PHILOSOPHY (FALSAFA)
Falsafa is an Arabic term that renders the
Greek philosophia and is used to
describe the Greco-Arabic tradition of philosophy and the wider classical
Islamic tradition. The impetus for philosophical speculation in Islam is a much
debated issue. Whether one wishes to see solely Hellenic roots for philosophy
in the ‘Abbasid period or whether one searches as a confessional statement for
philosophical inspiration in the Qur’an and the tradition of the Prophet is
largely a matter of ideology. The origins of philosophy are far too complex to
be reduced to a singular causality. What is clear is that in the ‘Abbasid
period the speculative desire to understand the nature of the Qur’an, and the
relationship between believer and cosmos, was increasingly articulated in
arguments of a systematic nature. The standards of argumentation, partly as a result
of the need to find a neutral set of rules that could apply in disputation with
non-Muslims who did not accept the validity of the Qur’anic revelation, was
Aristotelian logic, especially the Topics (translated into Arabic in this
period as the Book of Dialectic, or al-jadal).
It has also been suggested that the ‘Abbasids encouraged philosophical and
scientific speculation, complemented by translations from Greek works as an
expression of their imperial ideology. A translation movement developed in the
capital of Baghdad, fueled by money from the court and produced mainly by Arab
Christian theologians familiar with Greek and with the Syriac tradition of
translating the works of Aristotle, Plato, and other Hellenic thinkers into
scholarly Near Eastern vernaculars. The works were kept in the library of the
chancellery in Baghdad and named Bayt
al-Hikma (House of Wisdom). This movement intersected with a key
intellectual circle associated with arguably the first Muslim philosopher, Abu
Yusuf Ya‘qub al-Kindi (d. 870 CE). Thus translations and arguments that joined
Hellenic debates and took them into fresh avenues of inquiry were largely
coeval.
Important translators such as Hunayn b. Ishaq
(d. 873) and Yahya b. ‘Adi (d. 974) coordinated translations firstly of the
Aristotelian organon to establish rules
of disputation and standards of rational discourse, and later the metaphysical,
natural philosophical, and psychological works of the Stagirite. Aristotle was
the philosopher par excellence, and the Neoplatonic curriculum that Islam
inherited began the study of philosophy with Aristotle. What they also
inherited was the desire to harmonize the work of Plato and Aristotle. Yahya is
supposed to have translated Plato’s Timaeus,
the key cosmological text of the Neoplatonic curriculum, and Porphyry’s Isogoge or introduction to Aristotelian
logic was incorporated into the study of logic. Harmonization led to the
proliferation of pseudo-Aristotelian works attributed to the Stagirite that
were actually of Neoplatonic provenance.
Foremost among them were the Theology of Aristotle, a paraphrastic epitome
of Plotinus’Enneads IV–VI and Kitab fi
Mahd al-Khayr (Liber de Causis),a work that draws upon Proclus’ Stoikeiosis
Theologikeˆ (Elements of Theology).
Both works were at the forefront of the second translation movement beginning
in twelfth-century Spain, when Arabic philosophical works were translated into
Latin and influenced the development of the scholastic philosophy of the
universities.
The Theology
of Aristotle was produced by the Nestorian translator ‘Abd al-Masih b.
‘Abdallah b. Na‘ima al-Himsi (d. 835) for the circle of al-Kindi (d. 870) in Baghdad.
The Theologyis also part of a larger corpus of
Plotiniana Arabica,drawing
upon the Enneadsthat includes fragmentary sayings attributed to the ‘‘Greek Sage’’
(al-Shaykh al-Yunani) and an Epistle on Divine Science (Risala fi-l-‘Ilm
al-Ilahi). The text purports to be a translation of a theological text of
Aristotle, with the commentary of
Porphyry (d. 270), and certainly is a valuable expression of the Neoplatonic
heritage of classical Islamic philosophy. The misattribution appealed to the
taste of early Islamic philosophy that perpetuated the late antique Neoplatonic
reconciliation of the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle and filled a
perceived lacuna in the system of Aristotle that the Arabs inherited, providing
doctrines about the nature of God and eschatology. Nevertheless, the text was
adapted to suit the needs of its audience and was always more than a
translation, incorporating material akin to Aristotelianism and even drawing
upon pseudo Dionysian doctrines on
the ‘‘profession of ignorance.’’ The Theologyis divided into ten mayamir (sing.,mimar),
the Syriac Christian word for a chapter of a theological treatise. It is
prefaced by a prologue that mentions the author, the translator, the editor (al-Kindi),
and the patron (Ahmad, the son of the caliph al-Mu‘tasim). It may have been
modeled on a text of Porphyry that sets out some of the key issues to be
tackled in the text concerning the nature of the soul, its descent into the
world of matter, and its reversion to its principle. The Theology became the impetus
for philosophical speculation and established some of the key features of
Islamic Neoplatonism. Commentaries and glosses upon the text were written by
Christian, Jewish, and Muslim philosophers, including Ibn Sina and ‘Abd
al-Latif al-Baghdadi (d. 1231) in the classical period and Qadi Sa‘id Qummi (d.
1696) in the later Safavid period.
The doctrines of the Theology mainly concern the nature of the soul. The soul descends,
like all other beings, from a causal chain of emanation that is produced by a
purely good and loving principle, the One or the Creator (al-Bari’). It descends from a higher intelligible world to reside
within a material body that is part of the sensible world. The cosmos is thus a
natural and logical consequence of the One and not a volitional result of a
theistic creator. Unlike the Aristotelian doctrine, the soul is not a
perfection or entelechy of the body (although in at least one instance this
view is approved) but is independent of the body as an eternal, immaterial
substance capable of separating itself and ascending momentarily to experience
the beatitude of its intelligible origin. This possibility is expressed in the
famous ‘‘doffing metaphor’’ of Theology
mimar I (see Enneads IV.8.1). The
soul alienated in this world desires to taste the freedom of its origins,
transcending the material cage of this world, and wishes to revert to its
principle. Philosophers such as Suhrawardi and Sufis such as Ibn ‘Arabi later
cited this metaphor. Other doctrines and issues broached include time and
creation, the nature of God and His agency, the nature of knowledge, and the
end of the soul. Because of the coverage of central issues and its ascription
to Aristotle, the Theologybecame the seminal text in the classical period of
Islamic philosophy.
Indian and Persian Influences
The push eastward brought Muslims in contact
with Persian and Indian thought and science, and early on astronomical and
medical works were translated from Pahlavi and Sanskrit. The scientist and
philosopher al-Biruni (d. 1048) also had the Yogasutra of PatanjalÐ translated from Sanskrit, the only major work
of Indian philosophy available in the classical period. Persian texts
onmoraliawere transformed into a work such as Javidan Khirad (Eternal Wisdom) of Miskawayh (d. 1030). But the most enduring and
striking legacy of the East was the physics of atomism that became a central
feature of theological speculation about the nature of the cosmos, and the
significance and influences of the celestial bodies upon the earth.
