The prose literature of Islamic mysticism, or Ṣufism, during the ʿAbbasid era is rich and varied. Distinct accomplishments can be credited to Ṣūfī writers who often did not shun the use of prevailing genres and styles of expression. In the face of criticism and pressures from the ulema, Ṣūfī authors often resorted to the oblique and enigmatic as tools of literary expression and ideological articulation. Beliefs were often couched in symbolical and allegorical references, and so thoroughly camouflaged at times that authors in the later centuries found it necessary to write their own commentaries.

Basically Ṣūfī writers were not particularly innovative with regard to prose categories. They favoured definitive and descriptive works, guidance and reference manuals, epistolary and instructional treatises and biographies and hagiographies. Their themes tended to explain and moralize, with heavy stress on the exemplary. Didactic techniques seem to govern most aspects of their writings, particularly in the later stages when instructing and guiding novices required much wisdom and exemplification.

On the defensive during much of the earlier centuries, Ṣufism generated a wealth of polemical and introspective literature. To enlist sympathy for their cause, Ṣūfīs developed a remarkable capacity for communication. In contriving the means, they contributed not only to literary norms but to the language as well, in the form of direct facile expressions which, in the long run, reduced the tendency toward affectation, subtlety and exaggeration.

The earliest surviving piece of Arabic literature which may fairly be described as an original geographical work is al-Masālik wa-ʾl-mamālik of Ibn Khurradādhbih, who was writing during the reign of the caliph āl-Muʿtamid (reigned 256–79/870–92). By this time half a century had elapsed since the death of the magnificent al-Maʾmūn who is generally credited with the generous encouragement of the arts and sciences, and more than two centuries since the Arabs had first had their eyes opened to the dazzling novelties of the world outside their arid and barren peninsula. Ibn Khurradādhbih's work describes a vast, well-organized and well-known empire and clearly it must have had some antecedents. Our knowledge of these, however, is extremely fragmentary.

As the Muslim empire grew and became increasingly difficult to administer, its leaders began to feel the need for recorded information about their territories, if only for fiscal and military purposes. It may be surmised that a great deal more information of this kind was written down than we have any knowledge of. There are a few scattered and uninformative hints as to this kind of activity, such as the caliph ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-Azīz's ordering his newly appointed governor of Spain, in 100/718, to send him a description of “al-Andalus and its rivers”, for he had it in mind to evacuate the Muslims from that remote and dangerous territory.

One of the greatest thinkers of the classical Islamic age and the man who influenced Islamic thought after the sixth/twelfth century more than any other was Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī. Led by Muʾtazilites and philosophers such as Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā, Islamic thought had maintained certain modes of rationalism for 300 years; al-Ghazālī redirected it towards mysticism.

Today there are signs of al-Ghazālī's influence in the works of his successors including those of the great shaykh, Muḥyī ʾlDl-Dīn b. al-ʿArabī (560–638/1165–1240) who seems, at first glance, to have little in common with al-Ghazālī's conservatism. Al-Ghazālī's book Iḥyāʾ ʾulūm al-dīn (“The Revival of the Religious Sciences”), exceptional for its exalted tone of moral instruction, is still widely read in religious and learned circles and is occasionally reprinted in Cairo and Beirut. Of particular interest also is a shorter work called al-Munqidh min al-ḍalāl (“The Deliverer from Error”), which was written towards the end of his life and in which he describes certain periods of his life and summarizes his ideas on philosophy, mysticism and Ismacilism. In both these works, and in others also written in the last years of his life such as Ayjuhā ʾl-walad and al-Qisṭās al-mustacīm (“The Correct Balance”), al-Ghazālī blends mysticism with jurisprudence and theology with philosophy.

PUPIL AND TEACHER

Poor but well-educated, the young al-Ghazālī visited the great cities of his time: Jurjān, Naysābūr, Baghdad and Damascus, in order to gain more knowledge which he could share with others.

During the millennium which followed the introduction of mathematical astronomy from Indian, Sasanid and Hellenistic sources to the vigorous cultural scene of ʿAbbasid Iraq in the second/eighth and third/ninth centuries, Muslim astronomers compiled a remarkably rich and varied corpus of literature relating to their subject. Some of this literature survives in about 10,000 manuscript volumes preserved in the libraries of southwestern Asia, north Africa, Europe and the United States, and during the past 200 years a very small number of scholars has turned its attention to a fraction of this surviving material. Catalogues of varying quality exist for some library collections, but there are many important collections of scientific manuscripts which are not yet catalogued at all. Lists of medieval authors, titles of their works and available manuscripts thereof, have been prepared from these catalogues by H. Suter, C. Brockelmann, C. A. Storey and F. Sezgin.

