Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam
190: Marginalization of Muslims – A Brief Review
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA

 

When Islam burst upon the global scene in the 7 th century, it faced the Christian (Byzantine, Eastern Roman) Empire in the Mediterranean and the Zoroatrian Empire in Persia. The campaigns of Caliph Omar Ibn al Khattab (r) eliminated the Sassanids, the Persians embraced Islam, and Persia became a part of the Islamic heartland.

In the Mediterranean, the Roman provinces of Syria and Egypt were conquered. Expansion continued during the Umayyad period. An attack on the Byzantine capital of Constantinople (Istanbul) by Emir Muawiya (d. 680) was unsuccessful. Success was more forthcoming in the western campaigns. By 712, North Africa and Spain were in the Muslim camp. Muslim armies crossed the Pyrenees Mountains (715), consolidated their hold on southern France (715-730), and pushed north into the heart of the Frankish territories. They were stopped at the Battle of Tours (736) near modern Paris. Thus, the first wave of Muslim expansion succeeded in elbowing out the Byzantine Empire from the eastern Mediterranean and almost succeeded in overrunning the Latin West.

The second wave of expansion came in the 9 th century. After the death of Charlemagne (814) and the disintegration of the Carolingian Empire, a political vacuum developed in northern Europe that invited raids from the Vikings (Swedes). The Nordic countries were not yet Christian, and the Viking raids took a heavy toll in Germany, France and Scotland. At about the same time, the Umayyads in Spain and the Aghlabids in Tunisia launched a series of raids on southern Europe. The Spanish Umayyads reoccupied Narbonne and made a thrust towards the mountain passes in Switzerland. The Aghlabids captured Sicily and advancing into the Italian peninsula, occupied Pisa and raided Rome (846). The Muslim powers might have inflicted greater damage were they not divided among themselves. The Umayyads of Spain would not coordinate their efforts with the Aghlabids of North Africa who owed their allegiance to the Abbasids in Baghdad. In the 10 th century, the powerful Fatimids in Egypt (969-1172) displaced the Aghlabids. The Fatimids had a different vision of Islam from the Sunnis and engaged in a continuous struggle with both the Umayyads in Spain and the Abbasids in Baghdad. These internal struggles dashed any hope of a coordinated, sustained offensive against southern Europe.

The first Latin thrust at the world of Islam came during the Crusades. The Crusades were proposed by Pope Gregory V as early as 996, but the Europe of Pope Gregory was too weak, and the Islamic world much too strong, to mount a major attack across the Mediterranean Sea. The initial focus of the Crusades was therefore limited to southern Italy and Spain. Pisa and Sardinia were recaptured in 1052, while the city of Toledo in Spain fell in 1085. However, it was not until the 11 th century that the full fury of the Crusades was let loose.

In 1095, Pope Urban preached a Crusade to wrest control of Jerusalem from the Muslims. The imagination of Europe was fired up with visions of the Holy Cross and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. This time, the political climate in the eastern Mediterranean was more conducive to an invasion. The long drawn out struggle between the Abbasids in Baghdad and the Fatimids in Cairo had sapped their energies. The line of control between the Seljuk Turks who championed the Abbasids and the Fatimids ran through the hills of Palestine. The First Crusade succeeded in capturing Jerusalem and establishing a Latin presence in Palestine and Syria (1096). However, the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem was short-lived. A counterpunch by the Seljuks (1130-1170) expelled the Crusaders from northern Iraq. Salahuddin (d. 1193) united Syria and Egypt under his command, brought an end to Fatimid rule in Cairo (1172) and won back Jerusalem (1186) from the Crusaders.

The first Latin drive into the eastern Mediterranean was a military failure, but it did bring the Crusaders face to face with the more advanced Islamic civilization. Soon, the focus of the Crusades in the eastern Mediterranean changed from God to gold. With the Fourth Crusade and the sack of Constantinople (1204), the Latin West accepted the premise that gold was more important than the Cross and moved inexorably away from the age of imagination towards the age of mercantile acquisition.

