Political developments: 1918–48

The Arab lands of the Near East which were part of the Ottoman empire for nearly four hundred years, fell under Allied military occupation by the end of 1918. Great Britain and France had in their hands the destiny of the twin historic capitals of the once mighty Muslim empire: Damascus of Umayyad fame, and Baghdād of ‘Abbasid grandeur. And, for the first time since the Crusades, Jerusalem and, indeed, the whole of Palestine were occupied by a Christian power. The Arab nationalist leaders’ joy at the liberation of their lands from what they called the Turkish yoke, soon turned to disillusionment, righteous anger and even hostility when the truth became widely known, i.e. the existence of certain agreements and correspondence, whereby the former Arab provinces of the Ottoman empire—Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine—were to be divided between the British and French governments. Iraq and Palestine (with Transjordan) were to be under direct British military rule. France was to be installed in Syria and Lebanon. An Arab government was, however, established in Damascus early in October 1918. The story of this government, the establishment of which was due to unexpected circumstances, and the special case of Lebanon which clung to its own independence—special because of its religious and social background and because of its cultural and economic ties with the West—deserve to be related briefly.

A reader taking up a work entitled The Cambridge history of Islam may reasonably ask, ‘What is Islam? In what sense is Islam an appropriate field for historical enquiry?’ Primarily, of course, Islam is, like Christianity, a religion, the antecedents, origin and development of which may, without prejudice to its transcendental aspects, be a legitimate concern of historians. Religious history in the narrow sense is not, however, the only, or even the main, concern of the contributors to these volumes. For the faith of Islam has, again like Christianity, been a great synthesizing agent. From its earliest days it displayed features of kinship with the earlier monotheisms of Judaism and Christianity. Implanted in the former provinces of the Byzantine and Sasanian empires, it was compelled to maintain and define its autonomy against older and more developed faiths. Like Judaism and Christianity before it, it met the challenge of Greek philosophy, and adopted the conceptual and logical tools of this opponent to expand, to deepen, and to render articulate its self-consciousness. In this connexion, the first three centuries of Islam, like the first three centuries of Christianity, were critical for establishing the norms of belief and practice, and for embodying them in a tradition which was, or which purported to be, historical.

The Islamic synthesis did not stop at this stage. The external frontier of Islam has continued to move until our own day. For the most part, this movement has been one of expansion—into Central Asia, into the Indian sub-continent and south-east Asia, and into trans-Saharan Africa—but there have also been phases of retreat and withdrawal, notably in Spain, and in central and south-eastern Europe.

The institution of the caliphate and the Ridda

There was great consternation in Medina when Muhammad died (13 Rabī‘ I 11/8 June 632). Nevertheless, the Muslims realized at once that they would have to choose a successor to the dead man. His successor could not be another prophet, since it was known by divine revelation that Muhammad was the Seal of the Prophets, but it was urgently necessary to choose a new head of the community. So, while the relatives, including his cousin and son-in-law ‘Alī, kept vigil by the body and made preparations for the burial—curiously enough, in the room where it lay—a numerous group of Companions gathered in a roofed enclosure, the saqīfa of the Banū Sā‘ida, to decide what should be done. The discussion was animated, and at times even violent, for the old antagonism between Medinese Helpers (Ansār) and Meccan Emigrants (Muhājirūn) flared up afresh, and the idea had been mooted that there should be one Medinese and one Meccan head, with consequences that would have spelt disaster for Islam. During a momentary pause, however, ‘Umar paid homage to Abū Bakr, Muhammad's intimate friend and collaborator, by grasping his hand as was the custom when a pact was concluded, and his example was followed by others. Abū Bakr thus became the successor (khalīfa) of the Messenger of God and in this way the caliphate was founded, an institution which had no equivalent—and was destined never to have any—outside the Muslim world.

Centuries, calendrically precise, are seldom as meaningful historiographically as historians are apt to make them seem. The nineteenth century in Islamic South-East Asia is no exception, and yet, with the need to see a pattern in a period of years, patterns do emerge. The Java and Acheh Wars stand like tombstones at either end of a series of violent and often bloody conflicts fought to renovate or defend Islam and the ummat (Arabic, umma) against the vitiating syncretism of local tradition and increasing colonial encroachment. The early years of the century saw the beginnings of a redefinition of the relationship of the West with the Archipelago which was to culminate before the beginning of the next in the complete subjection of Indonesian and Malay political and administrative authority to alien rule. And finally, the opening of island and peninsular South-East Asian societies to the west meant, in the literal sense, not merely the consolidation of European power and influence, but a considerable increase in the flow of communications with the heartland of Islam which did much to determine the nature and intensity of the conflicts which characterize these years.

