫ۊ‬aqƯbat al-walad (the boy’s bag). 10 9F

Morphology The morphological scale ϲϓήμϟ΍ ϥ΍ΰϴϤϟ΍ al-mƯzƗn al-‫܈‬arfƯ is the standard procedure that designates the morphological forms of the Arabic words. If we take the root k t b (denoting the notion of writing), we will have the pattern of the verb kataba ΐΘϛ ˴ (to write), the agent (doer) is of the pattern ΐΗΎϛ NƗWLE (writer), ΔΒΘϜϣ matabah (library) and ΐΘϜϣ maktab (desk/office). Also, an initial hamza makes the verb, among other things, transitive, for example Ϣ˰˶Ϡ˰ϋ ˴ ‫ޏ‬alima (to know) and ϢϠϋ΃ DҵODPD (to inform). Adding the prefix ist can make the verb denote request, e.g. istaktaba ΐΘϜΘγ΍ (request to write down). Other meanings include appointment as in έίϮΘγ΍ istawzara (to appoint as a minister) and opinion as in ήϜϨΘγ΍ istankara (to find unacceptable/improper). The vocabulary of Arabic is based on consonantal roots and derivational 10

The case marker (ΔϴΑ΍ήϋϻ΍ ΔϛήΤϟ΍) is not represented in the transliterated form since it depends on the sentence structure in which the word is used.

38

Chapter Two

patterns according to which words are built. The majority is triconsonantal (ΔϴΛϼΛ) with some quadri-consonantal (ΔϴϋΎΑέ) and even a few five-consonant roots. There is evidence of biconsonantal words, which is a controversial issue. Derivational patterns are made of a combination of consonant and specific vowels that help in giving words a certain meaning. A change or addition of a vowel (or more) or one consonant (or more) can lead to change in meaning, as in kataba ΐΘϛ (wrote) and kutiba ΐΘ˰˵˰ϛ (was written), NƗWLE ΐΗΎϛ (writer) and NƗWLEƗni ϥΎΒΗΎϛ (two writers) respectively. The infinitive noun, al-PD‫܈‬GDU έΪμϤϟ΍, 11 designates the abstract notion of the process or action of the corresponding verb. It is usually referred to in order to have the right pattern of derivatives such as adjectives and nouns that denote the same idea. The past tense is usually taken as the base form.

Inflection Arabic has a sophisticated inflectional system. Nouns have three cases (ΔϴΑ΍ήϋ΍ ΕϻΎΣ): nominative ϊϓήϟ΍, accusative ΐμϨϟ΍/ΔϴϟϮόϔϤϟ΍, and genitive ήΠϟ΍ with exceptions that are made according to certain conditions. Nominative is the case of the subject ϞϋΎϔϟ΍, topic ΃ΪΘΒϤϟ΍, or comment ήΒΨϟ΍ as well as the topic of the group of kƗna (i.e. ϥΎϛ Ϣγ΍), and the comment of the group of ‘inna (ϥ· ˷ ήΒΧ). Accusative is the case of objects, vocatives ϯΩΎϨϤϟ΍, and nouns preceded by the exceptive particle (˯ΎϨΜΘγ΍ Γ΍Ω΍) or emphasis particle (ΪϴϛϮΗ) as well as the comment of the group of kƗna (ϥΎϛ ήΒΧ), and the topic of the group of ‘inna (ϥ· ˷ Ϣγ΍ . The accusative is also the case of different kinds of adverbs. The genitive is the case of nouns preceded by prepositions and quantifiers as well as non-head nouns in compounds (Ϫϴϟ΍ ϑΎπϤϟ΍). Spoken varieties usually drop case and mood markers, i.e. vowels at the end of words (ΔϴΑ΍ήϋϻ΍ ΔϛήΤϟ΍). In the standard language, this is the case only at a pause position, i.e. when saying a word alone or at the end of a sentence; in other words, markers at the end of a sentence are not pronounced. 12 Verbs have two tenses: past and present, which are also termed perfect and imperfect. The notion of future can be realised by attaching the prefix ˴ sa to the present tense form or by a combination of the present tense form α and the particle ϑϮγ sawfa or using time adverbs indicating future.

11 12

Specialised dictionaries refer to it as ‘quasi infinitive’ or ‘verbal noun’. ϙήΤΘϤΑ ϲϬΘϨΗ ϻϭ ˬϦϛΎδΑ ΃ΪΒΗ ϻ ΔϴΑήόϟ΍

A General Outline of the Arabic Language

39

Definiteness Definiteness is realized by adding the article al (ϒϳήόΘϟ΍ ϝ΃) at the beginning of the word. Indefiniteness, on the other hand, is marked by having no definite article attached; instead, nunation (ϦϳϮϨΗ) occurs, which means adding an n sound at a final position after the case-ending vowel (ΔϴΑ΍ήϋϻ΍ ΔϛήΤϟ΍) of a single noun, an adjective, regular feminine plural, and irregular plural. Nunation is also a characteristic of some adverbs such adverb of time as in ˱ϼ  ϴϟ ΎϧήϓΎγ sƗfarna leilan (we travelled at night), adverb of manner ϝΎΤϟ΍ as in ˱ Ύπϛ΍έ ˯ΎΟ jƗҴa rƗki‫ڲ‬an (he came running), absolute object ϖϠτϤϟ΍ ϝϮόϔϤϟ΍ as in ˱ ΎϤϴψϋ ˱ ΎΣήϓ Ρήϓ fari‫ۊ‬a fara‫ۊ‬an ҵDܲƯPDQ (he felt so happy), and adverbs of frequency as in ˱ ΎϤ΋΍Ω dƗҴiman (always) and ˱ ΍έΩΎϧ nƗdiran (rarely). Nunation can be found in some spoken varieties, such as the Gulf area dialects, but with the genitive case (έϭήΠϣ) in all positions.

Gender Nouns and adjectives have two genders: masculine (ήϛάϣ) and feminine (ΚϧΆϣ), for example, ϞΟέ rajul (man) and Γ΃ήϣ· imraҴa (woman). The masculine is also used as a generic form for mixed and neutral gender. Some words can be neutral or common for both masculine and feminine such as κΨη shaܵ‫( ܈‬person) and ΔϨϴϫέ rahƯna (hostage). The feminine gender is either based on the masculine form, for example, ΔϔυϮϣ muwaܲܲafa (employee FEM), by adding the feminine marker Δ˰ (final tƗ’) to the masculine form ϒυϮϣ muwaܲܲaf (employee MASC), or ends with a feminine marker such as Ɨ’ as in ˯Ύϗέί zarqƗҴ (blue FEM), or a long Ɨ suffix as in ϯήϐλ ‫܈‬ughrƗ (youngest/smallest FEM).

Number Arabic has a singular form, a dual form for two only ϰϨΜϣ˵ muthanƗ (dual), and a plural form for more than two. The dual marker is the suffix Ɨni for ˶ ϔυϮϣ muwaܲܲafƗni (2 employees MASC) and the nominative ϊϓήϟ΍ ΔϟΎΣ as in ϥΎ ˶ ϥΎΘϔυϮϣ muwaܲܲafatƗni (2 employees FEM), and ayni for the accusative ΐμϨϟ΍/ΔϴϟϮόϔϤϟ΍ and genitive ήΠϟ΍ as in Ϧϴ ˶ ˰˴˰ϔυϮϣ muwaܲܲafayni (2 employees MASC) and ϦϴΘϔυϮϣ ˶ muwaܲܲafatayni (2 employees FEM). The plural can be regular or irregular. Regular plural complies with gender in that the masculine form takes the marker njn for the nominative as in ϥϮϔυϮϣ muwaܲܲafnjn (employers MASC), and Ưn for the accusative and genitive as in ϦϴϔυϮϣ muwaܲܲafƯn. The regular feminine plural takes the final marker Ɨt. The nominative case is Ɨtu, e.g. ˵ΕΎϔυϮϣ muwaܲܲafƗtu (employers FEM), and

40

Chapter Two

the accusative and genitive cases are Ɨti as in Ε ˶ ΎϔυϮϣ PXZDܲܲafƗti (see Definiteness above). Irregular plurals can also have patterns. Such patterns are also analogical in that nouns and adjectives of a particular form have a common structure according to which it is constructed. Different plural forms can denote different meanings, e.g. Ζϴ˴Α bayt (home), ΕϮϴ˵Α buynjt (homes), and ΕΎϴΑ΃ ҴDE\ƗW(lines of poetry). The plural form is the pattern of analogy if no root can be traced for the word. This is particularly useful for loan words whose plural form is the regular feminine (ϢϟΎγ ΚϧΆϣ ϊϤΟ), for example, ΕΎϧϮϳΰϔϠΗ tilfizynjnƗt (TV sets).

Lexis Arabic vocabulary is mainly coined by derivation according to the morphological scale ϲϓήμϟ΍ ϥ΍ΰϴϤϟ΍. Words are derived according to the analogical patterns that function as lexical templates. Words are generally produced by root-and-pattern and affixation. Derivatives of roots are usually linked by the core meaning of the root (see the example of k t b in Morphology above). Words are derived according to patterns of semantic significance. Forms of present participle ϞϋΎϔϟ΍ Ϣγ΍ as in ϖ΋Ύγ sƗҴiq (driver), past participle ϝϮόϔϤϟ΍ Ϣγ΍ as in έϮδϜϣ maksnjr (broken), tools and machines Δϟϵ΍ Ϣγ΍ e.g. ΩήΒ˶ϣ mibrad (file/rasp), ΡΎΘϔϣ miftƗ‫( ۊ‬key), comparative and superlative ϞϴπϔΘϟ΍ Ϣγ΍, e.g. ήΒϛ΃ ҴDNEDU (bigger, elder), diminutive ήϴϐμΘϟ΍ e.g. ΐϴΘ˰˵˰ϛ kutayyib (booklet), ήϴϬ˵ϧ nuhayr (small river), and place as in βϠΠϣ majlis (sitting/meeting place) are all derived according to those patterns. Translation has also introduced compounds that reflect the foreign word formation processes: ΔϴΠδϔϨΒϟ΍ ϕϮϓ fawq al-banafsajiya (ultraviolet), ˯΍ήϤΤϟ΍ ΖΤΗ ta‫ۊ‬t al-‫ۊ‬DPrƗҴ (infrared) and ϲϜϠγϻ lƗsilkƯ (wireless/radio).

