A History of Islamic Societies provides an authoritative and comprehensive treatment of the civilizations and patterns of life of Muslims throughout the world. Lapidus provides a survey history which will achieve classic status, and prove essential reading for all students of Islamic societies for many years to come. Part I deals with the formative era of Islamic civilization from the revelation of the Quran to the thirteenth century and examines the transformation of Islam from a complex of doctrines and cultural systems into the organizing principles of Middle Eastern Society. Part II traces the creation of similar societies in the Balkans, North Africa, Central Asia, China, India, Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Part III considers the transformation of these societies under the forces of technological change, industrial revolution and European imperialism. It describes the emergence of modern economies, national states and secular ideologies in Muslim countries and seeks to assess the role of past Islamic institutions and present Islamic movements in the shaping of contemporary Muslim societies.
Contents
List of illustrations / xi List of figures / XV List of maps / xvii List of tables / xix Preface / xxi Acknowledgements / xxxi Publisher’s preface / xxxiii
Part I The Origins of Islamic Civilization: The Middle East From c. 600 To c. 1200 / 1
Introduction: Middle Eastern societies before the advent of Islam / 3
The Preachıng of Islam / 11
1 Arabia / 11
2 The life of the Prophet / 21 The Arab-Muslim Imperium (632-945) / 37
3 The Arab conquests and the socio-economic bases of empire / 37 Conquest and empire / 37 Economic change and the new urban societies / 45
4 The Caliphate / 54 From nomadic kingdom to Syrian monarchy / 54 The f Abbasid empire: social revolution and political reaction / 67 5 Cosmopolitan Islam: the Islam of the imperial elite / 81 Art, architecture and the concept of the Caliphate / 83 The Arabic humanities / 89 Persian literature / 91 Hellenism / 93
6 Urban Islam: the Islam of the religious elites / 98 Sunni scripturalism / 99 Theology / 105 Mystics and Sufism / 109 Shici Islam / 115
7 Islamic culture and the separation of state and religion / 120
8 The fall of the f Abbasid empire / 126 From Islamic Culture to Islamic Socıety: Iran And Iraq, 945 - C. 1200 / I37
9 The post-f Abbasid Middle Eastern state system / 137 The slave states and administration / 146 Local courts and regional cultures: Islam in Persian garb / 1 $ 2
10 Muslim communities and Middle Eastern societies / 162 The Shici communities / 163 The schools of law and Sunni sectarianism / 164 Sufi brotherhoods / 168 Muslim religious movements and the state / 172 Islamic institutions and a mass Islamic society / 174
11 The collective ideal / 181
12 The personal ethic / 192 Normative Islam: scripture, Sufism and theology / 192 Alternative Islam: philosophy, gnostic and popular Sufism / 208 The dialogues within Islam / 218 Conclusion: the Middle Eastern Islamic paradigm / 225
Part II The Wdrldwide Diffusion of Islamic Socıeties From the Tenth to the Nineteenth Century / 259 Introduction: the Islamic world and the rise of Europe / 241 Conversion to Islam / 242 Muslim elites and Islamic communities / 25} The state regimes / 264 Confrontation with Europe / 268
The Middle Eastern Islamic Societies / 276
13 Iran: the Mongol, Timurid, and Safavid empires / 276 Mongols and Timurids / 276 Safavid Iran f The conversion of Iran to Shicism / 295 The dissolution of the Safavid empire / 299 14 The Turkish migrations and the Ottoman empire / 303 The Turkish migrations and Turkish-Islamic states in Anatolia (1071-1243) / 304 The rise of the Ottomans (c 1280-1453) / 306 The Ottoman world empire / 310 Rulers and subjects / 322 The Ottoman economy and provincial administration / 328 The Ottoman empire in disarray / 333 15 The Arab Middle East / 344 Egypt and Syria in the “Caliphal” age / 345 The Saljuq model: state and religion / 353 The Ottoman era / 359 16 Islamic North Africa and Spain to the nineteenth century / 365 State formation in the “Caliphal” phase / 365 Spanish Islamic civilization / 378 The tripartite regime: Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century / 390 States and Islam: North African variations / 409
Islam In Central And Southern Asia / 414
17 Inner Asia from the Mongol conquests to the nineteenth century / 414 The western and northern steppes / 418 Turkestan (Transoxania, Khwarizm, and Farghana) / 423 Eastern Turkestan and China / 431
18 The Indian subcontinent: the Delhi Sultanates and the Mughal empire / 437 The Muslim conquests and the Delhi Sultanates / 437 Conversion and the Muslim communities / 443 The Mughal empire / 452 The decline of the Mughal empire / 463
19 The formation of Islamic societies in Southeast Asia / 467 The diffusion of Islam / 467 The Portuguese, the Dutch, and the Muslim states / 470 Islamic societies in Southeast Asia / 474 The new imperialism / 483