Theology and Philosophy
If rational discourse is a standard for
judging falsafa, then much of
thekalamtradition ought to be considered to be philosophical. Although the
philosophical nature of much of the debate among theologians (mutakallimun) is indubitable (such as
arguments about occasionalism, atomism, free will, and determinism), there was
a tension from an early period between them and philosophers. Theology remained
an apologetic defense of dogma as discerned in the Qur’an and the Prophetic
tradition, where as falsafa was an attempt at a rational speculation about some
more abstract notions about reality. Although it did not fail to serve as the
handmaiden of theology when the need arose, the Neoplatonic Aristotelianism of the
philosophers (falasifa) was
considered to be in contravention with sound belief. Ibn Sina (d. 1037) was the
central figure in the formation of the new Islamic philosophy. He established
key philosophical doctrines about the nature of God as a Necessary Being,
described the nature of the human soul and its end in the afterlife, and
provided engaging philosophical analyses of the nature of prophecy and
revelation. He produced a successful and influential synthesis of theology and
philosophy and it was precisely for this reason that he had been subjected to attack.
The famous theologian al-Ghazali (d. 1111) in his Tahafut al-Falasifa (Incoherence of the Philosophers) revealed the
ambivalence of theology toward philosophy. He was quite willing to co-opt Aristotelian
logic as a standard for argumentation and use philosophical styles of
discourse, but quite averse to the metaphysics to which they committed the
practitioner. In this work, al-Ghazali condemned twenty doctrines expressed by
philosophers such as Ibn Sina and held them to be incompatible with Muslim
dogma, while providing rather philosophical refutations of those positions. On
three specific issues, he regarded the philosophers as being guilty of heresy since
belief in those doctrines was unbelief. These were the notions that the world
was coeternal with God because it was only a logical and not a temporal consequent
of him, that God did not know particulars but only knew universals, and that
that there was no bodily resurrection. That al-Ghazali was willing to use
philosophical arguments to refute philosophy and that he wrote other works that
seemed to acknowledge Avicennan cosmology did contribute to his losing the
case. One must not accept condemnations of the philosophical as a universal
distaste for rational discourse in Islam. The cultural history of the classical
period actually suggests that philosophy was far from being a pursuit marginal
to intellectual Muslim society.
Islamic Philosophy
The philosophical tradition survived
al-Ghazali’s assault. Ibn Rushd (d. 1198) wrote a successful refutation of it. He
led a revival of an orthodox Aristotelianism in Islam and also penned a famous legal
defense justifying rational speculation. However, medieval Islam had no taste
for orthodox Aristotelianism. Thinkers were more concerned with perpetuating
the late antique process of harmonizing metaphysics with theism and thus forms
of Neoplatonism were more in vogue. Philosophy after the polemics culminating
in al-Ghazali survived in a number of guises, all revealing the central role of
Ibn Sina and acting as reactions to his thought. First, the real success
offalsafa led to its naturalization within the theological tradition of kalam. The rise of philosophical
theology meant that discourse not only commenced with philosophical logic but
also with its epistemological foundations concerning the nature of knowledge and
its metaphysical foundations concerning existence and its divisions. Second,
following Ibn Sina, works of falsafaincluded extensive discussions about the
nature of God, his attributes, and his relationship with the world and included
both the kalamcosmological proof for his existence and the Avicennan proof of
God as the Necessary Being. Avicennan falsafa won the day. Third, followers of
Ibn ‘Arabi engaged with philosophy and produced a far more systematic
metaphysical account of Sufi thought. Fourth, various traditions arose in
critique of Ibn Sina, beginning with Suhrawardi (d. 1191) and his school of ‘‘illumination,’’ and later in the Safavid
period Mulla Sadra (d. 1641) attempted to reconcile Ibn Sina, Suhrawardi, and
Ibn ‘Arabi. The scope of philosophy and its cultural influence has thus
extended far beyond its beginnings in ‘Abbasid Baghdad.
Primary Sources
Adamson,
P.The Arabic Plotinus. London: Duckworth,2002.
Adamson, P.,
and R. Taylor, eds.The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Corbin, H.A
History of Islamic Philosophy. London: Routledge, 1993.
Daiber, H.A
Bibliography of Islamic Philosophy. 2 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1999.
Fakhry, M.A
History of Islamic Philosophy. 3rd ed. New York: Columbia University Press,
2004.
al-Ghazali.
The Incoherence of the Philosophers, transl. M. Marmura. Provo, UT: Brigham
Young University Press, 1998.
Gutas,
D.Greek Thought, Arabic Culture. London: Routledge, 1998.
Ibn Rushd.
The Incoherence of the Incoherence, transl. S. van den Bergh. London: E.J.W.
Gibb Memorial Trust, 1954.
Ibn Sina.
The Metaphysics, transl. M. Marmura. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press,
2006.
Kraye, J. et
al., eds.Pseudo-Aristotle in the Middle Ages, London: Warburg Institute, 1986.
Leaman, O.A
Brief Introduction to Islamic Philosophy. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998.
———.Classical
Islamic Philosophy. Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Nasr, S. H.,
and M. Aminrazavi, eds.An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia. 5 vols. New York:
Oxford University Press/London: I. B. Tauris, 1998–2005.
Nasr, S. H.,
and O. Leaman, eds.History of Islamic Philosophy. 2 vols. London: Routledge,
1996. Peters, F.E.Aristoteles Arabus. Leiden: Brill, 1968.
Rosenthal,
F.The Classical Heritage in Islam. London: Routledge, 1975.
Sharif, M.M.
ed.History of Muslim Philosophy. 2 vols. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1966.
Suhrawardi.
The Philosophy of Illumination, transl. J. Walbridge and H. Ziai. Provo, UT:
Brigham Young University Press, 1998.
Walzer,
Richard.Greek into Arabic. Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1962.
PLATO, PLATONISM, AND NEOPLATONISM
Neoplatonism was a philosophical movement
that primarily belonged to the Hellenist Alexandrian and Syriac schools of thought.
Its founder, Plotinus (ca. 205–270 CE), an Egyptian of Greek culture, was
profoundly influenced by Plato’s Republic, Phaedo, and Symposium, as well
as being inspired by Aristotelian, Stoic, and neo-Pythagorean doctrines.
Plotinus’ own monumental corpus, the Enneads,
was partly drafted in response to the objections raised by Aristotle against
Plato’s theory of ideas. Therein, Plotinus argued that the Platonic forms
subsist in what Aristotle referred to as Nous
(intellect). Giving a metaphysical primacy to abstract ideas, the realm of the
intelligible was construed as being the ground of the ultimate reality, which
was radically independent from sensible beings. This ontology led to a belief
in the existence of absolute values rooted in eternity. Further elaborations of
Plotinus’s teachings were undertaken by his disciple, Porphyry of Tyre (ca.
232–305 CE), and were supplemented by the work of the latter’s pupil, the
Syrian Iamblichus (ca. 250–330 CE). However, Proclus (ca. 411–485 CE)
introduced the most rigorous systematization of this tradition. The impetus of Neoplatonism
in philosophy confronted many challenges following the closing of the Athenian
Academy (ca. 526 CE) by the Roman Emperor Justinian. The momentum of this
tradition was renewed with the philosophers of the medieval Islamic civilization
who imbued it with monotheistic directives. Following Socrates, in a critique
of the Sophists, Platonists believed that knowledge cannot be derived from appearances
alone, and that it can only be properly attained through universal ideas.