Syntax Syntax is the way in which sentences and phrases are formed and structured. Generally speaking, Arabic has two kinds of sentences, a verbal sentence (ΔϴϠόϓ ΔϠϤΟ) and a nominal sentence (ΔϴϤγ΍ ΔϠϤΟ). The verbal sentence starts with a verb and can be of the following patterns: VS (verb + subject) Ϟ˵ Οήϟ΍ ˯˴ ΎΟ jƗҴa al-rajulu (came the-man)

A General Outline of the Arabic Language

41

VSA (verb + subject + adverbial) ΔγέΪϤϟ΍ ϰϟ· ˵ΐϟΎτϟ΍ ΐϫΫ ˴ dhahaba al-‫ܒ‬Ɨlibu ҴLOƗ al-madrasati (went the-student to the-school) VSO (verb + subject + object) ΓΪϴμϘϟ΍ ˵ΐϟΎτϟ΍ ΃ήϗ qaraҴD al-‫ܒ‬Ɨlibu al-qa‫܈‬Ưdata (read-PAST the-student the-poem) VSOA (verb + subject + object+ adverbial) ˱ ΍ΪϏ νήόϤϟ΍ ˴ ˵ ήϳίϮϟ΍ ˵ ΘΘϔϳ ΢ yaftati‫ۊ‬u al-wazƯru al-maҵUL‫ڲ‬a ghadan (inaugurate the-minister the-exhibition tomorrow) VSOO (verb + subject + object1 + obeject2) ˱ ΎΑΎΘϛ ΐϟΎτϟ΍ ˴ ˵Ζϴτϋ΃ ҴDҵ‫ܒ‬D\WX al-‫ܒ‬aliba kitƗban (I-gave the-student a-book) VOS (verb + object + subject) ϊϴΑήϟ΍ ΎϧΎΗ΃ ҴDWƗQƗ al-rabƯҵu (came-us the-spring) VSOC (verb + subject + object + complement) ˱ ΍ήοΎΣ ˱ ΎϴϠϋ ˲Ϊ ϤΤϣ ΐδ ˶ Σ ˴ ‫ۊ‬DVLED 0X‫ۊ‬ammadun ҵAliyyan ‫ۊ‬Ɨ‫ڲ‬iran (thought Muhammad Ali present) VSOOC (verb + subject + object1 + obeject2 + complement) ˱ϼϣΎη ˴ϥΎΤΘϣϻ΍ Ώϼτϟ΍ ˴ ΫΎΘγϷ΍ ϢϠϋ ˴ ΍ aҵlama al-ҴXVWƗGKXal-‫ܒ‬ullƗba al-imti‫ۊ‬Ɨna shƗmilan (informed the-teacher the-students the-test comprehensive) The nominal sentence is a topic and comment (ήΒΧϭ ΃ΪΘΒϣ mubtadaҴ and khabar). It starts with the subject which is mostly a noun, and can be of the following patterns:

42

Chapter Two

SV (subject + verb) ˯ΎΟ ˲Ϊ ϤΤϣ 0X‫ۊ‬ammadun jƗҴ (Muhammad came) SVO (subject + verb + object) ΓέϮλ Ϣγέ ˲Ϊ ϤΤϣ 0X‫ۊ‬ammadun rasama ‫܈‬njratan (Muhammad drew a-picture) SC (subject + complement) ΔόΘϤϣ ΔμϘϟ΍ al-qi‫܈‬atu mumtiҵatun (the-story entertaining) SA (subject + adverb) ˱ ΍ΪϏ ϝ ˵ ΎϔΘΣϻ΍ al-i‫ۊ‬tifƗlu ghadan (the-celebration tomorrow) When the topic (΃ΪΘΒϤϟ΍) in a sentence of the pattern SC is indefinite (ΓήϜϧ), it is obligatorily postponed, e.g. έϮϔμϋ ˲ ΓήΠθϟ΍ ϰϠϋ ҵalƗ al-shajarati ҵu‫܈‬fnjrun [on the-tree (is a) bird]. In some patterns of a verbal sentence, the verb does not inflect, i.e. its form does not necessarily change to agree with the subject’s number and gender. However, in a nominal sentence, it agrees with the subject’s number and gender (see Inflection above and Tables 6 and 7 below). Table 6: Nominal sentences with verb subject agreement Δ˶ γέΪϤϟ΍ ϰϟ·

ΐϫΫ ˴

˵ΐϟΎτϟ΍

Δ˶ γέΪϤϟ΍ ϰϟ·

ΎΒϫΫ

ϥΎΒϟΎτϟ΍ ˶

΍ϮΒϫΫ

˵Ώϼτϟ΍

Δ˶ γέΪϤϟ΍ ϰϟ·

Table 7: Verbal sentences with no verb subject agreement Δ˶ γέΪϤϟ΍ ϰϟ·

˵ΐϟΎτϟ΍

ΐϫΫ ˴

Δ˶ γέΪϤϟ΍ ϰϟ·

ϥΎΒϟΎτϟ΍ ˶

ΐϫΫ ˴

Δ˶ γέΪϤϟ΍ ϰϟ·

˵Ώϼτϟ΍

ΐϫΫ ˴

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A General Outline of the Arabic Language

45

and when its word formation mechanisms are exploited. This takes us to the issue of terminology, which is a long-lasting problem. This is because of the very large number of terms created in other languages with no Arabic counterparts, as well as the multiplicity of Arabic terms for one concept, the slow and problem-laden coordination of translation and creation of terms. With the domination of globally powerful languages, mainly English and French, Arabic nowadays witnesses a triglossia with its speakers using two varieties of Arabic (standard and colloquial) and one foreign language. In spoken interaction and informal computer-mediated communication, the colloquial variety and a foreign language are usually used. For convenience, speed, and/or because of the unfamiliarly with Arabic characters, Arabic is also written using the Latin script in emails, text messages, chatting, and internet forums. There has been some research on and application of computational linguistics in the Arabic language in areas such as natural language processing (NLP) and machine translation (MT). There are problems and challenges facing Arabic in these areas, 15 but there is a good progress achieved so far.

Bibliography A Dictionary of Modern Linguistic Terms. Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1983. ҵAbd al-AzƯz, M. “.KDৢƗ‫ގ‬iৢ al-‫ޏ‬$UDEL\ya al-mu‫ގ‬ƗৢLUD,” (Characteristics of Contemporary Arabic) al-LisƗn al-ҵArabƯ 45 (1998): 143-163. ҵAbd al-Rahman, A. Lughatuna wa Al-‫ۉ‬ayƗt (Our Language and Life). 2nd edition. Cairo: 'ƗU al-Ma‫ޏ‬Ɨrif, 1971. ҵAbd al-TawZƗb, R. Fiqh al-ҵ$rabiyya (Arabic Linguistics). Cairo: al-KhanjƯ, 1980. Al-AntakƯ, M. DirƗsƗt fƯ fiqh al-lugha (Studies in Arabic Linguistics). Beirut: DƗr al-sharq al-‫ޏ‬ArabƯ, 1969. Al-Fayৢal, S.R. al-Mushkila al-lughawiyya al-‫ޏ‬Arabiyya (The Arabic Linguistic Problem). Tripoli: Gross Press, 1992. Al-MubƗrak, M. Fiqh al-lugha wa-kha‫܈‬ƗҴi‫ ܈‬al-ҵ$UDEL\\D (Linguistics and the characteristics of Arabic). Damascus: Syrian Arabic Academy, 1964. Al-ৡDOLK, S. )Ư fiqh al-lugha (Arabic Linguistics). Beirut: 'ƗU al-ҵIlm lil-0DOƗ\Ưn, 1983. 15

See Izwaini, 2011.

46

Chapter Two

Al-SamarrƗ’iy, I. Muҵjam wa dirƗsa fƯ al-ҵArabiyya al-muҵƗ‫܈‬ira (A Lexicon and Study of Contemporary Arabic). Beirut: Librarie du Liban, 2000. Al-SamarrƗ‫ޏ‬Ư, I. “0D‫ޏ‬a lughati al-ৢahƗfa” (The Language of Journalism). In Nadwat al-izdiwajiyya fƯ al-lugha al-ҵArabiyya (Proceedings of the Symposium on Diglossia in Arabic), 197-204. Amman: Jordan Arabic Academy, 1988. Al-SuynjtƯ, J. Hamҵ al-hawƗmiҵ. Kuwait: DƗr al-buতnjth al-‫ޏ‬ilmiya, 1980. Al-ZajjƗjy, A. A. ‫ۉ‬XUnjI al-maҵƗnƯ (Particles of Meanings). Amman: Mu’ssasat al-risala wa-GƗU al-‫ގ‬amal, 1984. Al-YƗzijy, I. Lughat al-jarƗҴid (Language of the Newspapers). Compiled and edited by NazƯr Cabbnjd. Beirut: Marnjn ‫ޏ‬Abnjd Publishing, 1984. Aziz, Y. “Existential Sentences in Arabic-English Translation,” Meta 40: 1 (1995): 47-53. Aziz, Y. A Contrastive Grammar of English and Arabic. Mosul: University of Mosul Press, 1989. Badawi, E. Mustawayat al-ҵ$UDEL\\D al-muCDVLUDKIƯMisr (Levels of Cotemprary Arabic in Egypt). 2nd HGLWLRQ&DLUR'ƗU$O-Salam, 2011. Bakalla, M. Arabic Culture through its Language and Literature. London: Kegan Paul, 1984. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/104144/Chad/54925/Lan guages#ref516639, accessed September 28, 2014. Fehri, A. F. A Lexicon of Linguistic Terms. Beirut: 'ƗU al-kitƗb al-jadƯd, 2009. Ferguson, C. “Diglossia,” Word 15 (1959): 325-340. HassƗn, T. Al-Lugha al-ҵ$UDEL\\D: maҵanƗhƗ wa-mabnƗhƗ (The Arabic Language: its Semantics and Structures). Cairo: al-+D\‫ގ‬a al-0Dৢriyya al-‫ޏ‬Ɨmma lil-KitƗb, 1979. Holes, C. Modern Arabic: Structures, Functions and Varieties. London: Longman, 1995. Ibn Manznjr, M. LisƗn al-ҵ$UDE Dictionary. 3rd ed. Beirut: 'ƗU ,ত\Ɨ’ al-Turath al-‫ޏ‬$UDEƯ, 1999. Izwaini, S. “Translation and Linguistic Recycling in Arabic,” Babel: revue internationale de la traduction 60: 4 (2015): 478-513. Izwaini, S. “Linguistic Challenges for Arabic Machine Translation,” Turjuman 20:2 (2011): 75-107. Khalil, A. A Contrastive Grammar of English and Arabic. 2nd edition. Amman: Jordan Book Center, 2010. Mustafa, I. ,‫ۊ‬yƗҴ al-na‫ۊ‬w (Reviving Arabic Grammar). Cairo: Translation and Publishing Committee, 1951.

A General Outline of the Arabic Language

47

Nahar, H. Al-AsƗs fƯ fiqh al-lugha al-ҵ$UDEL\\D wa-arnjmƗtihƗ (The Arabic Language and its Origins). Irbid: 'ƗU al-Amal, 2005. Stetkevych, J. The Modern Arabic Literary Language: Lexical and Stylistic Developments. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2006. Versteegh, K. The Arabic Language. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. Wright, W. A Grammar of the Arabic Language. Vol. 2., 3rd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Zaghoul, M. “Diglossia in Arabic: Investigating Solutions,” Anthropological Linguistics 22: 5 (1980): 201-217.

