Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam
13 8 . Tradition, Reform and Modernism in the Emergence of Pakistan - 2
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA
At age of 17, Mohammed bin Qasim was one of the ablest generals in the Umayyad armies. Paying attention to details, he ordered the cavalry to move by land and shipped heavy assault engines by sea. Starting his campaigns near the modern city of Karachi, he moved rapidly to capture Panjore and Armabel and advanced towards Debal. The Raja of Debal closed the gates of the city and locked himself inside his fortress. A long siege ensued. The assault engines hammered the city walls day in and day out taking them down brick by brick. Finally, the mighty fortress walls collapsed, the city fell, the Raja fled and the Arab prisoners were released.
From Debal, Mohammed bin Qasim advanced north, and in a series of campaigns captured Sistan, Bahraj, Cutch, Arore, Karej and Jiore. The Raja of Sindh fell at the battle of Jiore. Baluchistan and Sindh were added to the Umayyad Empire. The Arab armies moved up the Indus River. In 713, Multan fell, opening up the vast Punjab plains to the invading armies. Mohammed bin Qasim added portions of southern Punjab to his conquests and crossed the Indus to its eastern banks. But just as he was preparing for a decisive showdown with the rajas of eastern Punjab, the political situation in Iraq changed and Mohammed bin Qasim was called back to Basra. Following a pattern they had established in Iran and Egypt, the conquering Arabs set up military cantonments in Debal and Multan but made no attempts to convert the local population as long as they paid the taxes and accepted the protection of the Umayyad governor.
In the year 717, Omar bin Abdel Azeez became the Caliph in Baghdad. Unlike his predecessors, he was a pious man with a noble vision. He gave up the lavish, profligate ways of the Umayyads, adopted an ascetic lifestyle, abolished unfair taxation on Iran, Egypt and Sindh, engaged the dissidents in dialogue, and treated the population of his vast realm with equity and justice. Attracted by his piety and fairness, many of the Zoroastrians in Persia, Coptic Christians in Egypt, Buddhists in Central Asia and Hindus in Sindh accepted Islam. Historically, this was the first wave of conversion in the Islamic world after the death of the Prophet. However, court intrigue in the palaces of Baghdad intervened once again. Omar bin Abdel Azeez was poisoned in 719 and the far-reaching reforms initiated by him came to a halt. So did the process of conversion.
The Abbasids took over from the Umayyads in 751 CE, founded the city of Baghdad, encouraged learning and shifted their focus from conquest to trade. Arab and Persian merchants established colonies all along the rim of the Indian Ocean including Hermuz in Persia, Aden, Yemen, Dar es Salam in Tanzania, Cochin in India, Debal in Sindh, Multan in Punjab, Malacca in Malaysia and Canton in China. Arabic became the lingua franca of the littoral states of the Indian Ocean. The traders mingled and intermarried with the local populations. Impressed by their piety, integrity, fairness and egalitarian discipline, many entered the fold of Islam. Conversion was especially brisk along the Malabar Coast of India.
It was with the advent of Fatimid rule in Egypt in the 10 th century that conversion picked up in what is today Pakistan. I have in my books on Islam in Global History explained in some detail the religious, political and military events in North Africa and the Middle East surrounding the emergence of the Fatimids. The Fatimids are also called Ismailis. They follow six Imams as opposed to the Ithna Asharis who follow twelve Imams. Today, they constitute a small but influential section of the Islamic community based primarily in Bombay, Karachi, East Africa and Southern Egypt. The Agha Khan is the titular head of the Ismaili community.
In the year 969, the Fatimid Sultan Muiz captured Egypt. This event was a turning point in Islamic history. Using Egypt as their base, the Fatimids branched out, capturing Mecca, Madina and Jerusalem. For a hundred years thereafter the khutba in Mecca and Madina was read in the name of Fatimid princes whose sway extended from the Atlantic coast in Morocco to the Euphrates River in Iraq. The Sunni Abbasids were cornered into a small area around Baghdad.
Muiz (d 975) was a visionary monarch and an able administrator. He established schools, built canals, encouraged agriculture, fostered trade, reduced taxes on the peasants and supported the ulema. It was he who founded the city of Cairo and established the university at Al Azhar (969 CE). His empire sat astride the trade routes between Asia and Europe and benefited from the east-west trade. Egypt prospered and the people loved him.
With the strategic province of Egypt under their control, the Fatimids attempted to establish a universal Islamic Empire directed by the Fatimid Imams. For over a hundred years, from the conquest of Egypt in 969 to the year 1057 when the Buyids were driven out of Baghdad by the Seljuk Turks, the Fatimid writ reigned supreme over much of the Islamic world. The vast majority of their subjects were orthodox Sunni Muslims. To realize their vision of a global empire, the Fatimids embarked on a conversion program directed at the Sunnis as well as the Ithna Ashari (twelver) Shias. The university at Al Azhar was turned into a vast propaganda center wherein daees were trained and sent to the far flung corners of the Muslim world. In addition, in the year 1002, a formal dawa center, the Darul Hikmah, was established in Cairo.
Some of the Fatimid daees arrived in Multan and Sindh where they met with a degree of success. By the time Mahmud Ghaznavi appeared in the Punjab (1001CE), the Fatimids had converted the Emir of Multan and the Fatimid presence was well established there. Mahmud fought and defeated Dawud and brought his emirate back into the fold of Sunni Islam (1004 CE). The population which had opted for Fatimid Shi’ism reverted to Sunni schools of fiqh.
The influx of Fatimid daees marked the first organized attempt at mass conversion in Sindh and Multan. A large number of the early Sufi Shaikhs were among these daees. The names of Pir Sadruddin, Pir Kabiruddin and Pir Yusufuddin are well known in Pakistan. The influx of Sufi Shaikhs continued during the Ghaznavid period. Among the most successful of these Sufis were Shaikh Ismail and Data Ganj Baksh (d 1079). These stalwarts were the earliest missionaries in Western Punjab and their spirituality convinced multitudes of Hindus to accept Islam.
The ideological challenge from the Fatimids elicited a response from the Sunnis. Nizam ul Mulk (d 1091), the grand vizier of the Abbasids, established the Nizamiya college in Baghdad (1090). The College, in addition to a great center of learning, became a propaganda center for Sunni Islam. In this respect, it was a mirror image of Al Azhar, which was a center of Fatimid learning and propaganda. Local governors in the Sunni provinces followed the example of the grand vizier and established higher institutions of learning in cities as far away as Nishapur and Samarkand.
It was in the Nizamiya College Baghdad that Al Gazzali, the most celebrated dialectician in Sunni Islam, taught as a Professor. By the time Gazzali made his entrance on the stage of world history, classical Islamic civilization was past its zenith. Along the road, it had experimented with and abandoned the Mu’tazalite rational approach and had instead adopted and cultivated the empirical sciences. Now it was turning inwards to discover its own soul. Tasawwuf, the inner dimension of Islam, offered new vistas for a civilization that had grown weary of the exoteric sciences. Renowned empiricists such as Ibn Sina (d 1035) had come to accept tasawwuf as a legitimate discipline for the acquisition of knowledge. Al Gazzali, who experienced this skepticism in his personal life, gave up the teaching of exoteric sciences and embarked on a spiritual quest which opened up for him the vast realm of the spirit.
(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)
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