Heeding the meditations of Parmenides, they held that the realm of being was
unchanging, eternal, and indestructible; while
following Heraclitus, they took the sensible realm as being subject to a
constant flux of transformational becoming. Establishing a distinction between
truth and belief, they asserted that the intelligible was apprehended by reason
and the sensible by mere opinion. With this Platonist heritage, the ethical code
of goodness became a cosmological principle.
Eventually, Neoplatonists held that The One,
as the indeterminate perfection of absolute unity, simplicity, and goodness,
imparts existence from itself due to its superabundance. This event was grasped
as being a process of emanation that accentuated the primacy of Divine
transcendence over creation and represented an alternate explication of
generation that challenged the creatio ex nihilodoctrine. Endowed with vision, the
One, as the First undiminished Source of existence, imparts Nous, the immanent
changeless Intellect, as its own Image. From this effused Nousissues forth the
World Soul, which acts as a transition between the realm of ideas and that of
the senses. Refracting itself in materiality, the Soul generates all sensible
composite beings, while matter represents the last station in the hierarchy of
existence as the unreal substratum of the phenomenal universe. Emanation, as a
processional descent, was itself to be followed by an ascent that expressed the
longing of the rational soul to return to its Source and a yearning to inhabit
the realm of ideas. This reversible movement acted as the basis of the moral
code of the Neoplatonist system, which advocated a dualist separation of mind
and body, as well as affirmed the immortality of the soul. Philosophers in
medieval Islam came to know Plato through the Arabic translations of his Laws, Sophist, Timaeus,and Republic. His
influence on the history of ideas in Islam is most felt in the domains of ethics
and political philosophy, whereby his views offered possibilities for
reconciling pagan philosophy with monotheistic religion in the quest for truth
and the unveiling of the ultimate principles of reality. His Republic and Laws
presented an appealing legislative model that inspired political thought in
Islam, particularly the line in thinking that
is attested in al-Farabi’s (ca. 870–950 CE) treatise alMadina al-Fadila (The Virtuous City),
which gave prominence to the role played by philosophy in setting the legal
arrangements and mores of the ideal Islamic polity. TheCorpus Platonicumalso
impressed humanists like Ibn Miskawayh (ca. 940–1030 CE), who, in his Tahdhib al-akhlaq (The Cultivation of
Morals) espoused the Platonic tripartite conception of the soul, along with
its ethical–political ramifications. As for the Neoplatonist doctrines, these
found their way into the intellectual history of Islam through Plato’s dialogues,
as well as being channeled via the tracts known asAristotle’s Theology and Liber de causis (Kitab al-Khayr
al-Mahd). Although both texts were erroneously attributed to Aristotle, the
former reproduced fragments from Plotinus’s Enneads, and the latter rested on
Proclus’ Elements of Theology. This misguiding textual transmission led to
imbuing Aritotelianism with Neoplatonist leitmotifs, which impacted the
thinking of authorities such as al-Kindi (d. ca. 873 CE), Ikhwan al-Safa’
(tenth century CE), al-Farabi (d. ca. 950 CE), and Ibn Sina (d. 1037 CE), who
in their turn influenced the onto-theological systems of al-Sijistani (fl. 971 CE),
al-Kirmani (d. 1020 CE), Suhrawardi (d. 1191 CE), Ibn ‘Arabi (d. 1240 CE), and
Mulla Sadra (d. 1640 CE).
Primary Sources
al-Farabi
(Alfarabius).De Platonis Philosophia. Edited by Franz Rosenthal and Richard
Walzer. London: The Warburg Institute, University of London, 1943.
Galenus,
Claudius.Compendium Timaei Platonis. Edited by Paul Krauss and Richard Walzer.
London: The Warburg Institute, University of London, 1951.
Plato.Plato
Arabus. Edited by Paul Krauss and Richard Walzer. London: The Warburg
Institute, University of London, 1943.
Further Reading
Krauss,
Paul. ‘‘Plotin chez les arabes.’’Bulletin de l’Institut d’Egypte23 (1941):
236–295.
Netton, Ian
Richard.Muslim Neoplatonists: An Introduction to the Thought of the Brethren of
Purity. London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1982.
Rosenthal,
Franz. ‘‘On the Knowledge of Plato’s Philosophy in the Islamic World.’’Islamic
Culture 14 (1940): 398–402.
Walzer,
Richard. ‘‘Aflatun.’’ InThe Encyclopaedia of Islam. Vol I. Leiden: Brill, 1960.
———.Greek
into Arabic: Essays in Islamic Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1962.
POPULAR LITERATURE
Definitions
The contours of what is ‘‘popular’’ and
‘‘polite’’ literature differ from culture to culture, and the aesthetic assumptions
implicit in this binary division have often been questioned. Most scholarly
works on the literary history of medieval Islamic literature in Arabic,
Persian, and Turkish have followed the already existing format of literary
histories of Western languages and cultures, adopting their divisions and
terminology without taking into consideration different social structures,
priorities, and aesthetic contours, and without allowing for the fact that our
knowledge of economic and social life in many parts of the early medieval
Islamic world remains extremely patchy and hence prone to wild conjectures. The
essential constituents of the study of popular literature the methods of
composition, the performance and location of performance, as well as the
different ways of production and memorization, the range of participating
audience and solitary readership, and the changes in the content and diction in
time and place have on the whole not received the attention they deserve. With the
exception of The Arabian Nights,which
since the growth of interest in magical realism as a universal genre has become
a staple diet of academic courses on comparative literature, popular texts in
Arabic and other languages of medieval Islamic culture have been used mostly as
quarries for motif-indices without much attention to other contextual,
literary, and historical implications. For example, one of the last examples of
traditional popular Persian prose narratives,The Adventures of Amir Arsalan,
was first recited at the Qajar court in Iran in the second half of the nineteenth
century and contains many themes of much earlier medieval popular narratives,
including incidents illustrating the wiles of women, a favorite and recurrent
theme in medieval literature, perennial clashes between good and evil viziers,
and that hallmark of most popular adventures from Hellenistic romances to
Victorian bodice rippers: the ongoing though constantly interrupted amorous
escapade. This and other similar examples encourage us to reexamine the use of
terms such as courtly and medieval as working definitions and labels of
demarcation. Moreover, the occurrence of many of the themes of popular literature,
such as the ‘‘wiles of women,’’ or the importance of the shrewd tutor or
governess as an eminence grise in manuals of advice and other less strictly popular
genres, shows again how blurred the contours can be in a culture in which the
notions of entertainment and instruction, popular piety, and sectarian beliefs
were often indistinguish able and yet firmly insisted upon and vociferously
stated.
Rise of Islam
These connections and tensions appear from
the first centuries of Islamic history and are reflected in the early
commentaries on the Qur’an. Two denunciations of ‘‘Tales of the ancients’’ (asatir al-awwalin) in the Qur’an (VIII,
31; LXXXIII, 13) provide early exegetes with an opportunity to explain and
expand these terse verses in terms of a clash of intentions and worldviews.