CHAPTER THREE ISLAMIC SPAIN AFTER THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY FLORINDA RUIZ

Introduction From the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries the socio-political reality of Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula underwent a series of radical changes. Progressively, but at different times in different regions and under different circumstances, their culture was drastically reconfigured by the southward advance of Christian territorial conquests and military supremacy. Over the course of four centuries their Hispano-Islamic identity was forcibly transformed from 1) being free inhabitants of their own independent Islamic kingdoms to 2) becoming Muslim subjects (Mudejars) of newly created Christian states to 3) living in those kingdoms as compulsory converts, who practiced Islam as crypto-Muslims (Moriscos) in marginalized communities under the scrutiny of the Inquisition, to 4) being finally expelled from all regions of Spain in the early seventeenth century. By the end of the thirteenth century, the map of Islamic Spain had, for the most part, already turned into a jigsaw of scattered Mudejar communities, who continued the practice of Islam under various levels of restrictions and protections granted by their new Christian monarchs. Only the Kingdom of Granada remained, surviving as the last autonomous Islamic state for two more centuries until its military defeat and surrender to the kingdom of Castile in 1492. From this point on, Muslim subjects, many of whom had been relocated from their native cities to other lands across Spain, were doomed to a catastrophic end played out in two main phases. The first phase started with the decree on converting all Muslim subjects of Granada and the Kingdom of Castile in the 1500s, followed by similar impositions across other peninsular territories in the following

50

Chapter Three

years. The royal proclamations to enforce conversion served also as a tool to eliminate the rights previously granted to Mudejar communities in the charters of their own surrendered lands, as well as the rights that were stipulated for Granada’s Muslims in the peace settlement of 1492. Within one century, the communities of forced converts, or Moriscos, who struggled to preserve Islam in their lives against increasing challenges, entered a second and final phase in which they endured different levels of persecution culminating in a point of total elimination: the decree of expulsion from the peninsula, enacted between 1609 and 1614. This critical period in the history of Spain can be studied from different but complementary perspectives. We will approach it through the lens of the Muslim community rather than through the larger scope of the history of Spain. We will examine how peninsular Muslims became a vulnerable minority steadily exposed to increasing rejection by the ruling powers, leading to the deterioration of their social wellbeing. The last four centuries of Islamic culture and society in Spain can be characterized as a period of constant reconfiguration. Such transformation had multiple physical and cultural layers, both imposed by Christian rulers with the goal of effacing the practice of Islam, and self-inflicted by Muslim subjects with the opposite goal of maintaining that very identity. One cannot explore how their liberty was compromised and their culture catastrophically endangered under the new Christian jurisdiction without looking at the succession of political developments that prompted their struggle and accompanied the reconfiguration, and ultimately the destruction, of their world. Throughout the years, Christian and Muslim communities had shared a homeland with different degrees of interaction (economic interdependence, political negotiations, intellectual exchanges, evolving alliances and warfare, competing and complimentary trade interests, cautious acceptance, cultural contamination, mutual attraction, surrenders, treaties, abuses…) but always with an accepting notion of the existence of “the other” in a land that each considered their own. In the following pages, we will examine how the concept and acceptance of “the other” was drastically transformed as their spatial proximity was changed.

Fragmentation and conquests of al-Andalus The centuries-old coexistence between Muslims and Christians had given Spain a very different character from the new states emerging in the rest of Europe that lacked the essential Muslim component which made the Iberian Peninsula an exception. Thus, the expanding Christian forces of

Islamic Spain after the Thirteenth Century

51

Iberia set out to build a national identity whose very nature and constituting self-definition was to be founded in the rejection of and clear separation from that “other”. But inevitably, Spain was built both with and against its own Islamic component. The small, mountainous northern regions of the peninsula, largely untouched by Muslim forces since 711, had maintained a Christian identity and a way of life that had grown stronger over the centuries, not without external influences and support from Christian kingdoms across the Pyrenees. At the close of the tenth century, the Muslim city of Cordoba and Christian Leon had become equally important and competing cities within their respective regions and cultures. Alfonso VI’s Christian conquest of Toledo in 1085 soon marked a point of no return in the evolving map of a shrinking Islamic Iberia, with a Castilian frontier now well established as far south as the Tagus River in the middle of the peninsula [Map 1]. The southern section of Iberia was divided into numerous ܑƗҵifas, independent Muslim kingdoms which were often fighting against one another, at the mercy of external political influences and aid from North African tribes—first the Almoravids and then the Almohads who overtook them. The influence and power that the great Caliphate of Cordoba had once enjoyed were long gone. The eastern portion of Islamic Spain (Sharq al-Andalus), which once comprised most of the Mediterranean coastal lands, the Balearic Islands, and several neighboring interior regions, had by the close of the twelfth century been pushed south of Tortosa after Alfonso I took Zaragoza in 1118 and created the kingdom of Aragon. Valencia and Murcia had become, under Almoravid and Almohad rule, two important Muslim capitals. The strategic position of Valencia in the middle of the Mediterranean coast, with its thriving economy and cultural Islamic life, had made it an ideal destination for many Spanish Muslims who needed to relocate as one land after another fell to Christian control. Additionally, it became a welcoming region for North African Muslim migrants and merchants, who encountered no problems of adaptation in a city whose large population had maintained Arabic as the main language of interaction in daily life. But its flourishing economy, based on innovative agricultural practices and its profitable strategic position, also made it an attractive objective in the plans of expansion of Jaime I the Conqueror, new king of Aragon. The year 1212 signaled the beginning of the decline of al-Andalus in the Iberian Peninsula, which would continue throughout the thirteenth century. At the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, or battle of al-Uqab, the Christian troops of King Alfonso VIII of Castile, Pedro II of Aragon, and Sancho VII of Navarre, defeated the Almohad rulers [Map 2]. The

52

Chapter Three

campaign was enthusiastically supported as a crusade by Pope Innocent III, who attempted, without much success, to summon the French nobility to join the “crusade” of native peninsular troops. The battle became a successful national enterprise with the participation of most of the Christian kingdoms, a soli Hispani army, against “the other”. The defeat of the ruling Almohad caliph was a devastating blow to the geographic extent, influence, and cohesion of the Almohad Empire in the peninsula, now weakened and divided into yet more ܑƗҴifa city-states. In the southwest, the new ruler Yusuf II, besides defending against the threat from the Christian north, was also forced to protect the new Almohad capital, Seville, from southern maritime attacks by the North African Banu Marin tribes, for which he commanded the construction of the great Gold Tower of Seville to block entrance to the city by the Guadalquivir River. The Almohad dynasty vanished after Yusuf’s death in 1224 and new internal rivalries among different local ܑƗҴifa divisions resurfaced throughout alAndalus, which became even weaker and more politically fragmented. Thereafter, beyond the crumbling western territories, only three new Islamic kingdoms had any significant power in the east of the peninsula: Murcia (ruled by Ibn Hud), Valencia (ruled by Zayyan ben Mardanis), and Granada (ruled by %DQƯ al-Aতmar.) Kings Alfonso IX of Leon, Fernando III of Castile, and Jaime I of Aragon immediately took full advantage of the collapse of Almohad power. During the following three decades, nearly all Muslim territories in the Iberian Peninsula fell in a grand sweep under the control of Christian states. Jaime I of Aragon was able to secure Papal funding whenever his wars could qualify as crusades against Muslim rebellions, but he also gathered the support of Sancho VI, king of Navarre, the collaboration of military religious orders such as the Knights Templar, and his vassals’ compulsory military service 1. Jaime I’s campaign to appropriate Aragon’s neighboring Muslim lands began by testing his naval power and taking control of the Balearic Islands in the 1230s. Within a few years, his fleet imposed a two-year siege on the city of Valencia, now weakened by the post-Almohad ܑƗҴLID control of ZayyƗn ben Mardanis, who finally surrendered in 1238. Jaime’ territorial expansion then moved southward toward Murcia, which fell to the crown of Aragon in 1266. Simultaneously, in western al-Andalus, the Muslim territories of Extremadura, bordering Seville, and the southern frontier with Portugal, were swiftly conquered by Alfonso IX of Leon between 1229 and 1230. Fernando III, who eventually became king of both Leon and Castile, 1

Soldevila, 2007.

Islamic Spain after the Thirteenth Century

53

managed in 1236 to conquer Cordoba, the former Umayyad capital and center of Islamic intellectual life during the preceding five centuries. Immediately after its surrender, the city’s Grand Mosque was consecrated as Cordoba’s cathedral and the stolen iconic bells of the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, which had been kept in the mosque since Almanzor’s northern campaign in 997, were returned to northern Spain. The conquest of Seville followed in 1248 after a grueling fifteen-month siege from the Guadalquivir River. King Fernando’s initial conditions required all its Muslim inhabitants to evacuate the city where their ancestors had lived for five centuries. It was in Seville, the former seat of Almohad rule, where the king of Castile settled his court from that moment on [Map 3]. The spatial transformation, evacuations, and forced relocations that took place after the conquest of Seville were replicated across the peninsula and characterized the life of Muslim communities during the following three centuries until the final expulsion. The overwhelming significance of these conquests was not lost to the poet Abnj al-BaqƗ‫ ގ‬ar-RundƯ, who in 1267 recorded in his famous elegy the profound despair and sorrowful resignation on the cultural emptiness and looming destiny of the fallen Muslim cities after the forceful exodus: […] Ask Valencia what became of Murcia, And where is Játiva, or where is Jaén? Where is Cordoba, the seat of great learning, And how many scholars of high repute remain there? And where is Seville, the home of mirthful gatherings On its great river, cooling and brimful with water? These cities were the pillars of the country: Can a building remain when the pillars are missing? The white wells of ablution are weeping with sorrow, As a lover does when torn from his beloved: They weep over the remains of dwellings devoid of Muslims, Despoiled of Islam, now peopled by infidels! Those mosques have now been changed into churches, Where the bells are ringing and crosses are standing. Even the mihrabs weep, though made of cold stone, Even the minbars sing dirges, though made of wood! Oh heedless one, this is fate's warning to you: If you slumber, Fate always stays awake. […] 2

2

Fletcher, 1992: 129-130.