No classification of the Islamic astronomical literature exists in the modern literature, and besides, the scope of this literature has only become known during the past few decades. The present chapter represents an attempt to fill this gap, and to discuss the different categories of Islamic astronomical literature, the variety of which reflects the keen interest of Muslim scholars in astronomy for over a millennium. Very little of the Islamic material was transmitted to Europe in the medieval period, and that which was transmitted was hardly representative of the whole.

As a result of the great conquests of the first century of Islam, the Arabs became the heirs of the ancient civilizations of western Asia and north Africa. They also inherited the links that those civilizations had maintained over the centuries with their neighbours, and thereby came into possession of a considerable corpus of written material covering a wide field of knowledge, including scientific subjects. Many Greek manuscripts were preserved in Byzantium, but the Byzantines did little more than preserve, and made few significant contributions to the progress of science. Of greater significance were the Greek schools set up in Asia Minor soon after the council of Nicaea in AD 325. The Nestorian church made one of these schools, that of Edessa, their scientific centre. In AD 489 this school was transferred to Nisibin, then under Persian rule, with its secular faculties at Jundishāpūr in Khūzistān. Here, the Nestorian scholars, together with pagan philosophers banished by Justinian from Athens, carried out important research in medicine, astronomy and mathematics. To assist in instruction a number of Greek works were translated into Syriac. At about the same time the sect of the Monophysites, who like the Nestorians were subject to persecution by the Orthodox church, were working on similar lines in Syria. They also made translations of philosophical and scientific works into Syriac. A group who were to provide some of the greatest translators and scientists of Islam were the Ṣabians of Ḥarrān in Mesopotamia.

THE NATURE AND AIMS OF ALCHEMY

Many thousands of pages have been written by modern scholars on the subject of alchemy, but it cannot be said that all the obscurities that render the subject so difficult have yet been satisfactorily elucidated. These obscurities include the actual definition of the term “alchemy”, its origins in East and West, the authorship of many of the extant texts, the motives and beliefs of the alchemists, the methods they used and the identification of many of their materials. Only in the case of laboratory equipment and processes do we have any firm data, largely because most types of equipment used by the alchemists have survived into the present or recent past. Moreover, in several alchemical works, notably those of Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. Zakariyyaʾ al-Rāzī, many pieces of equipment are clearly described and illustrated and can be understood by comparing them with their modern counterparts. Even so, although the basic purposes of the equipment can usually be determined, uncertainty as to the course of a given process may remain if we do not know the precise composition of the materials being processed.

Much of the obscurity of the subject is due to its esoteric nature and the consequent use made by its practitioners of analogy, allusion and cryptic utterances. A second difficulty lies in the tendency of many writers to attribute their own work to earlier, sometimes mythological, personages.

BIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND

Abū ʾ1-Rayḥān Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Bīrūnī al-Khwārazmī, the most distinguished encyclopaedist of the Muslim scientists, was born in Khwārazm, apparently on the 3 Dhū ʾ1-Ḥijjah, 362/4 September 973. There is no firm etymology for his name “al-Bīrūnī”, but according to Yāqūt it is a local dialect word applied to people who lived in a suburb.

The date of al-Bīrūnī's birth is not well established. The only evidence for it is a note appended to a manuscript giving the above-mentioned date, and a statement by al-Bīrūnī himself giving his age in lunar years, which seems to corroborate that date. The usual biographical sources do not devote much space to him, and none of them give any information on his early life. All we can assert about that period is that he had studied with someone close to the Khwarazm-Shah's court, who also probably introduced him to this court. Later on he served Qābūs b. Wushmagīr (reigned 366–71/977–81 and 388–403/988–1012–13), the master of Jurjān, and to him he dedicated his first major work, al-Athār al-bāqiyah (see below), in the year 1311 of Alexander (= AD 1000). After some considerable turmoil in the political life of Khwārazm, al-Bīrūnī was apparently taken prisoner by the central Asian monarch Maḥmūd of Ghaznah (reigned 388–421/998– 1030) about the year 407/1016, and it appears that al-Bīrūnī's knowledge of astrology saved him from certain death.