The Java War of 1825-30, though from one point of view the first in a series of manifestations of social unrest in Java in which protest at socio-economic change brought about by the West played a determining role, must also be seen as yet another in the succession of conflicts which had punctuated the previous hundred years, arising in large part out of social tensions present within Javanese society itself.

The Ottoman decline in the eleventh/seventeenth century

The decline of the Ottoman state, which manifested itself in the eleventh/ late sixteenth–seventeenth centuries, affected the Arab provinces as well as the older dominions of Anatolia and Rumelia. Some territories were lost to the empire. Baghdād was reoccupied by the Safavids from 1033/1623 to 1048/1638, while in 1045/1635 the Ottomans abandoned their precarious tenure of the Yemen. Even where the form of the sultan's suzerainty was maintained, and the façade of the old provincial administration remained in being, locally based forces were striving for mastery in the provinces, and here and there local despotisms crystallized out of the general anarchy.

The drift to anarchy is well exemplified in the history of Egypt in the early eleventh/seventeenth century which, it may be noted, coincides with the great crisis of the Ottoman empire. A series of military risings against the viceroys (one of whom was murdered by mutinous troops in 1013/1605) culminated in a menacing revolt of the soldiery of the Delta in 1017/1609. The suppression of this revolt (which was described by a chronicler as ‘the second conquest of Egypt during the sacred Ottoman government’) did not permanently re-establish the viceregal power. By the middle of the century the beys, who were mostly members of neo-Mamluk households, had emerged as contenders for power with the viceroys and the officers of the garrison-corps.

Jochi (c. 1176–1227), the eldest son of Chingiz Khān, had been granted the most westerly part of the area dominated by the Mongols as his appanage. At his death this area was divided among his sons. The eldest, Orda, took the most easterly part (including most of what is now Kazakhstān and parts of western Siberia) where his subject clans became known as the ‘White’, or, occasionally, the ‘Blue Horde’. Another son, Shiban, arabicized as Shaybān, held a fief to the north of this area, east and south-east of the Urals, around the headwaters of the Irtysh, Ishim and Tobol rivers, from which later emerged the khanate of Sibir. But in the immediate future the most important inheritance was that of the second son, Batu (d. 1255), who was given the most westerly part of Jochi's appanage, in the region of the Emba and Ural rivers. Batu thus became the logical leader of the new western campaign, which was launched in 1236, and which brought under Mongol control the steppe-land to the north of the Black Sea, established Mongol dominion over the Slavic states to the north, ravaged eastern Europe and led to the formation of the political unit known to the Russians, and so to Europe, as the Golden Horde.

Batu's campaign spread fear and horror throughout Europe. The rapidity of the movements of the Mongol troops and their strange appearance contributed to the enduring legend that they represented the imposition of a novel and alien rule.

In the history of the ancient world, Arabia has a place not unlike that of two other peninsulas in the Mediterranean region—Italy and the Balkans. It owes this place to its being the homeland of the Semitic peoples who developed a civilization which, alongside the Hellenic and the Roman, was to be a constituent in the tripartite structure of the cultural synthesis which the Mediterranean world witnessed in the early centuries of the Christian era. But this place is rather uncertain as far as the ancient world is concerned not so much because Arabia, after all, may not have been the ‘original homeland’ of the Semites, but because Semitic civilization in its highest forms was developed not within Arabia but outside its confines, in the semi-circle known as the Fertile Crescent. Be that as it may for the Arabia of the ancient Near East, there is no doubt whatsoever that Arabia is both the homeland of the Arabs and the cradle of Islam. The term ‘pre-Islamic Arabia’ is thus a fortunate and a significant one, reflecting as it does the decisive role which Islam played in changing its character, both as a religion which appeared within its boundaries, and as a movement which launched the Arabs on the paths of world conquest. It is, therefore, from this angle that this chapter on pre-Islamic Arabia has been written, as the last in the history of the ancient Semitic Near East and the introduction to the history of the medieval Islamic world.