54

Chapter Three

Granada, an independent Islamic state By the mid-thirteenth century, while other Muslims became subjects of Christian kingdoms (Mudejars), only the kingdom established by Muতammad ibn Ynjsuf ibn Naৢr, known also as Ibn-al-Aতmar, around the city of Granada, remained an independent Islamic state. He had become known as Muতammad I, the founder of the Nasrid dynasty, who started the construction of the Alhambra Palace over the site of an old fort strategically situated atop the city. Facing the unstoppable victories of Fernando III of Castile and Jaime I of Aragon, Muতammad I had even cooperated in Fernando III’s conquests in exchange for guarantees to preserve Granada as the one pillar left in the crumbling building of Spanish Islam, which, although still an autonomous Islamic state, became a vassal of Castile for the next two centuries until its demise. Muতammad I’s negotiations had led to the surrender in 1246 of the city of Jaén to Castile in exchange for a 20-year truce, which obliged the kingdom of Granada to pay an annual tribute and even to provide military aid in Christian campaigns against other nearby Muslim territories. The same agreement forced him to participate with 500 troops in the 1248 conquest and siege of Seville and continued in effect under the rule of Fernando III’s son, Alfonso X, whom Muতammad I also helped in the conquest of Niebla. The Islamic kingdom of Granada occupied the southern mountainous regions of the peninsula and extended along the coastal lands, including the strategic cities of Malaga and Almería [MAP 4]. It had a large population due to the influx of displaced Muslim refugees from conquered Iberian lands and the arrival of Berber mercenaries from North Africa, who formed the bulk of its efficient army. The region was protected by an intricate network of mountains, watchtowers, fortresses, and fortress towns, such as Ronda, along its frontier, and by the aid of the North African Banu Marin tribe (the Marinid dynasty) across its shores, which maintained control of Gibraltar. But the Marinid interventions in support of the Nasrids against Christian advances ended after suffering a complete defeat at the hands of Castile in the battle of Rio Salado in 1340. Nevertheless, even after Algeciras fell under Christian control and Gibraltar was captured, Granada and its coastal cities of Almería and Malaga benefited from and contributed luxury products such as silk, sugar, and paper to a flourishing trade network of Italian Genoese merchants that connected numerous cities from Valencia to Lisbon. Despite areas of poor soil, its powerful economy was both agricultural and industrial, with factories that also exported paper and silk throughout Europe. However, as

Islamic Spain after the Thirteenth Century

55

a lucrative “protectorate” of Castile, the kingdom was forced to exact from its own inhabitants high levels of taxation to continue paying the price of peace with its Christian neighbors. The increasingly heavy tributes owed to Christian states eventually became a source of internal discontent, divisions, and revolts. The Nasrid dynasty, although plagued by numerous and violent internal feuds, ruled with competent diplomatic leaders until the early fifteenth century and developed its thriving economy in a Muslim society graced with rich artistic and intellectual life. Castile’s involvement in Europe’s Hundred Year War in the 1300s and its efforts to be at the forefront of newly developing European nations kept the Christian monarchs away, at least temporarily, from heavy intervention in Spain’s last Islamic state which, after all, was producing great revenues in taxation. Despite periods of turbulent relations with the Christian north, Muslim rulers took advantage of the new power struggles between Castile’s monarchy and its nobility, and the constant confrontations for succession to the throne: first that of Alfonso X the Learned (son of Fernando III) and later the civil strife between the successors of Alfonso XI, Pedro I, and Enrique II de Trastámara in 1370. Without real political or military power, Muতammad V of Granada (1354-1391) maintained a long period of relative peace by means of evolving diplomatic maneuvers in support of the most advantageous Christian candidate. Both Yusuf I and his son Muতammad V were responsible for the construction of the magnificent Alhambra Palace. Even King Pedro the Cruel, whose Christian court was now settled in Seville, requested in 1364 the collaboration of Granada’s architects for the construction of his own palace, the Alcazar of Seville, where one can still find in its tiled walls the Nasrid motto “LƗ ghƗlib illƗ AllƗh” (There is no victor but Allah). The historian, poet, philosopher, physician, and several times vizier of the court of Muতammad V, Ibn al-Kha৬Ưb (1313-1374), was the last important scholar and scientist in the history of al-Andalus. His many works on the history of Islam in the west and his chronicles on the history of Granada constitute an essential and direct source of information about al-Andalus and the Nasrid kingdom, its peoples, its politics, and its customs. Ibn al-Kha৬Ưb and his protégé and successor as court poet and vizier, Ibn Zamrak (1333-1393), had a major role in the completion of the finest parts of the Alhambra palace and composed qa‫܈‬Ưdas (odes) to commemorate state events, as well as nawriyyƗt and raw‫ڲ‬iyyƗt, floral and garden poetry, with their full poems and hundreds of verses used to decorate many areas of the palace.



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masters. But the resilient Mudejar communities responded with an active and successful determination to maintain and transmit their Islamic principles, identity, and cultural traditions under the leadership of numerous active faqƯhs. Following the advice of Islamic authorities overseas, these faqƯhs and TƗ‫ڲ‬Ưs began to adopt different survival strategies to meet the needs of a community under threat of extinction and worked to keep strong ties with Muslim Granada and other communities in North Africa. Since Muslim subjects were permitted to continue practicing their religion and sharia law in some regions more freely than others, certain areas experienced a tremendous increase in their Mudejar population, such as Valencia and Aragon, where many displaced Muslims from conquered lands resettled. This caused the resurgence of flourishing professional communities of much-needed notaries, accountants, scribes, legal experts, translators, religious figures, scholars, mathematicians, doctors, and caretakers who moved easily between languages and were skilled in dealing with their Christian neighbors. In Valencia, even two hundred years after its conquest, Muslims accounted for 1/3 of the population. In other areas, such as the fertile Ebro Valley of Aragon, the dense and homogeneous Muslim population comprised prosperous farmers, artisans, and merchants who carried on a peaceful coexistence with their Christian neighbors, though not without occasional frictions and discrepancies. 3 By the mid-fifteenth century, they were considered an important source of fiscal revenue for the crown. Generally, however, their integration was of a socioeconomic nature with partial acculturation, limited assimilation, no real religious conversion, and either compulsory or intentional segregation in differentiated urban and agricultural spaces. Relations between Christian and Muslim populations could deteriorate quickly due to any number of circumstances, including international events. For example, an outburst of violence in Valencia in 1455 followed a papal call for a new crusade against “infidels” in response to the siege of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks. Despite the temporary successes of Valencia and Aragon, in most regions, particularly Castile, the promised levels of coexistence between Christians and Mudejars never truly materialized. Instead, the latter experienced different levels of discrimination and were constantly pressured to alter their Muslim practices. One of the possible origins of the term “Mudejar” stems from the Arabic triconsonantal root d-j-n, which at the basic semantic level denotes “to remain, to stay, to get used to 3

Miller, 2008; and Meyerson, 1990.

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something, to be become habituated or accustomed”. Its participle mudajjan, and the related form mudajin, means “he who has stayed or remained” and can express the concept of “domesticated and tamed”. The term clearly indicates an imposed condition of “otherness” for having remained in someone else’s space and land and/or of being the tamed “other” in that land. Within this context, the term “aljamƗҵ”, which derives from the Arabic word “jamƗҵa”, denotes “a group of people, a gathering, assemblage or coming together” and is already documented in the thirteenth century as referring to entire Mudejar communities, their physical location in the city, and the administrative entity in charge of collecting Mudejar taxes for the crown. For Christians it represented in Spain the concept of a “community of others” within which the laws and traditions of Islam were partially kept and protected. For Muslims, it symbolized the continuity and permanence of Islam in a Mudejar community within a segregated Christian city. The faqƯh was its authority figure, the representative and conveyor of all knowledge in the practice of Islam.

Granada’s fall In the fifteenth century, several factors had also contributed to Granada’s decline. The Christian kingdoms of the peninsula finally managed to solve their mutual and internal conflicts and were free to focus on the Muslim kingdom. Moreover, the 1469 marriage of Isabel of Castile and Fernando of Aragon, with the subsequent union of their kingdoms in 1474, turned the Iberian Peninsula into a powerful and unified Spain, which now sought to compete and rise among Christian European nations as a powerful religious and political leader. Granada, thus, seemed like the one abandoned piece of a former puzzle whose other pieces had already been tossed away, and the Queen and King were ready to complete the Reconquest project by discarding it too. Granada itself, with the end of Marinid hegemony in North Africa, had lost its single source of military support. By then, the tribute paid to Castile had risen to three times beyond the sum paid by Christian territories, which resulted in widespread internal discontent among its Muslim inhabitants. As a consequence, numerous rival factions contended over opposing ways to deal with Castile until king Mulay-Hasan decided in 1481 to stop paying the city’s tribute to Castile. Castile responded by taking the city of Antequera and followed with an attack on Granada proper in 1482. The ten-year war that ensued was staged throughout the Muslim kingdom over a series of sieges, and one city after another fell to the

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Christian armies. In 1492, after an eight-month siege, Granada, with a Muslim population completely impoverished by the economic cost of the war, succumbed to Castile and the Catholic kings Fernando and Isabel signed the surrender agreements with King Muতammad XII (Abnj ‫ޏ‬Abdallah or Boabdil) son of Mulay-Hasan. For Granada’s Muslim upper class and aristocratic families, emigration to the Maghrib was an immediate consequence, which was encouraged and facilitated in order to remove the possibility of organized Muslim opposition to new Christian authorities. Many families relocated within the peninsula and joined the vibrant Mudejar population of coastal regions such as Valencia and Murcia. According to the Capitulations, the terms of the treaty that followed the 1492 surrender of the city, those who decided to stay were promised, as in the case of Mudejars in other cities previously conquered, the right to continue their practice of Islam, to observe the customs of their culture [IMAGE 1], to retain the use of their language, and to maintain the legal institutions (sharia) that regulated their society and their judges (TƗ‫ڲ‬Ưs). However, shortly after the conquest of Granada, the situation was changing radically everywhere else in the peninsula and anti-Islamic prejudice manifested itself openly under Christian rule. The expulsion of Muslims from the kingdom of Portugal in 1497 was largely due to Castile’s insistence at the hands of Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros of Toledo. Castile’s, or rather Cisneros’, interference in the matter exhibited the crown’s future intentions toward its own Muslim community in and outside of Granada. 4 For now, the Catholic monarchs had to handle the serious economic blow that the city experienced after the 1492 expulsion of the Jewish community and needed to develop a different approach for their Muslim subjects while, at the same time, aspired to construct a homogeneous society in line with the rest of the European monarchies. Thus, 1498, an influx of numerous Christian immigrants, eager to benefit from Granada’s Jewish exodus and Muslim emigration, were sent to populate the city. Their arrival brought a dramatic redistribution of Granada’s living space into two separate zones that asserted the “otherness” of the Muslim community and clearly infringed their freedoms. Under the new regulations, Christians were to live within the limits of the city and Muslim families were concentrated in the exterior area of the Albaicin quarter. Others took the initiative to relocate far from the urban centers, in the Alpujarras area, where they would be less disturbed by Christian authorities. Resentment and fear characterized the 4

Harvey, 2005: 15-21.

