74 Islamic Civilization

Pre-Islamic Arabia

The pre-Islamic Arabian peninsula, most of which is today the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, was populated by the Arab people. The Arabs were herders and merchants. They were organized tribally, with tribes claiming descent from common ancestors and governing through meetings of the patriarchs of each clan. The Arabs were well known in the Roman and Byzantine world as merchants for their camel caravans that linked Europe to a part of the Spice Road, transporting goods from India and China. They were also known to be some of the most fierce and effective mercenary warriors in the eastern Mediterranean region; they rode slim, fast, agile horses and fought as light cavalry.

The Arabs were polytheists – they worshiped a variety of gods linked to various oases in the desert. One important holy site that would take on even greater importance after the rise of Islam was the city of Mecca. Mecca had been a major center of trade for centuries, lying at the intersection of trade routes and near oases. In the center of Mecca was a shrine, called the Ka’aba, built around a piece of volcanic rock worshiped as a holy object in various Arabic faiths, and Mecca was a major pilgrimage site for the Arabs well before Islam.^[1]

The Rise of Muhammad

Muhammad was born in 570 CE to a powerful tribe of merchants in Mecca, the Quraish. He was raised an orphan in his uncle’s house. He married an older woman, the widow Khadijah, for whom he had worked in the caravan trade as a merchant. Muhammad performed devotional retreats each year in a cave in Mount Hira, outside of Mecca.^[2]

He was particularly well known as a fair and perceptive arbitrator of disputes among other Arab clans and merchants.  He traveled widely on business, dealing with both Christians and Jews in Palestine and Syria, where he learned about their respective religions. When he was about forty, he returned to Mecca and reported that he had been contacted by the archangel Gabriel, who informed him that he, Muhammad, was to bear God’s message to the people of Mecca and the world.  The core of that message was that the one true God, the God of Abraham, venerated already by the Jews and Christians, had called the Arabs to cast aside their idols and unite in a community of worshipers.^[3]

Muhammad’s preaching of a single god brought him into conflict with the Meccans whose economy relied on polytheism (merchants sold statues, figurines, and charms of the various gods) and the social stratification it supported.^[4]

Thus, in 622 CE, Muhammad and a group of his followers left Mecca, exiled by the powerful families that were part of Muhammad’s own extended clan, and traveled to the city of Yathrib, which Muhammad later renamed Medina, 200 miles north.  They were welcomed there by the people of Medina who hoped that Muhammad could serve as an impartial mediator in an ongoing dispute between clans and families.  Muhammad’s trek to Medina is called the Hejira (also spelled Hijra in English) and is the starting date of the Islamic calendar. 

In Medina, Muhammad met with much more success in winning converts.  He quickly established a religious community with himself as the leader, one that made no distinction between religious and political authority.  His followers would regularly gather to hear him recite the Koran, which means “recitations”: the repeated words of God Himself as spoken to Muhammad by the angel.  In 624, just two years after his arrival in Medina, Muhammad led a force against a Meccan army, and then in 630 CE, he conquered Mecca, largely by skillfully negotiating with his former enemies there – he promised to make Mecca the center of Islam, to require pilgrimage, and to incorporate it into his growing kingdom.  He sent missionaries and soldiers across Arabia, as well as to foreign powers like Byzantium and Persia.  By his death in 632, Muhammad had already rallied most of the Arab clans under his leadership and most willingly converted to Islam. ^[5] 

Islam

The word Islam means “submission.”  Its central tenet is submission before the will of God, as revealed to humanity by Muhammad.  An aspect of Islam that distinguishes it from Judaism and Christianity is that the Koran has a single point of origin, the recitations of Muhammad himself, and it is believed by Muslims that it cannot be translated from Arabic and remain the “real” holy book.  In other words, translations can be made for the sake of education, but every word in the Koran, spoken in the classical Arabic of Muhammad’s day, is believed to be that true language of God – according to traditional Islamic belief, the angels speak Arabic in paradise.

According to Islam, Muhammad was the last in the line of prophets stretching back to Abraham and Moses and including Jesus, whom Muslims consider a major prophet and a religious leader, but not actually divine.  Muhammad delivered the “definitive version” of God’s will as it was told to him by Gabriel on the mountainside. The core tenets of Islamic belief are referred to as the “five pillars”:

1. There is only one God and Muhammad is his prophet.
2. Each Muslim must pray five times a day, facing toward the holy city of Mecca.
3. During the holy month of Ramadan, each Muslim must fast from dawn to sundown.
4. Charity should be given to the needy.
5. If possible, at least once in his or her life, each Muslim should undertake the Haaj: the pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca.^[6]

After the Ottoman Conquest, many of the Christian mosaics within the Hagia Sophia were covered over with Islamic calligraphy and only rediscovered in the 20th century CE after the secularization of Turkey (Hagia Sophia became a museum in 1935 CE). This includes the mosaic on the main dome which was probably a Christ Pantocrator (All-Powerful) which spanned the whole ceiling and is now covered by remarkable gold calligraphy. On the floor of the nave there is the Omphalion (navel of the earth), a large circular marble slab which is where the Roman and Byzantine Emperors were coronated. One of the final additions the Ottoman Sultans made to finalize the transition from Christian basilica to Islamic mosque was the inclusion of eight massive medallions hung on columns in the nave which have Arabic calligraphy inscribed upon them with the names of Allah, the Prophet, the first four Caliphs, and the Prophet’s two grandsons. The Ottomans also added a mihrab, a minbar, and four enormous minarets in order to complete the transition to a mosque.

Additionally, after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 CE, the genius of Hagia Sophia’s architects continued to dominate the conquering Ottomans who made use of the designs for their mosques. The Ottomans conquered the city, but the artistic culture of the Byzantines, in a way, conquered the Ottomans. Hagia Sophia, under orders from Mehmed the Conqueror, was converted into a mosque within days of the conquest preserving the Byzantine architectural legacy in a new form and era.

Later Ottoman mosques were equally influenced by Hagia Sophia. The Blue Mosque, for example, preserves a layout inspired by Hagia Sophia that builds upon its innovations of pendentives and semi-domes to create internal space. Additionally, Islam’s use of geometric shapes and patterns, as opposed to Orthodox Christianity’s use of icons, also finds continuity in Greco-Roman-Byzantine’s use of geometry in sacred architecture as mentioned previously. In fact, the very same Sinan who built the Suleymaniye also worked to repair the millennium-old Hagia Sophia during the reign of Selim II.^[7]