Islam in Africa / 489
20 Islam in Sudanic, savannah, and forest West Africa / 489 The kingdoms of the western and central Sudan / 490 Merchants and missionaries in the desert, forest, and coastal regions / 500 The West African jihads / 508
21 Islam in East Africa and the rise of European colonial empires / 524 Sudan / 524 The coastal cities and Swahili Islam / 528 Ethiopia and Somalia / 532 Colonialism and the defeat of Muslim expansion / 535 Conclusion: the. varieties of Islamic society / 541
Part III The Modern Transformation: Muslim Peoples in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centurıes / 549
Introduction: modernity and the transformation of Muslim societies / 551 Islamic modernism and Islamic reformism / 557
Nationalism and Islam in the Middle East / 571
22 Iran: state and religion in the modern era / 571
23 The dissolution of the Ottoman empire and the modernization of Turkey / 592 The partition of the Ottoman empire / 593 Ottoman reform / 597 Republican Turkey / 607
24 Egypt: secularism and Islamic modernity / 615
25 The Arab Middle East: Arabism, military states, and Islam / 637 Notables and the rise of Arab nationalism / 637 Arabism in the colonial period / 644 The struggle for Arab unity and the contemporary fertile crescent states / 651 . The Palestinian movement / 639 Arab nationalism and Islam / 665 The Arabian peninsula / 668
26 North Africa in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries / 680 Algeria / 680 Tunisia / 697 Morocco / 703 Libya / 711 Islam in state ideologies and opposition movements / 714 Secularısm and Islam in Central and Southern Asia / 718
27 The Indian subcontinent: India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh / 718 Muslim militancy from Plassey to 1857 / 720 From the mutiny to World War I / 722 From elite to mass politics / 729 The Pakistan movement / 736 Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the Muslims of India / 742
28 Islam in Indonesia and Malaysia / 749 Dutch rule and the capitalist system / 749 Indonesian traditionalism, nationalism, and Islamic reform / 757 Compromise and competition: 1900-55 / 766 Indonesia from 1955 to the present / 771 British Malaya and independent Malaysia / 776 29 Inner Asia under Russian and Chinese rule / 784 Tsarist rule and jadid / 784 The revolutionary era / 795 Soviet modernization / 802 The Caucasus / 815 The Muslims of China / 817
Islam in Twentieth-Century Africa / 823
30 Islam in West Africa / 823 Colonialism and independence: African states and Islam / 824 Mauritania / 833 Senegal / 834 Nigeria / 838 Muslim minorities / 848
31 Islam in East Africa / 852 Sudan / 853 Somalia / 859 Ethiopia / 862 Swahili East Africa / 864 Universal Islam and African diversity / 873 Conclusion: secularized Islam and Islamic revival / 879 The institutional and cultural features of pre-modern Islamic societies / 880 Nations, nationalism, and Islam / 884 The role of women in Muslim societies / 890 Contemporary patterns in the relations of states and Islam: the secularized Muslim societies / 899 The neo-Islamic states / 906 Muslims as political minorities / 911
Concluding remarks / 915
Glossary / 918
Bibliography / 929
Index / 975
PREFACE
Islam is the religion of peoples who inhabit the middle regions of the planet from the Atlantic shores of Africa to the South Pacific, from the steppes of Siberia to the remote islands of South Asia: Berbers, West Africans, Sudanese, Swahili-speaking East Africans, Middle Eastern Arabs, Turks, Iranians, Turkish and Persian peoples of Central Asia, Afghans, Pakistanis, many millions of Indians and Chinese, most of the peoples of Malaysia and Indonesia, and minorities in the Philippines - some 900,000,000 people adhere to Islam. In ethnic background, language, customs, social and political organization, and forms of culture and technology, they represent innumerable variations of human experience. Yet Islam unites them. Though Islam is not often the totality of their lives, it permeates their self-conception, regulates their daily existence, provides the bonds of society, and fulfills the yearning for salvation. For all its variousness, Islam forges one of the great spiritual families of mankind. This book is the history of how these multitudes have become Muslims and what Islam means to them. In this book we ask: What is Islam? What are its values? How did so many peoples, so different and dispersed, become Mus-lims? What does Islam contribute to their character, to their way of living, to the ordering of their communities, and to their aspirations and identity? What are the historical conditions that have given rise to Islam and to Islamic religious and cultural values; what are the manifold ways in which it is understood and practiced? To answer these questions