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new modus vivendi in the city and tensions in Christian-Mudejar relations mounted. Soon the missionary and moderate policies of Granada’s first archbishop Hernando de Talavera, who faithfully implemented the terms and rights established in the Capitulations, were not considered effective enough by Cardinal Cisneros, whose priority was achieving rapid conversions instead of peaceful coexistence with “the other.” Cardinal Cisneros first decided to intervene in the matter by incarcerating any Muslims whose forebears had been Christians (elches, as they were called) for failing to return to the Catholic faith. The great social unrest that ensued among the Muslim inhabitants of the Albaicin immediately evolved into armed strife in which one of Cisneros’ bailiffs was killed. By 1499, after the imprisonment and brutal punishment of numerous Muslims, their leaders were forced to hand over more than 5,000 religious Arabic texts, which were publicly destroyed in a bonfire at the Plaza de Bibarrambla. The uproar spread rapidly throughout the region’s Mudejar communities, who rose up, resulting in the first Rebellion of the Alpujarras. The uprisings were put down between 1500 and 1501 in a violent military campaign with many casualties and large numbers of prisoners sold later into slavery. The Alpujarras revolt became a convenient pretext used immediately by the Catholic monarchs to revoke the initial terms of the Capitulations of Granada with new restrictive dispensations that very soon would alter the lives of Mudejar subjects in all other regions and eventually served to eliminate Islam from the Iberian peninsula. Under the New Capitulations for Granada of February 26, 1501, all inhabitants were to completely abandon Islamic law, adhere to the laws of the Christian kingdom, and convert. Muslims could either accept baptism and remain in the city, refuse baptism and become slaves, or leave the peninsula altogether (a risky proposition given the dangers involved in reaching the coast). Thus, the new judicial order brought forth the CryptoIslamic social entity of forced new converts, derogatorily referred to as Moriscos 5, who tried to maintain in secret their former ways of life. For now, in Granada, the traditional Islamic dress was still not banned [IMAGE 2], baths were permitted, and movement within Christian territories still allowed.

5 The derogatory name appears for the first in a text of the City Hall of Baza of September 2, 1521, which forbids innkeepers to serve wine to Moriscos.

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Forcible conversions and life in crypto-Islamic Spain The “success” of the New Capitulations of Granada turned into a new Royal Decree that was proclaimed for Castile and Leon on February 12, 1502. Thereafter, despite the opposition of some members of the aristocracy, new edicts of forcible conversions came in swift succession over all other territories [IMAGE 3]. In Aragon/Valencia, where the crown’s protection of its larger Mudejar communities had prevailed longer, the edict of conversion appeared in 1526-1527. Eventually, all mosques were turned into Christian churches and the life of Muslims in their native land was changed forever: Islam was officially criminalized. From that point on, Spain’s large minority of converted New Christians, or Moriscos, scattered throughout the Iberian Peninsula, fell under the jurisdiction and scrutiny of the Inquisition but continued the practice of Islam in secret, while paying lip-service to their enforced Christianity. In Aragon and Valencia, Muslims managed to protect their Islamic identity longer than in the rest of the peninsula. Initially, they were able to take advantage of the nobility’s desire to oppose the rules and institutions of Castile’s crown, which local nobles regarded as an imposition of power against their regional interest and independence. Following the late edict of forced baptisms, a pact was reached by which new converts were expected to abandon the use of their language and traditional attire only after a grace period of ten years and could not be tried by the Inquisition for a period of forty years. The edict of conversion expected them to adjust and learn the Catholic faith and Christian practice at the hands of appointed clergy and thus avoid for a longer period the monetary penalties set everywhere for failure to attend church services or to have memorized, after the grace period, the key Catholic prayers. Throughout the century, in different regions, the pressure from Christian authorities to control Morisco communities and erase any sign of Islamic “otherness” became unbearable, even more so following the visit that emperor Charles V paid to Granada in 1526, after which new restrictive measures were added. In the following years, Muslims were allowed to move only within Christian interior territories, always away from coastal lands, and they were forbidden from emigrating overseas for fear they might give crucial information to their Berber or Ottoman Turkish counterparts. This decision was reinforced after the attempt by the Ottoman Empire and Suleiman the Magnificent to capture the city of Vienna, Austria, in 1529. Although the siege of Vienna was not successful, Suleiman’s venture was perceived as another Islamic threat and

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an attempt at expansion by the Ottoman Empire into a part of Europe also ruled by Charles V. In Charles’ new dispensations the list of forbidden un-Christian activities affected every aspect of the “other’s” daily life. Not only were Muslims geographically segregated but also, for both communities, the official condemnation of many forms of contact and behavior resulted in a deeper dissociation between them. Under the penalty of excommunication, it was prohibited for Granada’s Christians to rent city space for gatherings and celebrations of Muslim families. Muslims were expected to gradually change their traditional dress and women, in particular, were strictly forbidden to wear the veil. At the moment of baptism, they were obliged to take the name of a Christian saint. A Christianization plan such as the one carried out in the Americas/Indies was partially implemented, but the Spanish church faced serious problems in recruiting the manpower to supply adequate evangelization to so many areas of the world 6. Moriscos could be prosecuted for refusing to eat pork or drink wine, for performing ‫ۊ‬alƗl slaughtering, for using henna or, in some regions later on, for gathering at celebrations to sing zambras or leylas [IMAGE 3]. Intermarriage between faiths became severely punished. They were forced to keep their doors open on Sundays and on Christian holidays to show that they were not working inside. Other prohibitions, such as the use of baths on Friday and Sunday, were shrewdly intended to impede the ritual purification necessary to engage in Islamic prayers. Additionally, former Muslims were forced to finance with a special tax, the farda, the military services provided by the crown to protect its coasts from North African corsairs’ raids, which often enlisted the help of of former Andalusi refugees residing there. As the use of Arabic also became forbidden with further proclamations and bans, the loss of its knowledge among the next generations became inevitable. But a new form of communication came about with the birth of the aljamía (from al-`ajamiyyah), the Hispano-Arabic dialect of the sixteenth century, which used Arabic characters to transcribe Castilian, or other Romance languages of the peninsula, mixed with many Arabic loan words, expressions, and structures. The term itself highlights the singularity and the sentiment of “otherness” that defined the Morisco community. The word aҵjamí referred to a “non-Arab foreigner” and the related feminine adjective aҵjamiyya, when applied to the word “language”, indicated a form of speech different from Arabic, alҵarabiyya, or “algarabía” in old Spanish, the term to refer to the language from the 6

García-Arenal, 1992.

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west. However, the very existence and vitality of this language suggests a partial level of acculturation within the reality of sixteenth-century Spain, where Moriscos could no more express themselves correctly in proper Arabic but developed a creative mechanism to retain and transmit their new Muslim identity. It produced great numbers of clandestine literary and religious texts, medical and esoteric treatises, poetry, travel guides, translations, short novels and legends, historical narratives, and various kinds of records often found centuries later in hidden spaces amid the remnants of old Muslim ruins. 7 Thus, although pure knowledge of Islam had become weaker, the tenets of Islam continued to be secretly taught in a productive written mode despite the prohibition against its instruction. 8 The advice given to Moriscos since the fatwa of 1504 (dated Rajab 910) by the Mufti of Oran 9 stated that Spanish Muslims could apply to their situation the principle of taqiyya, the practice of dissimulation or concealment, using various tactics. Previously, orthodox Muslim scholars had advised strict hijra, or emigration, from Christian lands to any country ruled by Muslim authorities while they were still able to leave. 10 But given that Spanish Muslims, subjected to persecution and oppression, were now unable to escape the peninsula, this religious document spelled out in detail the modifications that persecuted Spanish Muslims could introduce in their practice of Islam given their extraordinary circumstances. The mufti indicated that “those who hold fast to their religion just as somebody might clutch to himself a burning ember” 11 were allowed to make up at night the prayers they had to omit during the day and to simply wipe themselves clean when ritually pure water was not available. They could eat pork, drink wine or bow down to idols as long as their true intention was turned to Allah and the rejection of sin was sincere in their heart. If forced to do so, they could publicly deny the Prophet 0XতDPPDG by intentionally mispronouncing his name as “Mamad”, as Christians were known to do. To conclude his advice, the mufti expressed his hope “that Allah may bring it about that Islam may be worshiped openly without ordeals, tribulations or fears, thanks to the success of the future attack of the noble Turks.” 12

7

Benlabbah and Chalkha, 2010: 368-396; Montaner Frutos, 1988: 313-326; and Barceló and Labarta, 2016. 8 Wiegers, 1994. 9 Harvey, 2005: 60-69. 10 Van Koningsveld and Wiegers, 1996; and Harvey, 1990: 55-67. 11 Harvey, 2005: 60. 12 Ibid., 63.

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Insurrection and radical escalation of coercive measures Although a habit of more-or-less-practical tolerance was achieved depending on the rigor with which different regions applied the regulations imposed with each new edict of conversion, by the middle of the sixteenth century the political, social, and religious scene of Spain changed dramatically with the new king, Philip II, in 1554 and the impact of the numerous reforms that were issued by the European ecumenical Council of Trent in 1563. Following the ideals of the Counter-Reformation, the council revised the teachings of Catholic doctrine and traditions, issued numerous condemnations against what the Church considered Protestant heresies, and introduced further disciplinary legislation. Philip II succeeded his father with the zealous desire to assert himself as a strict Catholic leader defending the new Tridentine dogmas against Protestant European nations, supporting related Inquisitorial trials in major Spanish cities, and fueling the evangelization of the Americas. Accordingly, in the new monarch’s agenda of rigor in doctrine, the Morisco population was regarded as an insubordinate and heretic community of unbelivers whose forbidden conduct was more in need of serious disciplinary measures than further evangelization. Philip II’s new Royal Decree of 1567 curtailed their freedoms further with a clear intention to wipe out the last traces of crypto-Islamic practices. Their oppression became so radical, particularly in Granada, that even influential converted noblemen such as Don Francisco de Muley y Núñez submitted to the king in 1567 a written petition in their defense arguing that the language and cultural traits of the Morisco minority were in no way incompatible with the customs of Catholic communities sharing the same territory. 13 The severe repression of Muslim customs in Granada led in 1568 to a second insurrection of the Morisco population of the Alpujarras with the aid of the Ottoman governor of Algiers. The leader of the rebellion, the Morisco Fernando de Valor, adopted the Arabic name %DQƯ Umayya—reminiscent of the past glories during the centuries of Umayyad Muslim Iberia. Fearing an increase in the support that Muslim rebels might receive from Ottoman Turks or from other enemies of the crown, Philip II dispatched his half brother Don Juan de Austria, who engaged in a two-year brutal suppression of the revolt with his best military resources. Towns near Granada in the Alpujarras region, such as Galera, which alone suffered 2,500 deaths, were completely ravaged and later repopulated with settlers from Leon and La Mancha. 13

Garrad, 1954.