By the end of the Umayyad period, the government bureaucracy, organized as a group of dīwāns or government departments concerned with finance, official correspondence and the mustering and payment of the army, was already well formed. Under the ʿAbbasids, the existing dīwāns increased in size and complexity and were complemented by new ones with more specialized functions, such as confiscations (the dīwān al-muṣādarāt) and financial control and accounting (the dīwān al-zimām wa-ʾl-istīfāʾ). The role of the secretaries (kuttāb, sing, kātib), whose function had been of comparatively low standing under the Umayyads, now grew, possibly stimulated by the importance of the personal secretary to the last Umayyad caliph Marwān II (reigned 127–32/744–50), ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd b. Yaḥyā. This kātib class acquired a prestige in the ʿAbbasid state similar to that of its pre-Islamic predecessors in Persia and Iraq, the Sasanid dibhērān, whilst the coming to full form of the office of vizier or chief executive for the caliph, achieved under the originally eastern Iranian Barmakī family in the second half of the second/eighth century, allowed the secretaries to aspire to the highest position in the state beneath the ruler himself, and to give the central administration a distinct bias towards long-established Persian traditions of statecraft.

Despite this increased administrative proliferation and complexity, the positions of the exchequer, dealing with finance and taxation, and of the chancery, dealing with correspondence, remained pre-eminent.

Exegesis (tafsīr) forms one of the most extensive branches of Arabic prose literature. Developed over fourteen centuries, it provided the ideal vehicle for the expression of every shade of opinion adopted within Islam. Knowledge of the Qurʾān is indispensable for an understanding of Islam, but knowledge of the Qurʾān alone will not supply that understanding. Whereas the Qurʾān urged its first hearers to use their eyes and ears, but above all their minds in the pursuit of truth, the intellectual system that grew out of the Qurʾān was imbued with a spirit of conformity suspicious of every effort to act or think beyond the restraint of revelation. The definition of “revelation” gave Islam its distinct hue, while the identification as the source of knowledge of either Tradition, reason or intuition produced three broad exegetical approaches.

TRADITIONAL EXEGESIS

The individual pursues the right path if he adheres to “the way of the Muslims”, the straight path which the Qurʾān commanded men to follow, “not separate paths lest they take you by various routes away from the path of God”. Muslims were forbidden to imitate those who “divided into sects, falling into disagreement”. The role of the Prophet was central to Muhammad's concept of Islamic unity: “He who obeys the Prophet obeys God”; “He who disobeys God and His Prophet, transgressing the bounds God has set, will be cast into Hell.”

“Copious without order, energetic without rules”: this is how the English language appeared to Samuel Johnson in the eighteenth century and so, too, must Arabic have seemed to its first lexicographers some thousand years earlier. It was at this time that Sībawayhi (d. c. 183/799)) created the grammar which would henceforth rule the energy of Arabic, while his master al-Khalīl b. Aḥmad (d. 175/791) brought order to its copiousness by laying the foundations of lexicography (ʿilm al-lughah, “the science of language”). Just a few years after the publication of Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (1755), the Arab lexicographical tradition reached its peak in the gigantic Tāj al-ʿarūs min jawāhir al-qāmūs (begun in 1174/1760, finished 1188/1774) of al-Zabīdī (d. 1205/1791), which is a summation of the entire heritage, a triumph of cumulation incorporating every significant work directly or indirectly, from al-Khalīl onwards. There is hardly an item in the following sketch of the evolution of the classic dictionaries which has not found its way into the Tāj.

The formal lexicon is not the only product of the Arabs' interest in their language, however, and, before dealing with the standard dictionaries, some attention must be given to the other kinds of word-lists and alphabetically arranged reference works which emerged at the same time. These, though often subsumed in later dictionaries, are in no way their ancestors but had a separate existence and continued to appear side by side with them.

Although Faṭimid rule in Islamic history lasted only for about two and a half centuries (297/909 to 567/1171), it was of greater importance than any of the other provincial regimes which arose during the decline of the ʿAbbasid caliphate, for a number of reasons. It was the product of a movement, popularly known as Ismāʿīlī, the history of which goes back to the beginnings of the ʿAbbasid period, that is the time of the Shīʿī imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq. It ushered in the first serious imperial challenge to the empire of the caliphate at Baghdad. Its intellectual legacy was as brilliant as those of the most productive periods of Islam. Lastly, its impact was felt till much later times, judging by the histories of the period that continued to be written, despite the withering away of Faṭimid religious influence in Egypt and Syria.