Nadhr b. al-Harith, a rich merchant from the Quraysh and a staunch foe of the
Prophet, is depicted in these commentaries as a purveyor not only of singing
slave girls but also of imported stories from Persia, regaling the public with
tales of the adventures of the Iranian heroes Rostam and Esfandiyar. This
propaganda war against the Prophet, implying that the Qur’anic stories were
merely lackluster products of the same genre, came to a bloody end when the hapless
impresario was beheaded by no less a figure than ‘Ali b. Abi Talib, who himself
was to become the archetypal Moslem hero in later popular literature and appear
as a latter-day Rostam in many an adventure.
Impact of the Qur’an and its
Commentaries
As implied and illustrated earlier in this
entry, the impact of Islam on popular literature can be seen through several
different perspectives. The contribution of the Qur’an itself was pivotal.
Again, as in the case of the ‘‘Tales of the Ancients,’’ not only its extended
accounts of previous times and past nations, but also its more condensed
allusions, became building blocks for many a full-blown vita of ancient prophets
and their stories(Qissas al-anbiya;
Isra’iliyyat), which began to appear in Arabic and Persian, and later
Uighur and Turkish, commentaries of the Qur’an and soon attracted such attention
that they began to feature in more and more popular expanded versions with
relatively simple diction and syntax, ideal as part of a preacher’s baggage of
exempla. One exceptionally extended and self-contained account, the entire Sura
XII of the Qur’an, the story of the prophet Joseph, which was referred to in
the Qur’an itself as ‘‘the best of stories,’’ was retold more than any other and
praised by the exegetes for its miraculous encapsulation of all the ingredients
of an ideal story, although some thought that its masterly evocation of female
sexuality was too potent for the weaker sex and advised its perusal to be
limited to men only. On the other hand, the far more nebulous figure of Du’l-Qarnayn, ‘‘the two-horned’’ figure
in Sura XVIII, has also had an equally profound but more complex impact on
popular stories, through his identification with Alexander the Great and
through the fusion of the Qur’anic allusion and its extended explication by
commentators with material culled from the Alexander romance of
Pseudo-Callisthenes. The mixture of the different strands, Islamic and Hellenic
in this particular popular story, and the way its figures and motifs reflect
preoccupations and anxieties of different peoples of different regions of the
Islamic world, from Egypt and Ethiopia to the farthest corners of Islamic
penetration into Southeast Asia, require a multidisciplinary approach and a knowledge
of several indigenous cultural histories. The mystical figure of Khizr, for
example never mentioned directly by name in the Qur’an itself shares many associations
with the Green Man or Knight of European medieval literature, as well as the
angelic figure of Soroush in pre-Islamic Zoroastrian Iran and later Persian
poetic imagery and literature in general, including popular stories. Khizr is
not only a major figure in the Alexander legend but also appears in other popular
tales in his capacity as an intermediary from above and a helper of the tales hero
at the bleakest hour.
Religious Biographies and
Campaigns
Along with the Qur’an, the life of the
Prophet himself (al-sira al-nabawiyya),and
the martial feats of the Prophet and his Companions (ansar) against the heathen (al-maghazi),the
early history of Islam provided much material for popular culture in its
different forms, including popular spectacles, religious drama, and popular
epics, and always with some reference to already existing traditions. In
addition to the already mentioned heroic depiction of ‘Ali, the martyrdom of his
younger son Hosayn at the battle of Kerbala is reminiscent of the fate of the
young princes Iradj and Siyavosh in the Persian Book of Kings,who opt for justice and the right conduct while fully
prescient of the fatal consequences awaiting them. Another figure from the
Prophet’s immediate family whose tales of adventure form a considerable corpus
of their own is Hamza ra, Muhammad s.a.w paternal uncle, transformed into an
indefatigable fighter who surpasses Alexander in the range of his itinerary.
Hamza ra traveled not only in the heartland of the Islamic world but also to
such outposts as Central Asia, Greece, and Tangiers, often meeting the legendary
prophet Khizr in his capacity as the guide and helper of pious and God-fearing travelers.
The sumptuously illustrated manuscript of his adventures, the Hamza-nama, commissioned by the Indian
Mughal emperor Akbar, which has been the centerpiece of several exhibitions in
the West, is yet another reminder of the close interaction between Islamic
courts and popular literature.
Caliphs, Sufis, Monarchs,
and ‘Ayyars
Already in the depiction of Hamza, one
detects adistinctly heroic but not necessarily strictly Islamic characterization,
a factor that perhaps contributed to the great range of its translations and
adaptations,including one into Georgian. This tendency is intensified in the
depiction of such later familiar figures in the world of popular literature as
Harun al-Rashid, the ‘Abbasid caliph who for all intents and purposes appears
indistinguishable from other worldly rulers who also frequent popular tales,
such as Mahmud of Ghazna or the Safavid Shah Abbas. They are usually depicted
as stern but generous and manly figures whose courts provide convenient
backdrops to a host of popular episodic anecdotes. The ‘Ayyars, those cunning
yet chivalrous characters of nearly all Islamic literatures who gave their name
as an epithet to the hero of the earliest Persian popular prose narratives, Samak-e Ayyar, or even those founding fathers
of Sufi sects whose popular hagiographies form a substantial corpus of popular
literature, particularly in Persian, are celebrated from different
perspectives. Samak, like Rostam in the
Book of Kings, often appears as Jeeves to his feckless sovereign’s Bertie
Wooster, while Ahmad-e Jam, a celebrated Persian Sufi with a much-visited
shrine and a robust vita, is eulogized for his physical prowess and saintly deeds.
His gallant self-control in his dotage, when he refrained from copulating with
his nubile peasant bride more than once in the space of a single night out of
concern for her well-being, is remarked upon with admiration in his vita.
Language
and Style
The nomenclature used in titles of popular
stories illustrates both the connections and regional differences in the
popular literature of the medieval Islamic world. In Persian for example, the Book
of Kings (Shahnama) of Pre-Islamic
monarchs and heroes became an inexhaustible source of imitation and borrowing
and generated secondary verse epics that usually selected a relatively minor
character from its rich repertoire, and made him into the main protagonist with
the help of new episodes and adventures. The same process was in force in
popular prose literature in works such as the Firuz Shah Nameh that appears both in Persian and in Arabic
versions. The two languages also share the term Qissat (Per. Qessa) as a designation for a narrative story, as in
the famous Arabic Qissat Abu Zaid
al-Hilali wa-l-Na‘isa,though in Persian the word was given different
nuances and applied mostly to shorter tales. The Arabic stories, however, also
describe themselves assiras; and in modern critical terminology the entire
genre comes under the heading of sira
sha‘biyya or popular sira These include such famous stories asSira ‘Antar,
Sirat al-Zahir Baybars,
Sirat Bani Hilal al-Kubra, Sirat Saif b. Dhi Yazan, and others. The Arabic stories
are composed in rhyme prose with frequent insertions of poetry, whereas the
Persian stories tend to be in simple prose, with some containing occasional
lines of poetry. However, in their case, too, the simple prose is at times
replaced by interludes of ornate descriptive passages on such literary topics
as sunrises and sunsets, or depiction of beautiful women. This has led some editors
and commentators to detect the influence of copyists or scribes at the final
stage when this basically oral composition was turned into a written format.