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The war concluded in 1570 with the death of tens of thousands of Moriscos in the region. More than 80,000 were forcibly deported from Granada and dispersed throughout other inland Spanish territories, leaving a mere 10 to 15,000 in a highly impoverished city. 14 Vanquished Granadan Muslims were scattered all over Spain to improve their assimilation, but, in the end, all Moriscos, newly arrived or old inhabitants everywhere, became alienated and regarded as a major local and national threat. In a country with a population of about eight to nine million, the Morisco population of the sixteenth century might have been about 350,000, now unevenly distributed throughout Spanish territories. 15 The region of Valencia remained the most densely populated by Moriscos, with an estimated 135,000. 16 As they were dispersed throughout the different northern territories, particularly in Aragon, and as far north as the kingdom of Navarra, some Moriscos could avoid settling in lands that belonged to the crown or the church and opted for relocating to lands belonging to the Spanish aristocracy, who tried to defend their freedoms while exploiting them at the same time. Everywhere else the mutual perception of “the other” became tainted with a veil of fear, distrust, and suspicion, as the newly established inquisitorial districts and their agents performed inspections and encouraged secret denunciations accusing Moriscos of heretic acts or of connivance with Turkish enemies. Some noblemen, whose lands had been granted special charters and the benefit of autonomous jurisdiction, had a clear idea of the terrible economic repercussions that the loss of laborers among the Morisco workforce would have in the tributary collections of their territories and defended them against the monarchs’ impositions and the intervention of the Inquisition. The cost of an Inquisitorial trial was highly burdensome for the aristocracy as it was often accompanied by confiscations of a Muslim vassal’s property and wealth, which was redirected to finance the many costs of a trial and the salaries of the clergy who participated in it. In this scenario of conflicting interests, some Moriscos still managed to become an integral part of daily life in large urban centers such as Valencia. Their active engagement in the economy of the region is well-documented due to their extensive book-keeping practices and the records of regional Inquisitorial offices. The regions of Murcia and Extremadura also welcomed large numbers of Moriscos who had been expelled in 1571-

14

Vincent, 1970: 210-246; and Vincent, 1971.. Reglá, 1974: 60-63. 16 Lapeyre, 1959. 15

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1572 after the war in Granada. 17 Some of those ‘granadinos’, such as the group who joined the large and thriving Islamic community of the town of Hornachos, which was entirely inhabited by Moriscos, eventually arranged an exceptional mass departure to North Africa, forming the vibrant Hispano-Muslim communities of Salee and Rabat. 18 In Castile, as intense social feuding, personal revenges, massacres, and murders spread, it was clear that Christians were no longer inclined to share “their” land with “the other”, that neither the crown nor local authorities were willing to invest in the protection of the Morisco minority, who suffered the most intense social and religious persecutions. Quickly this sentiment became the national attitude against the “two-faced others” in their midst. By the end of the sixteenth century, the different strategies and measures to eradicate Islamic cultural practices among “insincere” Christian converts in reconquered lands had not produced the desired effects even after strict conversion policies had been implemented. The Morisco community was regarded as an insubordinate aberration on account of their unsatisfactory and only nominal conversion to Christianity. It seemed that after decades of secretly practicing their adherence to Islam, Muslims had become hardened to any form of Christian proselytism or to imposed regulations regardless of the consequences, except for one yet to come: complete physical ethnic eradication. In different social levels, there were plenty of arguments from all stances on how to deal with this “anomaly” or stubborn “otherness”. Philip II, now king of the entire Iberian Peninsula, initiated new discussions about the “Morisco problem” in 1581 in Lisbon during the celebration of his ascension to the throne. At that time and during the next two decades, numerous solutions to the matter were offered. Some of the most extreme ranged from proposals to send Moriscos to far away lands such as Newfoundland after castrating males in hopes they would not breed (by the Bishop of Segorbe) to recommendations to sending them away into unknown seas in scuttled ships to get rid of them by drowning (by the Prior of Calatrava) 19 . Aside from such radical suggestions, the intense political debate continued over the pursuit of more drastic disciplinary measures at the hands of an expanded Inquisitorial system, the need to improve reorientation of missionary initiatives of evangelization, or the actual possibility of expulsion. However, until his death in 1598, Philip II remained reluctant to follow the latter. At the close of the sixteenth century, the vulnerable, scattered, and small crypto-Muslim communities could pose no danger to the faith of a widespread, strong, and 17

Chacón, 1982. Sánchez Pérez, 1964; and Harvey, 2005: 369-377. 19 Harvey, 2005: 295-297. 18

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thriving Catholic majority. Their way of life and self-isolation brought about no real problems of public safety, nor did they signify any political threat to the powerful Spanish empire. However, in addition to the social impact caused by the religious reforms imposed by the Council of Trent, the combination of internal social tensions and external political factors escalated the level of social intolerance and prejudice toward Morisco communities.

Expulsion The constant threat of North African corsair attacks was coupled with rumors of Morisco complicity and machination to facilitate a new Muslim invasion of the peninsula. At the same time, the crown’s international conflicts with protestant European enemies exacerbated suspicions of further alliances and conspiracies between Morisco communities and the political agitations created by the Huguenots, the members of the Protestant Church of France, who posed a serious threat to the Catholic crown of France. Thus, the number of Inquisitorial trials against the Morisco population, which had reached its highest points in Granada after the 1568 revolt with 82.1% of cases against them, spiraled throughout the peninsula during the last two decades of the sixteenth century. 20 The impact of Inquisitorial prosecutions caused incalculable damage to the Morisco community and Spanish society at large: daily life was filled with the fear of “the other”, of possible denunciations, distrust, treason, imposition of fines, loss of property, incarceration, death, and a generalized apprehension in any form of social relations. 21 Beyond its religious goals, the Inquisition delivered the socio-political triumph that the crown had sought: to disturb any threads between and within both communities to such an extreme that the fabric of society was unalterably torn apart. A change of political climate came with the new king, Philip III, whose favorite and prime minister, the Duke of Lerma, along with the Archbishop of Valencia, Juan de Ribera, and several important members of the clergy, were determined to adopt the more radical position. With a new census that showed the Morisco population of Valencia rapidly increasing by one third, they produced demographic arguments in favor of a necessary expulsion, namely the threat of the rapid population growth among Moriscos, claiming that they could soon outnumber Christians, many of whom were in the priesthood, nunneries, military service, holy 20 21

Vincent, 1970; and Carrasco, 1992. Cardaillac, 1990.

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orders, traveling to the Indies or simply dead in battle. The demographic menace was thus added to the list of other national threats (religious, security, political, cultural, and social) already associated with the unwanted Morisco community. Only self-interest and the fear of losing economic profits from their vassals maintained the desire of a few noblemen to keep hardworking Muslims as second class fellow subjects in their lands. The General Inquisitor, Cardinal Niño de Guevara, who also opposed the petitions of expulsion, did so out of concern for the great economic losses that the measure would inflict to Inquisitorial and church revenues. Internationally, Spain was finally free from, though not successful in, its military interventions in Europe’s political conflicts: it had signed a peace treaty with James I of England in 1604 after the defeat in the war with Queen Elizabeth I and a 12-year ceasefire (1609-1621) with the Netherlands during the long Dutch revolt (1568-1648) against the rule of Roman Catholic Spain. The westward advance of the Ottoman Turks had been brought to an end after the naval expedition of 1571 and the Battle of Lepanto in Greek waters. Turkey was now distracted by its own eastern wars with other countries, and the Northern African tribes were dealing with internal civil wars. Therefore, a large fleet and numerous military resources were available to the crown to deal with national conflicts and the “Morisco problem” became the main political objective. At home, a conspiracy attempt in 1590 by Valencian Moriscos to enlist the assistance of Henry IV of France against Spain had already needed the attention of the crown, which quickly put an end to the plot, which was used once again as a pretext to justify the need for complete intolerance. Although Christendom was no longer under real military threat from the Great Turk or other Islamic countries, as the seventeenth century began a second clandestine attempt at recruiting military help from Sultan Muley Zaydan of Morocco sparked great fears of further intrigues in Valencia. Philip III used this conspiracy to put in motion the plans for expulsion that his father never carried out. The moment was ripe for drastic political action and, thus, any attempts at rebellion against harsher persecutions could be officially used as an accepted argument to declare expulsion as the only solution to bring about a swift end to the Morisco presence. At the kings’s council convened on January 2, 1602 the expulsion decision was finally reached, but the strategy to carry it out still needed previous preparatory actions, as it was feared that the larger Morisco population of Valencia could respond with violent resistance and take up arms in retaliation. It was also clear that such a large-scale operation to expel from their homeland hundreds of thousands of Morisco men,

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women, children, and the elderly presented serious political, juridical, military, logistical, and public security challenges. Accordingly, between 1603 and 1605 several edicts were issued against Moriscos bearing firearms and other weapons. The Moriscos’ true religious allegiance to Islam and their refusal to renounce Muslim rituals were presented as a dangerous and unacceptable behavior of true subjects of a Catholic empire—and therefore they could be dealt with politically as enemies and traitors. The political crime of lesae maiestatis, or treason, was finally chosen by the Spanish crown as the legal justification behind the upcoming edict of expulsion. Before the proclamation was made public, a large fleet of Spanish galleons was secretly mobilized and hidden to that effect in the Balearic Islands. The coastal and larger Morisco communities of Valencia were to be targeted first to avoid any organized opposition. Thus, the first proclamation appeared as a Royal Decree in September 22, 1609 and the preamble justified its enactment as a protection for Christian subjects of the crown who were in danger from the Morisco population: “heretics, apostates and traitors guilty of lesae maiestatis both human and divine” whose “ambassadors” had attempted to destroy the kingdom and had themselves failed to convert despite all Christian efforts to help them do so. 22 In its clauses the decree gave individuals only three days notice to make arrangements for their final departure [IMAGE 5]. Those who stayed behind would be subject to the death penalty. Initially, any children under the age of four and those of six and below who had a Christian parent could remain, as well as six families out of every one hundred Morisco households who appeared to be true converts and would be selected to stay in order to work the lands and help train future Christian settlers on how to work the mechanics of mills and the irrigation systems. Immediately, harsh deportations by sea, mostly towards Oran and Tremecén, came in quick succession. The influx of thousands of refugees from Valencia soon became more difficult than Oran could handle and many Moriscos there and everywhere fell victims of violent hostilities upon arrival on North African shores 23 [IMAGE 6]. It is calculated that more than 120,000 Moriscos (one-third of the population) departed from Valencian harbors, leaving behind about 3,000 children under seven years 22

For the official document of expulsion see García-Arenal 1996 251-255 and the version translated by the Granadan Morisco secretary and translator of peninsular documents at the service of Sultan Muley =D\GƗQ in Marrakech: 6KLEƗE al-'ƯQ Ahmad ibn 4ƗVLP al-+DMDUƯ al-$QGDOXVƯ 1ƗVLU al-'ƯQ ‘ala al-Qawn al-.ƗILUƯQ (Beirut, 1999) 118-124. 23 It is worth noticing Vicente Mestre’s 1613 depiction of the calamities (rapes, murders, thefts…) that Moriscos suffered upon arrival to Oran’s coasts [Image 6].

