Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam
191. Marginalization of Muslims – A Brief Review- Part 2
By Professor Dr Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA

 

It was in the last third of the 16 th century that the focus of history shifted to northern Europe. The confluence of several critical events helped the North Europeans in their emergence on the world stage. In 1571, the Battle of Lepanto contained the expansion of the Ottoman navy and prevented the Turks from projecting their power into the Atlantic Ocean and the Americas. In 1578 the Moroccans, under Sultan Ahmed al Mansur, crushed the Portuguese at the Battle of al Qasr al Kabir and with it the curtain fell on the Portuguese global venture. Sebastian, the King of Portugal, was killed and within two years after the debacle Portugal itself became a protectorate of Spain. In turn, Spain tried to leverage its position as the colonial power in the Americas to solidify its global naval supremacy. In this effort it was doomed to failure.

The lure of Incan gold from Peru and Aztec silver from Mexico, hauled aboard Spanish ships, was too strong a temptation for English, French and North African pirates. Spain tried diplomacy to stop the piracy but to no avail. In desperation, King Phillip III of Spain attempted an invasion of England. With the combined resources of Spain and Portugal, the Spanish armada sailed towards London. The invasion had the blessing of the Pope who declared a Crusade against England because Queen Elizabeth I (d. 1603) had taken England out of the orbit of Rome and had joined the Protestant League. The planned invasion was a disaster. The Spanish armada was sunk in the English Channel in 1588. The pride of the Spanish and Portuguese navies went down to the bottom of the sea and with it died the Spanish dream of dominating the world.

Meanwhile, a new naval power emerged in northern Europe. Holland, which had been a colony of Spain, threw off the Spanish yoke in 1572 and declared its independence. Antwerp and Rotterdam were important trading and shipbuilding centers for Spain and Portugal. When they wrested their independence, the Dutch inherited not only these trading posts but acquired the shipbuilding docks as well. Following the unsuccessful Spanish attempts to invade England (1588 and 1598), the weakness of Spanish naval power led to increased piracy against its shipping. As piracy took its toll, Spain was forced to increase the rate of production of its ships to replenish its vast fleet. Quality suffered. By contrast, the Dutch focused on improving the range as well as the firepower of their ships. Holland had, in addition, large resources of timber from the Rhineland and a vast reservoir of German mercenaries to draw upon from the northern counties. A weakened Spain, overextended across the globe, could not defend its positions as well as those of its Portuguese allies. By 1620, the Dutch had occupied Brazil, displaced the Portuguese as the dominant naval power in the Indian Ocean and replaced the Spanish as the most important European power engaged in the African slave trade.

From the vantage point of the year 1600, a historian may see a window of opportunity in North Africa and Western Europe. Portugal was defeated and had become a protectorate of Spain. The Spaniards, their ambitions frustrated in North Africa and England, could not defend their far-flung possessions. The Dutch and the English fleets were still in their infancy. This was an ideal opportunity for the Maghrib to venture forth and compete for the wealth that lay beyond the oceans. But it was not to be. North Africa surrendered the Atlantic Ocean to the Europeans. The wheels of fortune turned. Wealth and power gravitated towards northern Europe and left Africa in poverty.

These developments were a logical consequence of the political fragmentation that existed in North Africa in the 15 th and 16 th centuries. The Ottomans advanced from Egypt to control Tunisia and Algeria (1572) but halted their advance when the Sa’adids of Morocco showed their military prowess against the Portuguese at the Battle of al Qasr al Kabir (1578). In Morocco itself, there was tension between the rulers and the society. Real power in the countryside lay with the Jazuli (belonging to the Shadhuli order) Sufis and the Sa’adid emirs ruled only with the support of the Jazuli shaykhs. Unlike the emirs, the Jazulis had roots in the countryside. They organized local schools around zawiyas, provided social services and spearheaded the resistance to Portuguese incursions in southern Morocco and Mauritania. The money required to support these activities came from ziyara, a charitable contribution offered by the faithful to the local zawiyas, which were often built around tombs of Sufi shaykhs. By the same token, this was money denied the Sultans and emirs. Sources of revenue from the Mediterranean were equally elusive for the central administration. Much of the trade in the western Mediterranean was controlled by Genoa, Italy. The interests of the Moroccan merchants were therefore more closely allied with those of the Italian merchants than with the Sa’adid emirs in Marrakesh. In addition, there were profits from piracy, but the capital for this activity was controlled from abroad, primarily from Italy and France. The Sa’adids were therefore perennially short of cash and became increasingly coercive in their tax collection.

It was the pressure of an empty treasury that drove the Sa’adid Emir, Ahmed al Mansur to his ill-fated invasion of the Songhay Empire in West Africa (1592). Although the emir obtained a substantial amount of loot from this adventure, the long-term effect of the invasion was to disrupt the north-south trade between the Sudan and North Africa, further hastening the disintegration of both. In turn, the resulting dislocations helped the African slave trade, which was at this time gaining momentum in the Sene-Gambia region on the Atlantic shores.

The Jazuli Sufi movement, like its sister movements in Asia, was inherently anti-central, focusing more on individual salvation and the welfare of the local community, as opposed to a centralized administration. Only a centralized power could have mustered the capital to invest in a strong navy capable of competing with European navies. The Sultans of Marrakesh, perennially short of cash, could not afford such major investments. The only Muslim power that did have the resources, namely the Ottoman Empire, was precluded from doing so by the emergence of independent Morocco. The Spanish emperors, from Charles V (d. 1558) onwards, recognized that independent Morocco was a useful bulwark against Ottoman expansion and did everything in their power to encourage this independence. The Turkish navy had no bases on the Atlantic Ocean. As a result, the Atlantic became an exclusive preserve of the European powers, and America an extension of Europe.

The tension between the rulers and the society had disastrous long-term effects on the development of trade and technology in the Maghrib. What was good for the society was not necessarily good for the emirs and vice versa. The emirs and Sultans had nothing to gain from any improvement, which would help either the Jazuli shaykhs, or the rich merchants along the Mediterranean coast. For instance, cultivation of sugarcane, which had been introduced into Morocco around 1570, was abandoned because the primary beneficiaries of this cultivation were the Sufi zawiyas. Even though there was a ready market for Moroccan sugar in Elizabethan England, the Sa’adid emirs saw no advantage in furthering this trade. Similarly, profits that were made by a few merchants on the Mediterranean coast benefited neither the emirs nor the society at large. A few merchants became wealthy from the trade, but it did not help the consolidation of political power in the Maghrib or provide a channel for the energies of the masses in the direction of the increasingly important Atlantic Ocean.

In contrast to the accelerating social and political fragmentation in the Maghrib, England went through a political consolidation under the stimulus of similar impulses. English pirates were equally active against Spanish and Portuguese shipping. However, the impact of piracy was to hasten the demise of feudalism in England. Rich merchants, noblemen, even the crown, invested in this trade and benefited from its profits. The infusion of wealth created a new class whose interests lay more in the ships that plowed the ocean than in exploiting the land. As the newly rich made a bid for power, there was resistance from the established feudal lords. Tensions developed between the city and the countryside. Bold forays were made in the Parliament by both sides. After Oliver Cromwell (d. 1658), the debate between the trader and the landlord was decided in favor of the former and power shifted inexorably in favor of the merchants.

(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)