The Faṭimid daʿwah (mission), unlike any other mission, did not simply create a state, but continued to guide it throughout its existence and created an extensive literature. Never in Fatimid history was its mission geared to mass proselytization. Its teachings were addressed to a candidate (mustajīb) seeking admission to the community. It aimed at creating an elite class of dāʿīs (religious missionaries cum political agents) supported by a political base such as the Faṭimid caliphate. Once that base was gone, the community was destined to disappear, as the elite had been wiped out and there had in any case never been a mass following of the faith.

There are civilizations which have no history, or which, at any rate, are as little interested in commemorating the exploits of their ancestors as they are in bequeathing an account of their own to posterity. The reverse is true of those civilizations which, since antiquity, have succeeded one another on the shores of the Mediterranean and in western Asia, whether Semitic or otherwise. Writing, which made its appearance relatively early, obviously facilitated the recording of deeds or customs. Ruins of ancient monuments remind us of the passage of time and of successive peoples. The Qurʾān is full of allusions to this past and, within the framework of a divine plan, presents in its own way an historical view of the world. Arabic poetry, as has been observed elsewhere, preserves and glorifies the memory of the exploits of various small social groups. Arabs who had become Muslims could not but reveal some sense of history, even though at the outset they did not yet write works which could be called historical.

It is not claimed, of course, that a complete catalogue can be given of historiographical literature, of which, in any case, our knowledge is variable in relation to different periods and regions. At the start it is only necessary to emphasize that in the selection of works for mention – and a fortiori:, if such be the case, for publication, the criteria are not quite the same as for purely literary works.

Japanese society changed in many significant ways between the mid-twelfth century when the Taira were reveling in the final decades of their power and the close of the fifteenth century when the tenth Ashikaga shogun Yoshiki was ignominiously forced into a long exile. One of the most important changes was the rapid growth of commerce which affected in myriad ways both daily lives and the course of history.

This chapter describes and analyzes how market activities began and grew, leading to specialization among merchants, artisans, those engaged in transportation, and others and, as a result, raising the efficiency of both production and distribution. This chapter will pay special attention to the emergence and growth of several important economic institutions such as markets and guilds; the rise of Kyoto as the center of medieval commerce; the appearance of cities, port towns, and other urban centers and the increase in both their number and size; and other consequences of market activity and monetization that caused political and economic conflict between recipients and payers of dues and between lenders and borrowers.

HISTORIOGRAPHICAL ISSUES

Historians transform lived life into narrated life, and in this sense they are not unlike novelists. Intent notwithstanding, neither history nor novel copies human experience but, rather, selects, focuses, and retells and thereby inevitably reshapes. Even subtraction adds something new. And so though we go to both historians and novelists for “truth,” both are inherently disposed to falsification.

By selecting and subtracting, the interpretations of Japanese cultural history to date, particularly those of the Kamakura and Muromachi eras (roughly the twelfth through the sixteenth centuries) have focused on the “high” culture of the period; on the activities of the political, religious, and intellectual leaders of the time; and on the achievements of their close associates, eminent artists, architects, writers, and performers. Even those historians who are interested in the culture of ordinary people tend to view them in comparison with the upper classes, and their accounts are thereby riveted to the same high-low polarity as are those of the historians with whom they are ideologically at odds. Ironically, therefore, an elite veneer stretches over the history of the middle ages, obscuring the texture and contours of the daily life of the great majority of medieval men and women, while leaving in darkness those creators of Japanese culture who have failed to qualify under these preferred definitions of history.

It is not that such lives are beyond historical retrieval. On the contrary, throughout the middle ages the daily life of ordinary citizens was often a subject of note, even in the diaries and historical records of the elite; it is therefore much more easily resurrected than might be imagined.

The medieval centuries can fairly be described as the great age of Japanese Buddhism. Hōnen, Eisai, Shinran, Dōgen, Nichiren, Ippen, Rennyo, and thousands of lesser-known but equally dedicated religious leaders took Buddhism out of its traditional place in monastic cloisters under elite patronage, found new possibilities for personal salvation, and carried their message to common people throughout Japan. During these centuries, the foundations were laid for those new schools of Buddhism – Pure Land, True Pure Land, Nichiren, and Zen – that still claim the spiritual allegiance of the majority of Japanese. In response to these surges of reform, innovation, and popularization, some of the older schools of Buddhism produced reformers who called for a return to stricter monastic discipline and tried to make their teachings more accessible to ordinary men and women.