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of age, who were obliged to stay and were sent to other regions to be educated by priests and work for the prelates or nobles. 24 In the course of the following years, several proclamations were enacted in Andalusia, Aragon, Murcia, La Mancha, Andalusia, Castile, Extremadura, Aragon, and Catalonia, and close to 300,000 departed between 1609 and 1614. 25 By December of 1609, with a proclamation in January 1610, about 35,000 Moriscos from Andalusia and the entire town of Hornachos departed from the Seville, Cadiz, Almuñecar, Malaga, and Cartagena ports toward Morocco, where they founded strong Andalusi urban centers such as Rabat-Sallee and Tetuan. During the following months and until 1614, several expulsion edicts of various dates targeted the Morisco populations of Castile, La Mancha, and Extremadura. The new regulations differed in tenor from the first proclamation and offered the choice to make personal arrangements regarding their destination, the manner and points of departure, possible routes, and allowances in personal property that could be extracted from the peninsula. They were given between 30 to 60 days notice to prepare for departure and were expelled through France or through southern Spanish ports on route to North African coasts, Anatolia, and Ottoman Turkey, particularly Constantinople and Bursa. More than 100,000 Moriscos from Aragon and Catalonia were sent away through Navarre and the Pyrenees toward France to embark in the ports of Agde and Marseilles or from Los Alfaques in the Ebro delta in route to Tunisia. There they were able to join the networks of already settled communities of old Andalusi Muslim immigrants who had been leaving the peninsula since the eleventh century, escaping the early phases of the Christian reconquest. Some settlements, such as Testur and Zaguan, were actually founded by Andalusi refugees. The age of the children who could, and often were obliged to, stay was first raised to twelve in 1610 and to fourteen in 1611. They were to be raised by Christian families, who sometimes had captured or bought them, to be used as domestic help. By August 1611, a Valencian census informed Philip III that there were in the region about 2,450 Morisco children who had been separated from their parents. Since they would normally take the Christian last name of their owners, the trace of these children almost disappears thereafter. Finally, in 1614, the last group of Moriscos from the Valle de Ricote in Murcia, many of them well established and practicing Christians, were also expelled.

24 25

Domínguez Ortíz and Vincent, 1997. Lapeyre, 1959.

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During the expulsion process tens of thousands of Moriscos died in the journey. It is well known through several letters of warning addressed to the king from different local administrators that many Moriscos, who suffered great calamities in their new destinations, tried, and some managed, to return to their homelands and the children left behind in Spain. In fact, a 1630 Inquisitorial process against a Diego Díaz, a Castilian Morisco from Cuenca, establishes that he had already been expelled twice from the peninsula. Generally, most Morisco refugees reconstructed their lives away from their homeland and in their new Andalousi communities overseas, these Spanish Muslim exiles proudly maintained last names that indicated their Iberian origin: Garnati from Granada, Balansi from Valencia, Alakanti/Hakanti from Alicante, Saraqusti from Zaragoza, Jhinn from Jaén, Dani from Denia, al-Kundi from the word “count or leader”, and even Zbiss from the last name López/Llopis. Some were critical in the development of local agricultural economies through the production of sugar, grains, vines, cotton, olive, and cherry trees. Others engaged in the Mediterranean activities of corsair groups against the coasts of Europe. King Philip III sought to achieve at home the same Catholic homogeneity that he championed against heretics outside Spain. He perceived as a major inconsistency that a nation which was dedicating great efforts to convert large numbers of Indians to the faith would permit such an “aberration” in its own land. In the end, the crown’s actions turned out to be much more than the eradication of the Moriscos’ “aberrant” religion and culture: the elimination and purging of its members who did not fit into the newly constructed Spanish identity of pure Christian blood, religion, and customs. The decision to rid the country of its most productive population accelerated substantially the declining power, wealth, and prestige of Spain. The expulsion of a 4% of the working class resulted in a serious deficit in tax revenues from the group that contributed the most to the arcs of the nobility and the crown, with numerous bonds whose payments never materialized. The loss of such a productive workforce, in some areas more than others, caused the decline or collapse of various trades, industries, and farming, particularly the production of silk, cotton, and grains, as well as many forms of craftsmanship, the textile and tanning industries, and commerce in general. The worst impact came upon the economy of the kingdom of Aragon and Valencia, whose villages remained deserted for decades to come after more than one third of its population was expelled. The measure further altered the power and economic balance between the central government of Castile and that of the Aragon and Valencia periphery whose aristocracy received a serious

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blow to their wealth and their capacity to maintain autonomous jurisdictions. The catastrophic measure of expulsion was justified throughout centuries to come by a continued ideological campaign which equated their expulsion with the Spanish national right and duty to complete the reconquest of all Iberian territories from the hands of Muslim invaders and the mission to restore the land to their “original” Christian owners. However, after eight centuries inhabiting the peninsula (a longer period than that of the previous Roman or Visgothic presence), by the fifteenth century, acculturation was more than completed and, regardless of their religious belief, the majority of Muslims were as autochthonous Iberians as the members of Christian communities. Within one additional century, the crown managed to forcefully drive to an end a nine-century long history of Muslim presence in Iberian culture and society. From that point on, any official recollection of the period was constructed from the nationalistic perspective of a triumphant Spanish Catholic Empire and its capacity to give birth to the new artistic and literary movement known as the Spanish Golden Age. Ironically, this and the great cultural and intellectual transformations of Europe in the early modern period could not have happened without the stimulus of the Iberian historical symbiosis rooted in the fundamental influences of its Muslim past and Arabic legacy that the Spanish Catholic crown was so eager to erase and deny.

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Map 1. The Iberian Peninsula ca. 1030

Christian and Islamic territories ca.1030. Extract from The Historical Atlas by William R. Shepherd, 1926. "Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin." Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection.

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Map 2. The Iberian Peninsula ca. 1212

Christian and Islamic territories ca.1212. Extract from The Historical Atlas by William R. Shepherd, 1926. "Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin."

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Map 3. The Iberian Peninsula ca. 1360

Christian kingdoms and the kingdom of Granada ca. 1360. Extract from The Historical Atlas by William R. Shepherd, 1926. "Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin."

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Map 4. Nasrid Kingdom of Granada (1292-1492)

Approximate borders of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada and loss of territories between 1292 and 1492. Creative Commons Attribution.

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Image 1. Moriscos in Granada and the lower Albaizin, 1563.

Joris Hoefnagel, “View of Granada” 1563 in Georg Braun and Frans Hogenberg: Civitates Orbis Terrarum, 1572 (Ausgabe Beschreibung vnd Contrafactur der vornembster Stät der Welt, Köln 1582; [VD16-B7188) Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg. http://diglit.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/braun1582bd1 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joris_Hoefnagel_Granada.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Braun_Granada_UBHD.jpg

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Image 2. Morisco dress and domestic life, 1529.

Moriscos dress and costumes. "Trachtenbuch" Christoph Weiditz (1529), Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg, Hs. 22474. Bl. 103–104 Haustracht der Morisken-Mädchen / Moriske als Brotträger. http://dlib.gnm.de/item/Hs22474

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Image 3. Forcible conversion of Moriscos in Granada, 1500s.

Felipe Virgany, “Bautizo de los moriscos” (1521) Cathedral of Granada, Royal Chapel

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Image 4. Morisco music, singing, and dance, 1529.

Christoph Weiditz, "Trachtenbuch" 1529, Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg, Hs. 22474. Bl. 107–108 Der Moriskentanz Christoph Weiditz - http://dlib.gnm.de/item/Hs22474 (manipuliert, um das Buch in Doppelseiten anzuzeigen) https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=christoph+welditz+trachtenb uch&title=Special:Search&profile=default&fulltext=1&searchToken=aihft9zlwwx 6diog46m4euzlt#/media/File:Weiditz_Trachtenbuch_107-108.jpg

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Image 5. Departure of Moriscos from Valencia’s port, 1616.

Pere Oromig “Departure of Moriscos from Valencia’s port” 1616. Entidad Bancaja Collection, Caja de Ahorros de Valencia, Castellóon y Alicante. http://www.fundacionbancaja.es/cultura/coleccion/embarco-moriscos-en-el-graode-valencia.aspx https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/63/Embarco_moriscos_ en_el_Grao_de_valencia.jpg/800pxEmbarco_moriscos_en_el_Grao_de_valencia.jpg

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Image 6. Arrival of Moriscos to Oran, 1613.

Vicent Mestre, “Llegada de los Moriscos a Orán” 1613. Entidad Bancaja Collection, Caja de Ahorros de Valencia, Castellón y Alicante. http://www.fundacionbancaja.es/cultura/coleccion/llegada-de-los-moriscos-aoran.aspx

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CHAPTER FOUR A SHORT HISTORY OF ISLAMIC SCIENCE NIDHAL GUESSOUM

Introduction Over the past decade, the history of “Islamic science” has witnessed a strong renewal of interest, both at the general-public level and in the academic spheres. For instance, in January 2009 Jim Al-Khalili, a British physicist and award-winning science popularizer of Iraqi origin, presented the threepart TV series Science and Islam on BBC4, and Ehsan Masood published Science and Islam: A History, 1 as a companion book to the BBC4 TV series. These were soon followed by The House of Wisdom 2 and Aladdin’s Lamp 3 by Jeffrey Lyons and John Freely, respectively. Thereafter, Masood himself produced and presented a three-part BBC radio series on Islam and Science today. At the academic level, one must note the publication in 2007 of George Saliba’s Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance, 4 which attempted to show that not only did Islamic science not fade away after the eleventh century, but that strong and innovative works continued to appear all the way to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and indeed influenced the “making of the European Renaissance.” Almost simultaneously, Steven Weinberg, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, wrote in The Times Literary Supplement that the Islamic civilization has not produced any science of note after the death of the great Muslim scholar and theologian Al-Ghazali in 1111. 5 Jamil Ragep, the historian of Islamic science, responded to Weinberg, and an interesting exchange ensued. Ragep pointed, in particular, to the great pre-Copernican astronomical systems that 1

Masood, 2009. Lyons, 2009. 3 Freely, 2009. 4 Saliba, 2007. 5 Weinberg, 2007. 2

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Muslims developed, plus a few other examples, such as Ibn Nafis’s discovery of the pulmonary circulation of blood. 6 A number of other important academic works have appeared on the subject over the past decade. Several are listed in the bibliography at the end of this chapter, but a few need to be expressly mentioned: Jan P. Hogendijk’s and Abdelhamid I. Sabra’s edited volume of ground-breaking papers, titled The Enterprise of Science in Islam (2003); 7 Ahmed Djebbar’s Une histoire de la science arabe (2001); 8 the Encyclopaedia of Islamic Science and Scientists (2005), edited by N. K. Singh and M. Zaki Kirmani; 9 Khaled Abdul-Rahman Alrushaidat’s The Golden Age of Arab Islamic Sciences: The Impact of Arabic on the West (2007); 10 Mohamad Abdalla’s first-rate doctoral thesis Islamic Science: The Myth of the Decline Theory (2008); 11 and Jim Al-Khalili’s The House of Wisdom: How Arabic Science Saved Ancient Knowledge and Gave Us the Renaissance (2011). 12 Another example of activity on the subject is two important lectures organized by the Royal Society (London, UK): one in December 2006 presented by Ziauddin Sardar, titled “Islam and science,” and the other in January 2008 by Jim Al-Khalili, titled “The House of Wisdom and the legacy of Arabic Science.” And several elaborate exhibitions on Islamic science have been organized; examples include “l'Age d'or des sciences arabes” (The Golden Age of Arab Sciences), which ran at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, from October 25, 2005 to March 19, 2006, drawing 170 000 visitors; and “1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage in Our World,” which was created by the British-based Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilisation, and was first exhibited in March 2006 at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, before moving on to major world cities including Istanbul, London, 13 and New York.