But the two styles could have well coexisted from the outset; in the case of
the popular storyteller, as in the case of his rival the popular preacher,
occasional flights of rhetoric and a purple passage or two depicting a
well-established topic would have been a way of parading one’s skills as a
performer. The more racy and simple diction could be reserved for the main part
of the narrative where the action demanded all the attention. The same mixture
of styles occurs in Turkish folk epics such as Koroghlu,except that here regional variations contain different
proportions of poetry and prose.The Book
of Dede Korkut, on the other hand, is entirely in prose but contains
passages where rhyming and transliteration occur.
Narration and Wonder
The uneasy dichotomy between ‘‘popular’’ and
polite has already been referred to at the outset. But it must be borne in mind
that ‘‘literature’’ also has had an eventful semantic history, with both
‘‘literature’’ and ‘‘text’’ as metaphors assuming ever more widening range and
connotations. This revision of taxonomies can itself suggest new ways of
studying medieval popular literature in terms of its own dynamics and internal
structure. Thus in spite of using material culled from different times and
cultures the reign of the Kayanids or
Sasanids, glancing back at the heroic age of the Oghuz Turks, or drawing upon
the Days of the Arabs (Ayyam al-Arab)—the
underlying narrative techniques of the episodes and their ways of focalization
can be constructively studied together. The supernatural, for example, in its
different manifestations, in characterization as magicians and sorcerers, or in
location, in exotic lands populated by strange men and beasts, was a frequent
feature of most tales, and it was this abandonment of verisimilitude that has
given the term popular its laudatory and
pejorative connotations from the outset. The eleventh-century Persian historian
Bayahqi, for example, in a short diatribe against stories in which an old sorceress
can turn a man into an ass, while another aged hag can rub an ointment into his
ears and turn him back into a human being, dismisses the entire genre as mere
superstitions that induce sleep to the ignorant when they are read to them at
night. Yet it is this very defiance of verisimilitude and the destabilizing
effect of the magical hall of mirrors conjured up at times by these narratives
that have found them new audiences in our own time.
Further Reading
Chadwick, N.
K., and V. Zhirmunsky.Oral Epics of Central Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1969.
Connelly, B.Arab
Folk Epic and Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.
Encyclopaedia
of Islam, 2d ed., articles: ‘‘Hama ˆsa’’ (Ch. Pellat, Arabic; H. Masse´,
Persian; I. Me ´likoff, Turkish; A. T. Hatto, Central Asia; Aziz Ahmad, Urdu),
Vol. III, 110–119.
‘‘Hika ˆya’’
(Ch. Pellat, Islamic and Arabic; A. Bausani, Persian; Pertev Naili Boratav,
Turkish; Aziz Ahmad, Urdu; R. O. Winstedt, Malayan), Vol. III, 367–377.
‘‘Kissa’’
(B. Flemming, In older Turkish Literature; L. P. Elwell-Sutton, Persian; J. A.
Haywood, Urdu; A. H. Johns, Malaysia and Indonesia) Vol. V, 193–205.
‘‘Mana
ˆkib’’ (Ch. Pellat), Vol. VI, 349–357.‘
Marthiya’’
(Ch. Pellat, Arabic; W. L. Hanaway, Jr. Persian; B. Flemming, Turkish; J. A.
Haywood, Urdu), Vol. VI, 602–612.
Sıˆra
Sh‘abiyya’’ (P. Heath), Vol. IX, 664–665. Gerhardt, M.The Art of Story Telling.
Leiden: Brill, 1963.
Hanaway, W.
L. Jr. (Tr).Love and War: Adventures from the Firuz Sha ˆhNaˆma of Sheikh
Bıˆghamıˆ. Persian Heritage Series, vol 19. New York: UNESCO, 1974.
Heath, P.The
Thirsty Sword: Sıˆrat ‘Antar and the Arabic Popular Epic. Salt Lake City:
University of Utah Press, 1996.
Irwin, R.The
Arabian Nights: A Companion. London: Allen Lane, 1994.
Lewis, G.
(Tr).The Book of Dede Korkut. Harmondsworth, United Kingdom: Penguin Books,
1974.
Lyons, M.
C.The Arabian Epic. 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Norris, H.
T. ‘‘Fables and Legends.’’ InThe Cambridge History of Arabic Literature:
‘Abbasid Belles-Lettres, edited
by J. Ashtiany et al., 136–145. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Renard,
J.Islam and the Heroic Image. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press,
1993.
Reynolds, D.
F. ‘‘Creating an Epic: from Apprenticeship to Publication.’’ InTextualization
of Oral Epics, edited by L. Honko, 263–277. (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and
Monographs, 128). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2000.
PRISONS
Prisons were known to the pre-Islamic Arabs,
and some settled communities in Arabia had them. ‘Adi b. Zayd (d. about 600 CE)
composed poetry on his incarceration by the Lakhmid king, al-Nu‘man III (d.
602). Nomads took captives in raids; imprisonment itself was impractical.
Imprisonment was neither an official punishment in Roman law nor in Near Eastern
provincial laws. It was used instead for pretrial detention. However, debtors
and serious criminals such as thieves and murderers were increasingly incarcerated
in late antiquity, as were political prisoners. Imprisonment was also among the
punishments used in Sasanian Iran.
In the Qur’an the only mention of prison
(Ar., sijn) is in the story of Joseph (Q 12:32ff and Q 26:29). House arrest was
the punishment for women guilty of fornication, before it was replaced by
flogging (Q 4:15 and Q 24:2). The reference to banishment as a punishment for
highway robbery was sometimes interpreted as imprisonment (Q 5:33).
Punitive imprisonment had a very limited role
in the hudud (punishments by divine
ordinance). The main purposes for prisons in the legal literature were pretrial
detention and coercion of debtors. An apostate could be imprisoned for three
days to allow him to repent and escape execution. However, it was occasionally
a punishment (such as for certain categories of murderer and recidivist
thieves). These parallels with pre-Islamic laws in the Near East raise unresolved
genetic questions about Islamic law. A judge could also impose punitive
imprisonment for matters outside the hudud through his power of ta‘zir (discretionary punishment). To
maintain order, rulers could imprison whomever they wished.
Nearly all cities had prisons. In 762, when
alMansur (d. 775) founded his new capital at Baghdad, he constructed the Matbaq
prison within the Round City, and another, The Prison of the Syrian Gate, outside
the walls. Al-Tabari (d. 923) mentions men’s and women’s prisons in
ninth-century Baghdad. Al-Maqrizi (d. 1442) describes seven prisons from different
periods of Cairo’s history. He says those for criminals, thieves, and highway
robbers were cramped and foul-smelling places of torment.
Such terrible conditions were common in
robbers’ prisons. The historical evidence suggests that robbers’ prisons were
widespread, although they are rarely mentioned in legal texts. The extent of
such incarceration remains uninvestigated. The conditions in debtors’ prisons and
those in which suspects were held seem to have been less harsh. The adab al-qadi (the conduct of the judge)
literature sets out prisoners’ rights: people should not be detained without a
complainant; guests and even conjugal relations might be permitted; and mistreatment,
such as beatings and forced labor, was prohibited. How often these strictures
were actually observed is less clear.