we shall see how religious concepts about the nature of reality and the meaning of human experience, embedded at once in holy scripture and works of commentary, and as thoughts and feelings in the minds and hearts of Muslim believers, have given shape to the lifestyles and institutions of Muslim peoples, and how reciprocally the political and social experiences of Muslim peoples have been given expression in the values and symbols of Islam. Our history of Islam is the history of a dialogue between the realm of religious symbols and the world of everyday reality, a history of the interaction between Islamic values and the historical experiences of Muslim peoples that has shaped the formation of a number of different but interrelated Muslim societies.
Part I examines the formative era of Islamic civilization from the revelation of the Quran to the thirteenth century. It begins with the Prophet Muhammad, and continues with the classical Islamic era which gave rise to Arabic literature, Islamic religious teaching and cosmopolitan cultural achievements - a tripartite complex of tribal-ethnic, religious and courtly-aristocratic cultures from which all later versions of Islamic civilization derive. Part I attempts to explain the development of this civilization in terms of the relationship of Islamic cultures to the established institutional patterns of Middle Eastern empires, economies and monotheistic religions, and in terms of the cultural effects of the formation of new empires, urbanization, and social change. Part I concludes with the history of Iraq and Iran from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries, to explain the transformation of Islam from a complex of doctrines and cultural systems into the operative principles of a Middle Eastern society. This was the age in which Islam became the religion of the masses of Middle Eastern peoples. In this period, Muslim peoples formed new state and communal institutions (Shffi “sects,” Sunni schools of law, and Sufi fraternities) and defined the relations of political regimes to religious bodies. In this era, Islamic values gave rise to the “mass societies,” ordered by parallel political and religious institutions.
In its turn the Islamic version of Middle Eastern society became a paradigm for the creation of similar societies in other parts of the world. Part II traces the diffusion of the Middle Eastern Islamic paradigm. From the seventh to the nineteenth centuries, Islam became the religion of peoples in the Arab Middle East, Inner Asia and China, India, Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Balkans. Part II considers the forces behind the diffusion of Islam, and the interaction between Islamic religious values and established cultures and societies. It also examines the consolidation of Islamic regimes including the Mughal, the Ottoman and the Safavid empires, and Islamic states in Southeast Asia, Africa and elsewhere, and their varied ways of integrating political regimes, Islamic religious institutions, and non-Islamic values and forms of community.
By the eighteenth century the Middle Eastern paradigm for an Islamic society had been replicated, multiplied, and modified into a worldwide system of related but different societies. Each of them, in the view to be set forth in this volume, was one of a family of societies, for each was a recognizable variant upon a similar underlying structure of familial-communal, religious, and state institutions. Each of them was a variant upon the ways in which Islamic belief, culture, and social institutions have interacted with the still broader complex of human organization including the non-Islamic institutions of political regimes, systems of economic production and exchange, non- Islamic forms of kinship, tribal, and ethnic communities, and pre-Islamic or non-Islamic modes of culture. Here we explore the degree to which the Middle Eastern paradigm was transferred to new Islamic societies. What was the relation of Islamic to pre-Islamic institutions in these regions? What were the similarities and differences among these numerous Islamic societies? «
The transformation of Islamic societies from the eighteenth century to the present tests the resiliency of the historical templates and the identity of the Islamic world system. In Part III we see how Islamic societies were profoundly disrupted by the breakup of Muslim empires, economic decline, internal religious conflict, and by the establishment of European economic, political, and cultural domination. These forces led to the creation of national states, to the modernization of agriculture and industrialization, to major changes in class structure, and to the acceptance of secular nationalist and other modern ideologies. In the course of these changes Islamic thought and Islamic com-munal institutions have been radically altered.
