Sharia, Sufis, and Cultural Encounters in the Islamic World WHAP/Napp

Sharia, Sufis, and Cultural Encounters in the Islamic World WHAP/Napp

“The Koran was spread in Africa mainly by persuasion and example. In most of the ports and inland trading towns it won initial converts from only a fraction of the citizens. In many towns the new faith was first reflected in the building of a small mosque and in the architecture of those houses which enclosed a courtyard so that the women could wear no veil and enjoy privacy. Little mosques were replaced in time by ones that could hold a large congregation. In the present northern Kenya, on the shores of the Indian Ocean, the first mosque at a trading port was built between 750 and 780. Only 25 worshippers could fit inside this wooden rectangle. It was replaced by a succession of new mosques, mostly larger, the crowning one being built of coral stone in about the year 1000.

The people of the desert with their herds of camels and their moving camps were more sympathetic than the farmers of the fertile land to the new religion. The desert nomads found that the religion could not only give their life a new meaning but fit neatly into their wandering ways. In Islam a group did not necessarily need a permanent mosque for its Friday services and it did not need access to a priest even for a burial. For wanderers a religion requiring no priest and no church was highly practical.

The diffusion of the new religion and way of life was conducted through an alien language. Arabic was the only language of worship for Islam. No translations of the Koran were provided for the speakers of any native African tongue. Converts learned by heart the key passages of the Koran, understanding them as best they could while reciting them with fervor. With the religion came new taboos on food. African villages which voted a roast pig as a meal to remember soon abandoned this delight; and some villages where home-brewed beer was a pleasure abandoned it forever. With the religion came a host of commercial contacts from which African traders gained, for Islamic traders did business at open-air markets as far apart as Mombasa, Canton, and Timbuktu.” ~ A Short History of the World

1-  How did Islam spread in Africa? ______

2-  How was Islam first reflected in Africa? ______

3-  Why were the people of the desert more sympathetic to Islam? ______

4-  Why did converts have to learn Arabic? ______

5-  How did the diffusion of Islam change some African practices? ______

6-  How did Islam benefit African traders? ______

7-  While Islam was adopted by some Africans, a measure of cultural syncretism occurred. What is cultural syncretism [Previous Knowledge]? ______

8-  Provide an example of cultural syncretism in African history. ______

Notes:
I.  The Abbasid Dynasty (750-1258)
A.  Splendid new capital in Baghdadànon-Arab Persians played prominent role
B.  But political unity of Abbasid Empire did not last long
1.  Fractured politically into “sultanates” with allegiance to caliph
II.  Yet Development of Sharia
A.  Extensive body of Islamic law
B.  Work of the ulama or religious scholars in primarily 8th and 9th centuries
C.  Based on Quran, teachings of Muhammad, deductive reasoning, and scholars
D.  To the ulama, living as a Muslim meant following sharia
III.  A Second Understanding of the Faith – Sufism
A.  Saw the worldly success of Islamic civilization as a distraction and deviation
B.  Sufis à represented Islam’s mystical dimension, sought a direct and personal experience of the divine
1.  Renunciation of material world, meditation on words of the Quran, use of music and dance, veneration of Muhammad and various “saints
C.  Became widely popular by the ninth and tenth centuries and was sharply critical of scholarly and legalistic practitioners of the sharia
D.  But for orthodox religious scholars, Sufism verged on heresyà Sufis claimed to be one with God, to receive new revelations, or to incorporate religious practices from outside Islamic world
E.  Al-Ghazali (1058-1111)
1.  Major Islamic thinkeràboth a legal scholar and a Sufi
2.  Rational philosophy alone could never enable believers to know Allah
IV.  Gender and Islam
A.  On a spiritual level, the Quran was clear, men and women were equal
B.  But in social terms, women were inferior and subordinate
C.  Female infanticide was forbidden…Women were given control over their own property…Women were granted rights of inheritance, although half the rate of male counterparts
D.  Women could sue for divorce if had not had sexual relations for more than four monthsàBut practice of a woman taking several husbands was prohibited while polygyny, multiple wives for a man, allowed (four wives)
E.  But veiling and seclusion of women became standard practice among the upper and ruling classes, removing women from public life
F.  Also “honor killing” of women by male relatives for violating sexual taboos
V.  But like Buddhism and Christianity, Islam also offered new outlets
1.  Some Sufi orders had parallel groups for women
2.  Even within world of Shia Islam, women teachers were termed mullahs
3.  The home or in Quranic schools, allowed some women to become literate
VI.  Islam and Cultural Encounters
A.  The Turks became third major carrier of Islam, after Arabs and Persians
B.  Turkic and Muslims regimes governed much of India until the British
C.  Disillusioned Buddhists as well as low-caste Hindus and untouchables found the more egalitarian Islam attractive
1.  But in India, never more than 20 to 25 percent Muslim
a)  Islam was radically monotheistic while Hinduism was polytheistic
b)  Islam’s equality of all believers contrasted with the Hindu caste system
c)  But in the early sixteenth century, Sikhism emerged in India
1)  blended elements of Islam, such as devotion to one universal God, with Hindu concepts, such as Karma and rebirth
D.  But in Anatolia, the population by 1500 was 90% Muslim and largely Turkic-speakingàAnatolia was the heartland of the powerful Turkish Ottoman Empire that had overrun Christian Byzantium
E.  But Islamization did not completely eliminate the influence of Turkish cultureàTradition of a freer, more gender-equal life for women, common among pastoral people, persisted after the conversion to Islam
F.  In West Africa, Islam accompanied Muslim traders across the Sahara
1.  By the sixteenth century, a number of West African cities had become major centers of Islamic religious and intellectual life (like Timbuktu)
2.  Ibn Battuta, a fourteenth-century Arab traveler, was appalled that practicing Muslims in Mali permitted their women to appear in public almost naked and to mingle freely with unrelated men
G.  The chief site of Islamic encounter with Catholic Europe occurred in Spain (called al-Andalus by Muslims)
H.  Beginning in eleventh century, formal colleges called madrassas offered advanced instruction in the Quran and sayings of Muhammad and law
I.  Islamic civilization was a network of faith but also a network of trade
J.  The blending of Islamic civilization and other civilizations led to new contributions to learningàIn eleventh and twelfth centuries, this enormous body of Arab medical scholarship entered Europe via Spain