Historical sources provide numerous accounts
of political prisoners and prisoners of war. Palaces and other such buildings
could be reused to hold them, such as the Palace of the Tree in which ‘Abbasid princes
were detained in Baghdad and the Treasury of the Banners in Cairo, where senior
officials were incarcerated until it became a prison for Frankish captives
during the Crusades. Many political prisoners and prisoners of war had a worse
fate: Castles and citadels often had a jubb (pit); others were held in robbers’
prisons; and many were tortured or executed.
Further Reading
Rosenthal,
F.The Muslim Concept of Freedom prior to the Nineteenth Century. Leiden: Brill,
1960.
Schneider,
I. ‘‘Imprisonment in Pre-classical and Classical Islamic Law.’’ Islamic Law and
Society 2 (1995): 157–173.
———.
‘‘Sidjn.’’ InThe Encyclopaedia of Islam. 11 vols. Edited by C. E. Bosworth et
al. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1960– 2003. Vol. 9, 547–548.
Ziadeh, F.
J. ‘‘Adab al-Qadi and the Protection of Rights at Court.’’ In Studies in
Islamic and Judaic Traditions: Papers Presented at the Institute for
Islamic-Judaic Studies, Center for Judaic Studies, University of Denver. 2
vols. Edited by W.M. Brinner and S.D. Ricks. Atlanta: Scholars Press,
1986–1989. Vol. 1, 143–150.
PROCESSIONS, MILITARY
Processions (Ar.mawkib; mawakib) played an important role in representing the
military and, more broadly, the political power of medieval Islamic states and
officials. Since the distinction between military and political functions can
be ambiguous, what follows will emphasize those examples wherein the representation
of power is primary. No doubt the use of processions was common to all medieval
Islamic polities; nevertheless, documentation is rather uneven. Sufficient
evidence from a number of historical contexts does exist, however, to provide
some insight into the political and cultural potency of these occasions.
Processions displayed publicly the symbols
and instruments of power. Islamic symbols of sovereignty included such items as
the taj (crown, but an elaborate and adorned turban), the parasol, sword, mace,
inkstand, and others. The Seljuks, displaying their nomadic roots in the Asian
steppes, introduced the elaborately decorated saddle-cover (ghashiyya) that was carried in front of
the parading sultan, and which was also used, along with those other
aforementioned symbols, by subsequent rulers, including the Mamluk sultans of
both Cairo and Delhi. There is little evidence about processions of the
‘Abbasid caliphate, the ceremonial of which seems to have been largely fixed to
the court itself; indeed, the term mawkib
also came to mean audience. However, ‘Abbasid officials, along with their
enormous entourages, did mount elaborate processions, the conduct of which was
governed by strict protocol. According to Hilal al-Sabi’, one should ride behind
one’s superior so as not to subject him to the dust stirred up by one’s mount; however,
while conversing with the superior one should ride just ahead of him so as not
to require him to turn his head. Processions of the Fatimid state are perhaps the
most thoroughly documented. The Fatimids used processions regularly to project their
power into the cultural and urban fabric of Cairo and Fustat. The most famous occasion
was the New Year’s procession involving hundreds of officials and thousands of
soldiers, which itself became a field of competing power for the participants.
Military power was displayed on occasions
when armies departed on campaign or returned from battle. In Mamluk Cairo these
often involved the entire political and social establishment. In their last
campaign, when they met defeat at the hands of the Ottomans in 1516, the
parading army was accompanied by members of the state bureaucracy, Sufi orders,
artisan guilds, and various other urban groups. Victory parades offered the
opportunity to demean enemies of the state. Victorious soldiers carried severed
heads on pikes, violated captured banners, broke war drums, and shackled prisoners,
including vanquished rulers. Public processions could also provide popular access
to the sultan. When the Mamluk sultan passed through Cairo with his entourage,
whether on official business or for pleasure, the masses had the opportunity to
voice their concerns to the sultan as he passed by or to express their opprobrium
by pelting the royal party with rubbish.
In addition to the representation of power,
processions also signaled former enemies’ submission to the state and their
incorporation into its apparatus. The Spanish Umayyad caliphate staged
elaborate processions, requiring days of travel, in which North African
supplicants would submit to their authority. After transport across the
Mediterranean, the party would be well received and furnished with gifts of
horses and equipment necessary for the journey to Cordoba, including litters for
women in the group. The party would then undertake the long journey to Cordoba,
where they would camp outside the city in preparation for a parade through the
city, followed by a formal procession the day after to the caliphate’s suburban
capital at Madinat al-Zahra’ for an audience. The latter parade in particular
seems to have been especially spectacular, involving thousands of armed men who
lined the route, state officials, and soldiers in ceremonial dress, all of whom
required preparations through the preceding night.
The cultural variety inherent in the Islamic
world is evident in processional displays of martial power. Ibn Khaldun
observed in the North African Marinid state the custom of the Zanata Berber
warriors, in which poets and musicians inspired the troops as they marched to battle.
Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna, whose Afghanistan-based empire extended into the Punjab,
conducted a martial review in which he employed a formation consisting of forty
caparisoned elephants standing in front of seven hundred war elephants, all of
which would probably have been adorned with protective metal faceplates and
headpieces decorated with dangling elements that when clanged would intimidate
the enemy. Martial processions were the focal point of independent cultural practices.
Ghaznavid expansion into the Gangetic Plain was commemorated, and described by
Ibn Battuta in the fourteenth century, in the hero-cult procession of the lance
of Sayyid Salar Mas‘ud, the legendary warrior and nephew of Sultan Mahmud. The
martial displays of the Mamluks, in the context of the Rajab procession of the Mahmal (see Processions, Religious and
Festivals and Celebrations) Pop in fifteenth-century Cairo, were parodied by carnivalesque
clowns.
Further Reading
Hilal
al-Sabi’.Rusum Dar al-Khilafah (The Rules and Regulations of the ‘Abbasid
Court). Translated by Elie Salem. Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1977.
Ibn Battuta.
The Travels of Ibn Battuta, AD 1325–1354. Translated by H. A. R. Gibb. 3 vols.
Hakluyt Society,
Second
Series, vols. 110, 117, 141. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958–1971.
Ibn Iyas.An
Account of the Ottoman Conquest of Egypt in the Year AH 922 (AD 1516).
Translated by W. H. Salmon. Oriental Translation Fund, New Series, vol. 25.
London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1921.
Ibn Khaldun.
The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History. Translated by Franz Rosenthal. 3
vols. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958.
Safran,
Janina M. ‘‘Ceremony and Submission: The Symbolic Representation and
Recognition of Legitimacy in Tenth-Century al-Andalus.’’Journal of Near Eastern
Studies, 58 (1999): 191–201.
Sanders,
Paula.Ritual, Politics, and the City in Fatimid Cairo. Albany: State University
of New York, 1994.
Sanders,
Paula et al. ‘‘Mawakib.’’ InThe Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2d ed., vol. 6,
849–867. Leiden: Brill, 1991.
PTOLEMY
Claudius Ptolemy (Ar. Batlamiyus)
was active in Alexandria circa 150 CE. He belongs, together with Aristotle,
Euclid, and Galen, to the four most wellknown scholars of antiquity in the
Arabic and Islamic intellectual world.