Subsequent forays by the Latins to occupy Egypt (1218) ended in failure and their attempts to form a coalition with the marauding Mongols (1260) were equally unsuccessful. The finale came when Sultan Baybars of Egypt defeated a combined army of the Crusaders, Armenians and Mongols at the Battle of Ayn Jalut (1261), near the city of Nazareth. However, it was in the Maghrib that the real drama of the Crusades was played out. It was the western Crusades, fought in Spain and North Africa, which altered the flow of global history and ultimately resulted in the ascendancy of Europe over the rest of the world.

Frustrated in the east, the Crusaders turned their full fury at the Maghrib. After the Battle of Hittin (1186) and the failure of the Third Crusade (1193), no serious attempt was made by the Latins to retake Jerusalem. It was a different story in the west. The Second Crusade (1145) succeeded in capturing Lisbon ( Hishbunah in Arabic) in Portugal, while Sicily was wrested from the Arabs (1050). The intervention of the Murabitun from West Africa (1086), and of the Al Muhaddith from North Africa (1125) stemmed the Crusader tide for a while. But the disastrous defeat at Las Novas de Tolosa (1212) sealed the fate of the Al Muhaddith Empire and the Christian Crusaders thrust forward. Spain, except for a tiny foothold in Granada, fell to a combined onslaught from Portugal, Castile and Aragon (1232-1248).

For the next hundred years, a military equilibrium prevailed in the western Mediterranean. Hostilities resumed in the 15 th century as pressure from the Turks in the eastern Mediterranean increased. In 1415, Portugal captured the important trading post of Ceuta astride the Straits of Gibraltar. This was the first significant hold of the Christian Iberians in North Africa. Tangier fell in 1425. Using these two cities as their bases, the Portuguese expanded their operations on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. Prince Henry, Portuguese governor of Ceuta and Tangier, encouraged these excursions. Since the Maghrib was in political disarray following the collapse of the Al Muhaddith, it was in no position to mount a vigorous counter-offensive. In 1434, the Portuguese sailor Diaz crossed Cape Bajador at the western tip of Africa. This was an important benchmark in that it demonstrated Portuguese capability to sail against the wind. In 1441, the first Portuguese slave raid was made on the coast of Mauritania, in which a “Moorish” couple was captured and enslaved. This was the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade, which in the coming centuries was to transform Africa, Europe and America alike. By the year 1500, there were 30,000 Muslim slaves in Lisbon.

The Portuguese continued their relentless advance down the coast of West Africa. Gaining experience as they went, Portuguese sailors soon discovered that by sailing further west to the Azores Islands and then turning south, they could avoid the opposing currents off the coast of Africa. By 1490, their ships were sailing far into the southern reaches of the great continent of Africa. The farther south they went, the larger was the radius of the arc extending from the Azores to the tip of South Africa. In 1492, during one of those voyages, in an arc that extended far from the shores of Africa, Columbus discovered the West Indies. Granada fell the same year to a determined Castilian onslaught. In 1494, at the Treaty of Tordesillas brokered by Pope Alexander VI, Portugal and Spain divided the world into their respective spheres of influence. In 1496, Vasco de Gama sailed around the Cape of Good Hope in Africa, up the coast of East Africa and with the help of a Muslim navigator, Ahmed Ibn Majid, was shown the sea-route to India. Thus, the naval thrusts that had started a century earlier to outflank the Muslim Maghrib resulted in the discovery of America and the establishment of naval trade routes to the prosperous Indian Ocean region.

But these discoveries in themselves were not sufficient to guarantee the ascent of Europe. While the Iberians were exploring the coast of West Africa, the Ottoman Turks, rising from the dust of Tatar destructions, started a broad offensive in southeastern Europe. This was the third major offensive of the Muslims towards Europe. The Turks were fierce, determined, had the zeal of the ghazis and were more than a match for Europe in military technology. In 1453, Constantinople (Istanbul) was captured and was made the capital of the expanding empire. By the turn of the century, Turkish cavalry was riding on the plains of Hungary and was knocking at the doors of Vienna, deep in Central Europe. When the Ottomans captured Egypt in 1517, they projected their naval power into the Mediterranean, while their land armies pushed across North Africa, expelling the Spanish who had established their bases along the southern Mediterranean coast. Meanwhile, the powerful Safavids in Persia and the resplendent Moghuls in India were consolidating their empires. To an observer in 1570, it would not be obvious as to whether it would be the Christian Iberians or the Muslim Turks who would conquer and dominate the world.

(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)