The social ramifications of this religious upsurge were enormous. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of monasteries, nunneries, hermitages, and “training places” (dōjō) for lay devotees were established. Monasteries, monks, and wandering preachers looked for, and found, new patrons; received donations and grants of land; served as bearers of culture and learning as well as advocates of Buddhist spirituality; acted as political advisers; and engaged in commerce and diplomacy. Some of the older monastic centers remained powerful political and military forces in society. And some of the newer groups, especially the Nichiren and True Pure Land followers, displayed a militant edge.

INTRODUCTION

The 1260s marked the beginning of a decisively new period for the Kamakura bakufu as it faced a set of increasingly complex problems caused by changing conditions both at home and abroad. The political structure of the bakufu was about to undergo a major change the death of Hōjō Tokiyori in 1263, which in effect ended the “Golden Period” characterized by the regency (shikken) system. At the same time, changes in the social, economic, and technological spheres were beginning to shake the shoōn system, which had been flourishing since the eleventh century. As examples of these changes, improved agricultural technology increased arable acreage, and the technique of double cropping – planting wheat after harvesting the rice – also enhanced productivity. The greater surplus in turn led to the diversification of agriculture, and as witnessed by the opening of periodic markets, commerce and trade likewise became more important. Simultaneously, peasants with free time or surplus means produced various handicrafts to be sold at market. A cash economy made advances as a large quantity of coins was imported from China, giving rise to financial middlemen and the practice of paying shōen taxes in cash.

These changes could not have taken place without influencing the overall social fabric. In various regions, cultivators rose up against the local jitō or shōen proprietors. In the meantime, the jitō and proprietors themselves began to compete, the worst of such confrontations occurring in the home provinces and the west, often involving military forces.

INTRODUCTION

Buddhism has had a long and illustrious history in Japan, but it was in the Kamakura period that Buddhism in Japan came into full flower. The forms of Buddhism that emerged at that time – Pure Land, Zen, and Nichiren – were largely responsible for the dissemination of Buddhist beliefs and practices throughout Japanese society. The success of this movement lay in tailoring the ideas and goals of Buddhism to the concerns of the populace at large. Hence, Kamakura Buddhism, as the entire religious movement is called, has left an indelible mark on Japanese history and has made Buddhism a lasting and pervasive component of Japanese culture.

Buddhism originated in India and spread to China about four centuries after the time of the historical Buddha Sākyamuni (ca. fifth to fourth century, b.c.). It was transmitted to Japan from China via the Korean peninsula around the middle of the sixth century. The cultural gulf that existed at that time between Japan on the one hand and China and Korea on the other was considerable. Japan's ruling class accepted Buddhism as the embodiment of an advanced and superior civilization, and in order to gain control over the concepts and technology that Buddhism brought to Japan, the elite provided a succession of large temples where Buddhism could put down roots. A community of priests supported by the state and the aristocracy belonged to each of these temples.

Japan absorbed Buddhism as a comprehensive and advanced cultural medium from the outside but did not, at first, give substantial weight to its religious concerns per se.

The subject of this volume is medieval Japan, spanning the three and a half centuries between the final decades of the twelfth century when the Kamakura bakufu was founded and the mid-sixteenth century during which civil wars raged following the effective demise of the Muromachi bakufu. The historical events and developments of these colorful centuries depict medieval Japan's polity, economy, society, and culture, as well as its relations with its Asian neighbors. The major events and the most significant developments are not difficult to summarize.

This was the period of warriors. Throughout these centuries, the power of the warrior class continued to rise, and one political result of this development was the formation of two warrior governments, or bakufu. The first, the Kamakura bakufu, founded in the 1180s, was not able to govern the nation single-handedly. In several important respects, it had to share power with the civil authority of the tennō – usually translated as the emperor – and the court. But under the second warrior government – the Ashikaga bakufu that came into being in 1336 and was firmly established by the end of the fourteenth century – the warrior class was able to erode the power of the civil authority. During the first half of the fifteenth century, when the bakufu's power was at its zenith, the warrior class governed the nation in substantive ways. Although the civil authority did not lose all its power and continued to help legitimize the bakufu, it was manipulated and used to serve the bakufu's own political needs almost at will.