The legacy of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century historical change, how-ever, is not a unilinear movement toward “modernization, ” but a heritage of continuing conflict in Muslim countries over political, economic, and cultural goals, and of different courses of change in different Muslim societies. Political decline and European intervention have led to a struggle among political elites, scholarly (fulamay} and mystical (Sufi) religious leaders, and revivalist move-ments for political and social power. While secularized political elites tend to favor modernization in Western forms, and the redefinition of Islam to make it consistent with modern forms of state and economy, religious reformers espouse the revitalization of moral values and formation of new political communities on Islamic principles. By examining the historic forms of political and religious organization, the impact of European imperialisms, and the political and ideological struggles of competing elites in Muslim countries, this book will attempt to explain the structure of present-day regimes, and the role of historic Islamic institutions and reformist movements in the shaping of contemporary Muslim societies. The basic problems in analyzing these developments are both evolutionary and comparative. Has the impact of the West and of modern technical civ-ilization generated a new form of society or do the historic political and religious templates still regulate the destiny of new Muslim nations? Do present conditions basically reflect the cultural and political qualities of the imperial, sectarian, and tribal societies of the eighteenth century or have the nineteenth- and twentieth-century transformations of economy, class structure, and values generated a new evolutionary stage in the history of Islamic societies? To deal with these issues the history of Islamic societies will be presented in two dimensions: one historical and evolutionary, an effort to ac¬count for the formation of Islamic societies and their change over time; the other analytic and comparative, an effort to understand the variations among them.
This approach is based on a number of historical and methodological assumptions. The first is that the history of whole societies may be presented in terms of their institutional systems. An institution, be it an empire, a mode of economic exchange, a family, or a religious practice is a human activity carried out in a patterned relationship with other human beings as defined and legitimated in the mental world of the participants. An institution encompasses at once an activity, a pattern of social relations, and a set of mental constructs.
The second assumption is that the history of Islamic societies may be told in terms of four basic types of institutions: familial, including tribal, ethnic, and other small-scale community groups; economic, the organization of pro-duction and distribution of material goods; cultural or religious concepts of ultimate values and human goals and the collectivities built upon such com-mitments ; and political, the organization of domination, resolution of conflict, and defense. These institutions have characteristic qualities in each society and are interrelated in a patterned way.
The third assumption is that the institutional patterns characteristic of Islamic societies had their origin in ancient Mesopotamia in the third mil-lennium B.C. The constellation of lineage and tribal, religious, and political structures created by the Mesopotamian city states and empires set the foun-dations for the later evolution of Middle Eastern societies before and during the Islamic era, and was either reproduced or diffused from the Middle East to other Islamic societies. Thus the Middle Eastern Islamic society was based upon the infusion of more ancient institutions with an Islamic cultural style and identity. These Middle Eastern Islamic institutions in turn interacted with the institutions and cultures of other world regions to create a number of variant Islamic societies. In the modern era these variant societies were again transformed, this time by interaction with Europe. Modern Islamic countries are each the product of the interaction of a particular regional form of Islamic society with different forms of European imperial, economic and cultural influences. The variation among modern Islamic societies may be traced to older patterns.
In this volume primary emphasis will be placed upon the communal, religious, and political institutions of Islamic societies rather than upon tech-nologies and economies, for this is what distinguishes them from other societies which have similar ecological characteristics and similar modes of production. I subordinate economic to non-economic institutions because the distinctive historical developments in Islamic societies in the last millennium have been cultural and political; and because changes in the realm of culture and institutions differentiate Islamic societies from each other and from other human civilizations. I further assume that cultural and sociopolitical institutions and economic and technological forces can act autonomously and that each may be a causal factor in historical change, but that in the history of Islamic societies cultural and institutional factors have been the significant locus of historical individuation.