Above all he was a
scholar in astronomy, astrology, and geography. In astronomy, Almagestis the
Arabic name (alMajisti) for Megale syntaxis, Syntaxis mathematica (The
Mathematical Compilation, The Great Compilation). This great treatise of
theoretical astronomy, in thirteen books, was written circa 150. It is often
presented as being exclusively a work of ‘‘mathematical’’ astronomy. Indeed, it
exposed all that is necessary to size quantitatively the movement of stars. But
it also contains elements of ‘‘physical’’ astronomy. Early on, it was
translated into Arabic by al-Hajjaj b. Yusuf b. Matar (210/826), and revised
with the Christian Sarjis b. Hiliya (Serjios/Serjius Eliae) in 214/829. It was
translated again by the physician Ishaq b. Hunayn (d. 298/910) in 279/892, a
translation that was revised by the mathematician Harran Thabit b. Qurra (d.
288/901), whose maternal language was Syriac and who knew Greek very well, and
also wrote a commentary and other books on it. Gerard of Cremona (d. 1187)
found in Toledo an Arabic manuscript of it, which was a mix of the versions of
al-Hajjaj and Ishaq b. Hunayn, and translated it into Latin.
The Book
of Planetary Hypotheses (Hypothesis ton planomenon), comprising two
treatises, was composed afterAlmagest. Its purpose is to present an organization
of the universe in material spheres. Only the first treatise is extant in
Greek. The history of the modern knowledge of this book is complicated,nand we
must content ourselves in saying here that the two treatises are extant in
Arabic: al-Iqtisas (The Exposition).
Al-Biruni gives: Kitab al-Manshurat: Sections[of
the spheres]).
The Book
of Phaseis (Phaseis aplanon
aspheron) is brief, dealing with the visibility of the fixed stars. It consists
in two treatises, the first of which is not extant in Greek. The Arabic
translation of the whole in the AH third/ninth CE century is lost, but a
passage of al-Biruni purports to have, partly, the content of the first treatise.
Ptolemy’s last astronomical work is the Easy Tables
(Procheiroi kanones), a better title
than the usual English one:Handy Tables, which is known in Arabic as al-Zij
al-muyassar,or Zij Batlamiyus (Ptolemy’s Tables, Tabulae manuales). They are quoted in Arabic since the third/ninth
century, having been transmitted in Greek in the version established by Theon
of Alexandria (d. end of fourth century), and not Theon (the Old) of Smyrna, as
it is often unfortunately said.
In his astrological workTetrabiblos, Ptolemy
deals only with general astrology that relates to whole races, countries, and
cities, and genealogy, which concerns the individual. It was translated into
Syriac, then into Arabic (Kitab
al-Arba‘a; Quadipartitum). According to al-Nadim, it was translated by
Ibrahim b. al-Salt and revised by Hunayn b. Ishaq.
The
Geography (Geographike hypegesis) of Ptolemy had a great influence on the
geographical opinions of the Muslims, but his question as to how the Arabs came
into possession of their Ptolemaic information is a crucial one. They give much
information on the authority of Ptolemy, which clearly does not come fairly
directly from his Geographia, and yet there is not extant in Arabic any work
that may be described as a translation of it. Therefore no such translation is
extant, and it is not clear that it ever existed.
Primary Sources
Ibn al-Nadim
(or al-Nadim).The Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadim.A tenth-century survey of Muslim
culture. 2 vols. Edited and translated by Bayard Dodge. New York: Columbia University
Press, 1970, II, 639 sqq.
Sai’d
al-Andalusi.Science in the Medieval World: Book of the Categories of Nations.
Translated by I. Salem Semaan and Alok Kumar. Austin: University of Texas Press,
1991.
Ya‘qubi, Ibn
Wadih qui dicitur al-Ja’qubi Historiae. 2 vols. Edidit indicesque adjecit M.
TH. Houtsma. Leiden: Brill, 1883 (reprint, ibid. 1969), I, 150–161, translated by
Martin Klamroth inZDMG42 (1888): 17–27.
Further Reading
De Ze´non
d’Ele´ea`Poincare´. Recueil d’e ´tudes en hommage a ` Roshi Rashed. Edited by
Re´gis Morelon and Ahmad Hasnawi. Louvain-Paris: Peeters (Les Cahiers du MIDEO,
1), 2004.
Endress,
Gerhard. ‘‘Die wissenschaftliche Literatur.’’ In Grundriss der arabischen Philologie,
II, edited by Helmut Ga¨tje. Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert, 1987, 400–506.
Volume III
edited by Wolfdietrich Fischer, ibid., 1992, 3–152.
Morelon,
Re´gis. ‘‘Fragment arabe du premier livre du Phaseis de Ptole´me´e.’’JHAS, 1–2
(1981): 3–22.
———. ‘‘Une
proposition de lecture de l’histoire de l’astronomie arabe.’’ InDe Ze´non
d’Ele´ea` Poincare´ 237–49.
———. ‘‘La
version arabe duLivre des Hypothe`ses de Ptole´me´e, traite´ 1.’’MIDEO21
(1993): 7–85.
Pingree,
David. ‘‘Astrology.’’CHALIII 290–300.
Rosenthal,
Franz. ‘‘al-Kindi and Ptolemy.’’ InStudi orientalistici in onore di Giorgio
Levi Della Vida, II, Roma: Istito per l’Oriente, 1956, 436–456, reprint in
Id.,Science
and Medicine
in Islam, Aldershot: Variorum (CS 322), 1990, nr. IV.
Saliba,
George. ‘‘Aristotelian Cosmology and Arabic Astronomy.’’ InDe Ze´non d’Ele´ea`
Poincare´ 251–268. Sezgin, Fuat. Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttum, VI, Astronomie.
Leiden: Brill, 1978, 83–96.
The
Cambridge History of Arabic literature, III. Edited by M. J. L. Young et al.Religion,
Learning and Science in the ‘Abbasid Period. Cambridge, United Kingdom:
Cambridge University Press, 1990.
QAYRAWAN
Qayrawan was one of the most important cities
of medieval North Africa and still retains a high status as one of the first
Muslim cities to be founded in the region. The city is located on an arid plain
in the center of modern-day Tunisia (medieval Ifriqiyya). Its location away from
the coast has meant that its economy has mostly been based on agriculture and inland
trade. Today the city still has a large number of traditional crafts, including
leatherworking and textile production.
History
Although Qayrawan is generally regarded as a
Muslim foundation, there is considerable evidence of a Byzantine city or town
on or nearby the site of the present city. The pre-Islamic town was known as Kuniya or Kamuniya, and remains of an
ancient church and a temple have been identified in the vicinity of the modern
town. During the Muslim conquests, the area was frequently used as a military camp
(kayrawan) for the Arab armies. The area was considered safe for the Arab
armies because of its location away from the coast, where it could be attacked
by Byzantine sea power, and away from the mountains, which contained troops
resisting the invasion. On three occasions in the mid-seventh century (654–655,
661–662, and 665), the Muslim general Mu‘awiya Ibn Hudayj set up a military
camp in the area near a rocky outcrop known as al-Karn (this may be identified with the hill today known as Batn al-Karn
that is twelve kilometers northwest of the city). Some early Arabic chroniclers
(Ibn ‘Idhari and Ibn Naji) even state that Ibn Hudayj built some permanent
structures at the site.