The Ghaznavids and Ghurids

When Alptigin rebelled against the Samanids he established himself at Ghazna in 352/962, where his slave and son-in-law Sebüktigin succeeded him in 367/977 and started vigorously to expand his dominions. Jayapāla of Waihind saw danger in the consolidation of the kingdom of Ghazna and decided to destroy it. He therefore invaded Ghazna, but was defeated and agreed to pay an indemnity. He defaulted, took the field again and was once more defeated. This was the beginning of the struggle between the Ghaznavids and the Hindu Shahis.

Sebüktigin died in 387/997 and in the following year was succeeded by the famous Mahmūd. The latter defeated Jayapāla (391/1001), who immolated himself by fire because his subjects thought that he had brought disaster and disgrace to the dynasty. Jayapāla's son Ānandapāla carried on the struggle, and in a few years succeeded in organizing a confederacy of the Hindu rulers of Ujjayn, Gwalior (Gwālyār), Kālinjar, Kannawj, Delhi (Dihlā) and Ajmēr. This powerful confederacy was defeated at Peshāwar in 399/1008, despite the fact that during the greater part of the battle Mahmūd and his army were hard-pressed. The tide turned when Ānandapāla's elephant was hit by an arrow, took fright and ran away. On this the Hindu army broke and fled. The Hindu Shāhī dominions came into Mahmūd's possession and a governor was appointed to reside at Lahore (Lāhawr). He decided to teach the Hindu rajas a lesson so that they should not venture to combine against him again.

A reader taking up a work entitled The Cambridge history of Islam may reasonably ask, ‘What is Islam? In what sense is Islam an appropriate field for historical enquiry?’ Primarily, of course, Islam is, like Christianity, a religion, the antecedents, origin and development of which may, without prejudice to its transcendental aspects, be a legitimate concern of historians. Religious history in the narrow sense is not, however, the only, or even the main, concern of the contributors to these volumes. For the faith of Islam has, again like Christianity, been a great synthesizing agent. From its earliest days it displayed features of kinship with the earlier monotheisms of Judaism and Christianity. Implanted in the former provinces of the Byzantine and Sasanian empires, it was compelled to maintain and define its autonomy against older and more developed faiths. Like Judaism and Christianity before it, it met the challenge of Greek philosophy, and adopted the conceptual and logical tools of this opponent to expand, to deepen, and to render articulate its self-consciousness. In this connexion, the first three centuries of Islam, like the first three centuries of Christianity, were critical for establishing the norms of belief and practice, and for embodying them in a tradition which was, or which purported to be, historical.

The Islamic synthesis did not stop at this stage. The external frontier of Islam has continued to move until our own day. For the most part, this movement has been one of expansion—into Central Asia, into the Indian sub-continent and south-east Asia, and into trans-Saharan Africa—but there have also been phases of retreat and withdrawal, notably in Spain, and in central and south-eastern Europe.

General characteristics of the period

Before the end of the ninth/fifteenth century, the three great dynasties; then in power in North Africa—the Marinids in Morocco, the ‘Abd al-Wadids in the central Maghrib and the Hafsids in Ifrīqiya—were either being displaced by a new dynasty or suffered the decline of their authority and the dividing up of their lands; so that at the beginning of the tenth/sixteenth century the Maghrib was in complete political decay. This situation allowed the penetration of Africa by the Portuguese and the Spanish on the one hand, and by Ottoman Turks on the other. The Portuguese and the Spanish were unable to remain in Morocco, where the Sa'did dynasty succeeded in forming an indigenous government which lasted for a century before being supplanted by the ’Alawid dynasty. On the other hand, in the central and eastern Maghrib the Turkish corsairs, after conquering the rival Spanish forces, introduced governments of military occupation. These transformed themselves into local powers which were recognized by the Ottoman sultan, but their existence was troubled by many palace revolutions.

One of the principal activities of these states was privateering, from the ports of Salé, Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, which provided resources for the rulers, but resulted in difficulties with the European maritime powers. Nevertheless, foreign merchants settled in Algiers, in Tunis, and in some other places; political relations were established between the North African states and England, France and Holland. The Mediterranean, in spite of the discovery of new sea routes and new countries, continued to play an important part in world politics, especially as the Ottoman empire, which until then had held only the eastern shores, was henceforward established along the greater part of its African coast, from the Nile Delta to Mulūya.