For the purpose of this presentation I also assume that the basic forms of economic production and exchange in Muslim societies were set down in the pre-Islamic era. The forms of agricultural and pastoral production, handicrafts, manufacturing, prevailing systems of exchange, and technological capacities are all older than, and continue through, the Islamic era in their inherited forms. This is not to deny that there has been considerable variation in economic activity in and among Muslim societies, such as in the relative role of pastoral, agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing activities, or in de-grees of poverty and prosperity, or in the distribution of wealth; nor that these differences have important cultural and political implications, nor that econ-omic considerations are an essential aspect of all human values and social action. Still, in my judgment the fundamental modes of economic production and exchange were basically unaltered until the modern era, and economic and technological changes were not the primary sources of political and cultural variation or of changes in class structure and social organization. Until the modern era economic activity remained embedded in communal and political structures, and class divisions in society did not determine, but were inherent in, state and religious organizations. Even in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when European capitalism and profound economic and techno¬logical changes have influenced Islamic societies, economically derived classes such as merchants and proletariats are weakly developed in Muslim countries, and political and religious elites, institutions and cultural values continue to play a predominant role in the modernization of these societies. Whether twentieth-century technological and economic change now call into question the existence of an Islamic group of societies is a moot point.
These assumptions, presented here in a very schematic and simplistic form, derive from a variety of historical, social scientific, and philosophic sources. As an historian, however, my primary interest is not in theory but in the adap-tation of the theoretical assumptions to the needs of a coherent and mean-ingful exposition. The central problem of this book is how to present a history of enormous diversity - the history of societies which to sight and sound are utterly different - and yet preserve some sense of their historical and insti-tutional relatedness. For the reader this book is intended to provide a coherent overview of Islamic history. As a teacher I have long come to the conclusion that the endless everyday flow of events and news confuses rather than enlightens us and that a large “map” of the subject as a whole is essential to understand particular occurrences. Only from a large point of view can we acquire the poise, the distance, and the perspective that make it possible to identify basic structural factors and long-term historical trends and distinguish them from accidental and short-term considerations.
This is not, it should be clear, an effort to define an essential Islam but rather an effort to develop a comparative method of assessing the role of Islamic beliefs, institutions, and identities in particular historical contexts. The mech¬anism I have adopted to do this - the expository framework - is based on the assumptions that Islamic societies are built upon institutions and that these institutions are subject to internal variation, to variations in the relationships among them, and to variations over time. The limited number of institutional factors imposes a constraint that allows us to conceive this large subject in some ordered way, but also allows for the depiction of individual societies as concrete and different entities. By exploring the variation of institutions in differing contexts, we may be able to comprehend why Islamic societies are similar in general form and yet differ so much in specific qualities.
A few comments about the organization of the book may help the reader find his or her way through this large volume. First, the reader should be cautioned that the factual narrative approach of this book conceals great uncertainties in the problematics of historical judgment, incomplete knowl¬edge, conflicts of opinion and interpretation among experts, and constantly changing research which brings new knowledge and new points of view to the fore. Little has been said about the degree of reliability or the margin of error in the presentation of information, but the book is based upon the most reliable and up-to-date research and intepretation. Indeed, some conclusions are based upon current unpublished research. The reader should thus be aware that parts of the work are provisional and exploratory in nature, and represent the author’s best judgment about particular subjects.
The book is organized into three parts, each of which has an introduction and conclusion which deal with the organizing concepts upon which the book is based and summarize the important themes which come up in the narrative chapters. For an overview of the evolution of Islamic societies, these in-troductory and concluding chapters may be read separately or in conjunction with selected period or regional histories. This arrangement adds flexibility for the reader in choosing an approach to the book but involves a certain amount of repetition, for which I ask the indulgence of attentive readers of the whole volume. Each of the three main divisions deals with a particular epoch in Islamic history - the origins, diffusion and modern transformation of Islamic societies. This means that Islamic culture, arts, literatures, and religious values are discussed primarily in Part I, and are only referred to in a summary way in Parts II and III. The latter tend to emphasize the institutional aspects. Also regional histories are ordinarily divided into two or three sections. The history of Middle Eastern Islamic societies is divided among all three parts; the histories of other Islamic societies are divided among Parts II and III. There are, however, a number of exceptions. While Part I deals generally with the formation of Middle Eastern Islamic societies from the seventh to the thir-teenth century, for narrative convenience the early history of the Arab Middle East, of North Africa and of Spain is grouped with the corresponding regional histories in Part II; portions of these chapters may usefully be read in conjunction with Part I. Similarly, the entire history of the Arabian pen¬insula, Libya and the Caucasus is found in Part III rather than being scattered through the volume. The history of all these societies concludes in the present era around 1980, although there are references to developments as late as 1984. The use of the present tense in Part III refers to the period from 1970 to the present.