Complete the Graphic Organizer Below:

Questions:

·  How did the rise of Islam change the lives of women?

·  What similarities and differences can you identify in the spread of Islam to India, Anatolia, West Africa, and Spain?

·  Why was Anatolia so much more thoroughly Islamized than India?

·  What makes it possible to speak of the Islamic world as a distinct and coherent civilization?

·  In what ways was the world of Islam a "cosmopolitan civilization"?

1.  The split between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims occurred as a result of
(A)  Divergent interpretations of religious texts
(B)  Conflict over the translation of liturgy into native languages
(C)  Disagreement over leadership succession issues
(D)  A rift between more fundamentalist and more liberal branches of Islam
2.  Which of the following is an accurate statement about Islamic art and architecture?
(A)  Islamic art focused on abstract geometric patterns and ornate calligraphy in Arabic.
(B)  Elaborate miniatures of historical figures and historical battles were created during the Abbasid and Umayyad Dynasties.
(C)  The most important architectural contributions were elaborate pyramids and sculptures.
(D)  Most Islamic art forms were derived from classic Greek and Roman examples.
3.  Who is recognized by Muslims as the last prophet?
(A)  Abraham
(B)  Ishmael
(C)  Abu Bakr
(D)  Muhammad
(E)  Moses / 4.  Which of the following is a major difference between the classic periods in Rome and the Islamic civilizations?
(A)  While Roman society had strict social class delineations and little mobility, Islam was egalitarian with few barriers to social mobility.
(B)  The Islamic civilization was more dependent on agriculture and therefore more susceptible to fluctuations in food supply.
(C)  While the Roman Empire fell as a result of internal warfare over succession to the throne, Islamic dynasties faced few internal divisions.
(D)  Islamic scientific thought and art forms borrowed heavily from Hellenistic sources, while Rome’s scientific, philosophical, and artistic advancements were unique to its culture.
5.  Like Christians, Muslims profess all of the following beliefs EXCEPT
(A)  Monotheism.
(B)  Resurrection.
(C)  The Last Judgment.
(D)  The teachings of Moses.
(E)  The Trinity.
6.  Shi’ites recognize their leader, who fulfills both political and religious functions as,
(A)  Caliph.
(B)  Imam.

Thesis Statement: Comparative: Political and Cultural Impact of Christianity and Islam

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