6

Ragep, 2007. Hogendijk and Sabra, 2003. 8 Djebbar, 2001. 9 Singh and Kirmani, 2005. 10 Alrushaidat, 2007. 11 Abdalla, 2008. 12 Al-Khalili, 2011. 13 The ‘1001 Inventions’ exhibition completed a record-breaking run at London’s Science Museum, registering 400,000 visitors in the first half of 2010, followed by a similar run at the historic Sultan Ahmed Square in Istanbul with 400,000 additional visitors over seven weeks. It then went to the New York Hall of Science in December 2010, where 250,000 people visited it over five months, then on to the California Science Center in Los Angeles, where it was to reside for latter half of 2011. 7

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Why this sudden surge of interest in Islamic science, particularly in the west? 14 There are, in my view, several reasons for this: a) a renewed interest in Islam, to a large extent stemming from recent political events, notably 9/11 and its aftermath; b) a large increase in the number of Muslims living or having grown up in the west and finding that the great Islamic civilization is largely unknown there; c) significant developments in the scholarship of the history of Islamic science, particularly in astronomy, with important scientists and works discovered in the last few decades only; d) a multiplication of media outlets, particularly satellite TV channels and webbased platforms such as YouTube, requiring new and varied material to feed the interest of a large spectrum of viewers, readers, and web surfers. Highly educated people in the west have thus discovered, horrified, that they had not been taught about major scientists like Al-.KZƗUL]PƯ, who invented algebra essentially from scratch, and in the process introducing the zero (adopted from ancient Indian mathematics) and giving us the concept and name of algorithm, and Ibn al-Haytham, who revolutionized optics, invented the camera obscura, and influenced both Renaissance painting through the concept of perspective and Renaissance astronomy by allowing Kepler to correctly take atmospheric refraction into account, and thus produce more accurate data and deduce correct planetary laws. Most importantly, it has become clear that the simple historical scenario which had been accepted by many and repeated in stereotypical fashion about the Islamic civilization having, for the most part, only “preserved and transmitted” the Greek heritage, sometimes with some “enrichments,” is incorrect. Likewise, the prevailing view that the bulk of Islamic science activity took place mainly between the ninth and the eleventh centuries, after which a quick decline took place, largely due to the attacks by conservative religious scholars like Al-Ghazzali, is clearly untenable. As we shall see, scientific activity in the Islamic civilization proceeded at a different pace and took different trajectories in different fields; in astronomy, in particular, major works, both theoretical and observational continued to be undertaken well into the sixteenth century.

14

Please note that all the activity (books, lectures, exhibitions) I reported in the preceding paragraphs is limited to what has occurred in the west over the last decade.

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Islamic science: from its emergence to its peak By “Islamic science,” I refer to all the natural science produced during the pre-modern periods of Islamic civilization, by various contributors, most of whom were Muslims, but quite a few of whom were not. Others prefer the phrase “Arabic science,” noting that most, though not all, works of science produced during that period were written in Arabic; this choice avoids the reference to Islam, particularly as a religion. Since the civilization is almost invariably referred to as “Islamic civilization” (being clearly rooted in and stemming from Islam, and not Arabic), I find it reasonable to use the phrase “Islamic science”, though one must always recall that not all scientists were Muslims, and not all (in fact not even a majority) were Arabs, and not all works were written in Arabic. Finally, the phrase “Islamic science” is quite commonly adopted by western (non-Muslim) scholars (e.g. Gingerich 1986). 15 It is commonly stated that science began to flourish in Islamic civilization when important Greek works were translated into Arabic through the financial support provided by the caliphs Harun Ar-Rashid and his son al-Ma’mun. This is an overly simplified description of the story, which turns out to be quite complex. For one thing, the “translation movement” started during the Umayyad caliphate, before the Abbasid period, although in the latter era it took on much greater dimensions and proceeded more systematically. More importantly, however, several scholars have challenged the “translation as a primary factor” thesis. In his recent book, Islam, Science, and the Challenge of History, Aতmad Dallal refers to two theses put forward by George Saliba and Dimitri Gutas: the first insists that the main impulse for the rise of Arabic-Islamic science was the Arabization of the administrative system during the mid-eighth century (the translation of the dƯwƗns having chiefly taken place during the caliphate of Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan); the second sees the driving force in “the imperial ideology” of the early Abbasid caliphs. 16 Dallal insists that a scientific culture had already emerged within Islamic society when translations started to be produced in large numbers. What then led to the emergence of that glorious scientific tradition which not only lasted for many centuries but took place over the largest geographical spread ever and under very diverse rulers and states? Many writers insist that Islam was, first and foremost, the impetus for that culture of knowledge and science. They point to the Qur’an, the primary 15 16

Gingerich, 1986. Dallal, 2010: 14.

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reference and core of the Islamic culture and life, where hundreds of verses are found to refer to natural phenomena and encourage Muslims to reflect on the elegance and beauty of creation and the order in nature as well as to observe and seek to understand the wisdom behind all that, an explicit example of this being the verse: “Say: Contemplate what is in the heavens and the earth” (10:101). Moreover, a number of Prophetic proclamations (hadƯths) and statements from the tradition clearly reflect the importance of knowledge and the stature of scholars in the Islamic worldview, for example: “The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr.” In the same “Islamic-influence” spirit, some authors have seen in the development of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), particularly the deductive school of Abnj ণDQƯID al-Nu‫ޏ‬mƗn (700-768), the genesis of a methodological approach that could/would later lend itself to philosophy and science. Another probable reason for the development of science in the Islamic civilization was the need for certain types of knowledge directly related to some religious practices, e.g. prayer times, the direction of Mecca, the construction of an Islamic calendar for holy occasions (Ramadan, Eids, Hajj) and civil purposes (payment of salaries, debts, etc.), not to mention issues where mathematics and other sciences could be very useful, like the computation of zakƗt (alms) or the division of lands and monies among heirs. All these topics required advanced knowledge of complex mathematics and astronomy. Hence, most mosques employed muwaqqits, official time-keepers, who had to be competent in astronomy and able to make correct calculations for times when the sun could not be seen and when the crescent could be seen. When al-KhwƗrizmƯ composed his historic book on Algebra, KitƗb aljabr wa-l-muqabala, he introduced it in a way that relates strongly to the religious needs of the Muslim community: “That fondness for science, by which God had distinguished Imam al-Mamun… has encouraged me to compose a short work, … confining it to what is easiest and most useful in arithmetic, such as men constantly require in cases of inheritance, legacies, partition, law-suits, and trade, and in their dealings with one another…” 17 One example he gives is that of a woman who dies and leaves behind an estate to be inherited by her husband, her son, and her three daughters, according to the (complex) Islamic rules of inheritance. Al-.KZƗUL]PƯ then shows that this problem can be turned an algebraic equation, and simple operations allow one to find the answer for any size of the estate. He goes on to show that more complex problems, including determinations of zakat, can be dealt with in similar fashion. 17

al-.KZƗUL]PƯ 1986:3.

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Other commentators, however, point to the scientific cultures that Muslims found when they moved to places like Mesopotamia and the Nile Valley, where they found sophisticated irrigation systems, complex knowledge relating to one’s life 18 and advanced technical skills in such areas as textiles, leather, glass, and metalworking. And once they interacted with scholars from India, Byzantium, and elsewhere, they learned systematic methods of inquiry and learning, which then became science. And so the development of a society greatly interested in and benefiting from knowledge and science started to take place: the first hospital was established by al-WalƯd ibn Abd al-Malik (d. 715), the Umayyad caliph; the first observatory was built on the Qasyun mount outside of Damascus, though at least partly for the astrological interests of the Umayyad rulers; alchemy was encouraged and pursued from the earliest times, possibly from the times of the Prophet, at least in part for the production of coins and identifying pure gold; etc.

Islamic science in the Abbasid period Islamic civilization reached its peak in all domains during the Abbasid caliphate in the East (centered at Baghdad) and of the Andalusian (Umayyad) caliphate in the West (centered at Cordoba). The Abbasid period stretched from 750 to 1258 (the Mongol sack of Baghdad); the Andalusian period stretched from 711 (the arrival of Muslims) or 755 (the re-founding of the Umayyad caliphate in Al-Andalus) to 1492 (the fall of Granada). In this section, I will review the achievements made during the Abbasid period by the most famous Muslim scientists and their most important discoveries or contributions. A lengthier but still very condensed and accessible review of those can be found in John Freely’s most recent book, Light from the East: How the Science of Medieval Islam Helped to Shape the Western World (2011). 19  Al-FazarƯ, IbrƗKƯm (d. 777): He was a mathematician and astronomer of the Abbasid court of the Caliph Harun al-Rashid, he translated the Indian astronomical text, The Sindhind, with his son and Ya`qub ibn ৫DULT around 750 CE. He was also the first to construct astrolabes 18

Ibn $EƯ Usaybiya, in his ҵUyun al-DQEDҴ IƯ ‫ܒ‬DEDTƗW al-DWLEEDҴ, mentions that the famous caliph ‫ޏ‬Umar ibn ‫ޏ‬Abd al-‫ޏ‬$]Ư] found an important Greek medical treatise (known by its Arabic title, “al-Kunnash”) that had been translated from Syriac into Arabic, and deemed it so essential that he ordered that it be duplicated and made easily accessible to the general public. 19 Freely, 2011.

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and the author of a poem (qasida) on astrology and on various astronomical topics.  Ibn ৫ariq,