The definition of geographic regions also requires some arbitrary simpli-fications. Muslim world areas are by and large defined in regional terms such as Middle East, North Africa, Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, West and East Africa, and so on. For convenience of reference, and despite the obvious anachronism, these areas or parts of them are commonly identified by the names of present national states such as India, Indonesia, or Nigeria. This is to simplify identification for readers unfamiliar with the geography of these vast regions and to avoid such cumbersome locutions as “areas now part of the state of—,” but it should be clear that the use of these terms does not necessarily imply any similarity of state and social organization or of cultural style between pre-modern and contemporary times. Also it should be noted that I have placed the history of Libya in the chapter on North Africa and the Sudan in East Africa though these countries also belong to the Arab Middle East. Finally, not all Muslim regions are covered in this book. Muslim minorities in mainland Southeast Asia, the Philippines, Ceylon, Europe and the Americas, for example, are not discussed.
Transliterations from the numerous native languages of Muslim peoples have been simplified for the convenience of English readers not familiar with these languages. In general I have tried to follow standard scholarly usage for each world area, modified by the elimination of diacritical marks and some-times adapted to give a fair sense of pronunciation. Certain standard Arabic terms and names are given in their original, usually Arabic, literary form despite actual variations in spelling and pronunciation the world over. Dates are given in the Christian era. In the preparation of the book I have been greatly aided by my students, research assistants, and colleagues. They have helped me, depending upon their skills and my background in a given world area: by the preparation of bibliographies; reading, review, and preparation of digests on relevant literatures; research into particular themes and topics in both secondary and source materials; summaries or translations of materials in languages I do not read, and discussion of historiographical or methodological problems in their particular fields or disciplines. They have made an important contribution to my understanding of the role of Islam in several world areas, and have enormously facilitated the completion of the book.
I would like to thank David Goodwin, Margaret Malamud, Ann Taboroff, Sahar von Schlegell (Islamic history and Sufism); James Reid (Iran); Corrine Blake (Arab Middle East); Elaine Combs-Schilling (North Africa); Sandria Freitag and David Gilmartin (India); Mary Judd and Allan Samson (Indo¬nesia) ; William McFarren and Leslie Sharp (Africa); Rose Glickman and Mark Saroyan (Russian Inner Asia), and John Foran and Michael Hughes (mod-ernization and political economy). I am also grateful for the bibliographical help of Melissa MacCauly and Susan Mattern. For the selection of illustrations, I benefited from the advice and assistance of Guitty Azarpay, J ere Bacharach, Sheila Blair, Jonathan Bloom, Herbert Bodman, Gordon Holler, Thomas Lentz, Kim Lyon, Amy Newhall, and Labelle Prussin. I warmly thank the individuals and institutions by whose kind permission they are reproduced here. I am grateful to Cherie A. Semans of the Department of Geography, University of California, Berkeley, for the preparation of the designs and sketch maps upon which the maps in this volume are based.
Many friends and colleagues have read portions or even the whole of the manuscript and have given me invaluable corrections, suggestions and reflective thoughts. Each of them has enriched this volume, though none of them is responsible for the remaining faults. It gives me great pleasure to thank Jere Bacharach, Thomas Bisson, William Brinner, Edmund Burke III, Elaine Combs-Schilling, Shmuel Eisenstadt, Sandria Freitag, David Gilmartin, Albert Hourani, Suad Joseph, Barbara Metcalf, Thomas Metcalf, Martha Olcott, James Reid, Richard Roberts, William RofF, Allan Samson, Stanford Shaw, David Skinner, Ilkay Sunar, liter Turan, Abraham Udovitch, Lucette Valensi and Reginald Zelnik. As much as the writing, the friendship and generosity of these people have blessed the last seven years.