Despite the plentiful evidence of earlier
occupation of the site, it is clear that the city of al-Qayrawan was founded by
Mu‘awiya Ibn Hudayj’s successor ‘Ukba Ibn Nafi‘, who was appointed governor of
Ifriqiyya in 670. ‘Ukba was not satisfied with the location of the military
camp and capital at al Karn, and he chose a new site on the flat plain nearby.
The first buildings constructed were the Dar
al-‘Imara (governor’s palace) and the Friday mosque, which took more than five
years to complete. However, ‘Ukba’s successor was not satisfied with the
location of the town, and he tried to establish a new town three kilometers
away; this was to be known as Takirwan. This action did not meet with the approval
of the Umayyads, who sent ‘Ukba to return the settlement to its original site.
The town suffered a further setback in 684,
when ‘Ukba and his forces were defeated by the Berber rebel Kusayla. For five
years, the Berbers used Qayrawan as their capital until it was recaptured by
Umayyad forces in 689. The town remained free of armed conflict until the 740s
when it was once again fought over by Berbers and various schismatic religious
groups. Central control was restored by the ‘Abbasids in 761, when they sent
Muhammad ibn al-Ash‘ath to be governor of the region. The new governor built a
wall around the city to protect it from further attacks, although this did not prevent
it from being sacked by the Berbers in 771. Although the town remained
nominally under ‘Abbasid control, effective rule passed to a local dynasty known
as the Aghlabids. Under the Aghlabids, Qayrawan developed as an intellectual,
mercantile, and religious center. The Aghlabid conquest of Sicily brought
further wealth and prestige to the city.
During the tenth century, Qayrawan was
incorporated into the growing domain of the Shi’i Fatimids. However, the
inhabitants of the city remained Sunni, which caused constant friction with the
Fatimid rulers. Eventually the position of Qayrawan within the Fatimid realm became
untenable. First, the city was burnt and pillaged by Fatimid troops; later (1054),
the city was subjected to a sacking by the Banu Hilal (from which it has never
fully recovered). During the twelfth century, the town was peripheral to the
main events in the region, although its prominence increased during the late
thirteenth century (1270) when Ifriqiyya was invaded by the Crusaders under
Louis IX. The Hafsid ruler considered moving the capital back to Qayrawan.
During the early sixteenth century, the city
along with the rest of Ifriqiyya became part of a Spanish protectorate under
the nominal rule of Mawlay Hassan. Qayrawan was probably of little interest to
the Spanish, although they did establish a garrison in the city. In 1575,
formal Muslim control of the region was restored when the Ottomans ejected the
Spanish. Under Ottoman rule, Qayrawan was neglected, and, in 1701, its citizens
suffered the indignity of being forced to destroy their own town. Although the town
was rebuilt three years later, it continued to be in a very poor condition
until the 1750s, when its citizens were granted tax exemptions and it was
supplied with a new city wall. In 1881, the city was incorporated into the
French protectorate of Tunisia.
The population of the city varied
considerably throughout its history, from an estimated fifty thousand during
the seventh century to well over one hundred thousand during the ninth century.
Although the majority of the population were Sunni Muslims, there were also
significant numbers of Jews and Christians.
Topography
The old city of Qayrawan is located to the
north of the French colonial quarter and is enclosed by a circuit of walls
built of fired brick that stretch for
more
than three kilometers. To the east and northeast of the walled town are the
ancient suburbs of Guebelia, Jebelia, and Zlass. The Great Mosque is located at
the extreme west end of the Old City (Medina), although it probably stood
somewhere near the center of the original city as laid out by ‘Ukba ibn Nafi‘.
The layout and dimensions of the original
city are not known, although it is probable that it was roughly square, and,
according to al-Bakri, each side measured approximately four kilometers. For
the first century of its existence, the city did not have walls, although it
was probably enclosed by a ditch and rampart (as were other early Islamic
cities such as Basra and Kufa). The interior was divided according to tribal allotments.
Although the precise tribal allocations are not known, it is known that the Fihr tribe (a branch of the Quraysh) had
an area to the north of the Great Mosque. The chief building material was
reused stone taken from the Roman Byzantine buildings in the vicinity, although
baked brick was also extensively used.
The high point of the city came with the
period of Aghlabid rule, when it benefited from both the links with the high
culture of ‘Abbasid Baghdad and from the conquest of Byzantine Sicily. The Aghlabids initiated a
series of improvements, the most significant of which was the rebuilding of the
Great Mosque and its minaret (see
Monuments below). In addition to these buildings, they also constructed two
fortified palaces in the vicinity of the city: al-‘Abbasiyya and al-Rakkada.
A consequence of the phenomenal growth of
Qayrawan during the ninth century was that the city’s water supply was
inadequate for its growing population. It is known, for example, that the city
had forty eight hammams (bathhouses),
each of which needed a considerable amount of water. During the Umayyad period,
the rulers had relied on a water source (Mams) that was thirty‐three kilometers away; water was carried to the city
by an aqueduct and distribution system that had been built by the Romans. The
Aghlabids renovated this system and increased capacity by building a number of
large circular cisterns, the most famous of which stands near the Tunis gate
and was built by Abu Ibrahim Ahmed between 856 and 863.
Monuments
The principal monument of Qayrawan and the only
surviving building whose origins can be traced back to the seventh century is
the Great Mosque. This is a large rectangular enclosure (approximately one hundred
and twenty by seventy meters) that is aligned southeast by northwest with a
prayer hall occupying one‐third of the area at the
southeast end. At the northwest end of the enclosure, there is a massive square
minaret built of fired brick on a stone base. Unfortunately, nothing remains
(above ground) of the first mosque built by ‘Uqba in 670, and the mosque in its
present form dates mostly from the time of the Aghlabids (ninth century). The
only early features that remain visible are a mihrab, now functioning as a
doorway for the imam, and a cistern, both of which belong to the mosque as
rebuilt by Yazid ibn Hatim in 772 CE. The present mihrab dates to the ninth
century and comprises a deep concave recess covered by a pointed, horseshoe
shaped arch. Surrounding the mihrab, there are a series of 139 polychrome-luster
tiles imported from Baghdad. To the right of the mihrab is the minbar, which is
the oldest surviving example of this fixture.
The Mosque of Three Doors is famous for its fac
¸ade, which is made up of three doorways covered with horseshoe-shaped arches
resting on marble columns. Above the arches there is a monumental kufic inscription
attributing the construction of the mosque
to Muhammad ibn Khayrun al-Ma‘arifi in 866. The mosque was substantially
altered in 1440, when a minaret was added and the interior remodeled. Qayrawan
also has a large number of religious buildings dating to the later middle ages,
including the fourteenth-century Zawiya of Sidi ‘Abid al-Gharyani and the
Zawiya of Sidi Sahib.
Further Reading
The most
important early sources areal-Bakri and Ibn ‘Idhari.
For the
Great Mosque, see Creswell, K. A. C., with revisions and additions by J.W.
Allan.Early Muslim Architecture, 315–30. Aldershott, 1989.
For the
history of the city, see Talbi, M. ‘‘Al-Kayrawan.’’ In EI, 2nd ed., 824–32.
See also
visual material at http://archnet.org
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