Several colleagues have had a particularly strong effect on the development of my understanding and have generously shared with me their views and unpublished work on various aspects of this book. In particular I would like to thank Barbara Metcalf (India), Elaine Combs-Schilling (North Africa), Suad Joseph (women’s studies), Martha Olcott (Soviet Inner Asia), James Reid (Iran and Inner Asia), Allan Samson (Indonesia), Warren Fusfeld (for his dissertation on the Naqshbandiya in India), and Sandria Freitag and David Gilmartin (India). Morris Rossabi has graciously allowed me to see a copy of an unpublished article by Joseph Fletcher on the Naqshbandiya in China.
I am equally indebted to the many people who have helped prepare the manuscript and the published book. The staff of the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California prepared an early draft of the manuscript. Muriel Bell edited several of the chapters. Lynn Gale helped to arrange the transmission of this material to the word processor of the Institute of International Studies at Berkeley, where Nadine Zelinski and Christine Peterson have worked with great skill on the preparation of the manuscript and have given me endless friendly support; they are among the close collaborators to whom I owe this book. The staff of Cambridge University Press, Elizabeth Wetton, editor, Susan Moore, subeditor, and Jane Williams, designer, have been especially helpful. Finally, but not least, I am grateful to my wife Brenda Webster for her amazed, and amazing, patience as this book grew larger and larger, for her suggestions and criticism, and above all, for her faith in the work. The research for this project has been generously supported by the Institute of International Studies of the University of California, Berkeley. I would like to express my thanks to Professor Carl Rosberg, Director of the Institute, to Mrs Karin Beros, Management Services Officer of the Institute, and to the Institute staff, who have been generous and gracious in their support. The preparation of this volume has also been made possible by a year in residence at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California, with the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and by a research grant from the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. The completion of this work has been made possible by a grant from the Division of Research of the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency. To these institutions I express my deep appreciation for affording me the opportunity to concentrate upon research and writing.
Ira M. Lapıdus University of California, Berkeley March 15, 1985
Part I The Origins Of Islamic Civilization: The Middle East From c. 600 To c. 1200
Introduction: Middle Eastern Socıeties Before the Advent of Islam
Islamic societies were built upon the framework of an already established and ancient Middle Eastern civilization. From the pre-Islamic Middle East, Islamic societies inherited a pattern of institutions which would shape their destiny until the modern age. These institutions included ordered small communities based upon family, lineage, clientage and ethnic ties, agricultural and urban societies, market economies, monotheistic religions, and bureaucratic empires. The civilization of Islam, though born in Mecca, also had its progenitors in Palestine, Babylon, and Persepolis. Islamic societies developed in an environment that since the earliest history of mankind had exhibited two fundamental, original, and persisting structures. The first was the organization of human societies into small, often familial, groups. The earliest hunting and gathering communities lived and moved in small bands. Since the advent of agriculture and the domestication of animals, the vast majority of Middle Eastern peoples have lived in agricultural villages or in the tent camps of nomadic pastoralists. Even town peoples were bound into small groups by ties of kinship and neighborhood with all that implies of strong affections and hatreds. These groups raised the young, arranged mar-riages, arbitrated disputes, and formed a common front vis-a-vis the outside world.
The second was a contrary evolutionary tendency toward the creation of unities of culture, religion, and empire on an ever-larger scale. In prehistoric ...
Ira M. Lapidus
A History of Islamic Societies
Cambridge Unıversity
Cambridge Unıversity Press A History of Islamic Societies Ira M. Lapidus Ira M. Lapidus Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley
The right of the University of Cambridge to print and sell all manner of books was granted by Henry VIII in 1534. The University has printed and published continuously since 1584.
Cambridge Unıversity Press Cambridge New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, Sydney
Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 iRP 32 East 37th Street, New York, NY 10022, USA 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia
Printed in Great Britain by the University Press, Cambridge
British Library cataloguing in publication data Lapidus, Ira M. A history of Islamic societies. 1. Civilization, Islamic I. Title 909'.09767I / DS35.62
Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data Lapidus, Ira M. (Ira Marvin) A history of Islamic societies.
Bibliography. Includes index. 1. Islamic countries - History. 2. Islam - History. I. Title Ds35.63.L37 1988 909'.097671 87-11754
ISBN 0 521 22552 3
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