Questions about Islamisation

In response to Qutluh, the one possessing qut, or the breath of life

Islamic fundamentalism as we know it today was founded on the writing of the Quran during the reign of ʿAbd al-Malik from 685 to 705 (SHOEMAKER 2022), since anything before that possessed the quality of a leader-follower relationship (as described in 7^th century sources, SHOEMAKER 2021) between Muhammad and his followers, while the political leaders of later generations used this legitimacy only indirectly. Islamisation during the expansion of muslim hegemony in the early 8^th century thus was the first imposition of Islamic fundamentalism through conquest and state coercion.

To what extent did ʿAbd al-Malik intend to combine the precepts of the Quran put together by his team of scholars with previous traditions of statecraft? It is certainly possible he lived with the same contradictions as did many subsequent caliphs and especially Muslim sultans, shahanshas and khans, who tried to reconcile their inherited methods of administration, whether Turkish, Sasanian or Indian (or a mix of the three), with the Quran.

Quranic Islam as set up in Spain and Central Asian oases in the early 8th c. (to take the two most geographically remote examples of islamisation) demanded the creation of a mono-culture by the threat of violence and enslavement and systematic destruction of the old culture, as well as surveillance of converts (History of Bukhara):  "Every time a Muslim army came to Bukhara, it raided in summer and left in winter [...] the inhabitants of Bukhara became Muslims, but each time, after the withdrawal of the Muslims, they apostatized. Qutayba b. Muslim converts them three times to Islam, but they apostatized and became infidels again. The fourth time he made war against them, he captured the city and established Islam there with great difficulty. He instilled Islam in their hearts, and made [their religion] difficult in every possible way. They accepted Islam outwardly, but inwardly worshiped idols. Qutayba decided to order that the people of Bukhara give half of their houses to the Arabs so that the Arabs would be with them and informed of their affairs. Then they would have to be Muslims. In this way he made Islam prevail and imposed religious laws on them. He built mosques and eradicated the traces of infidelity and the commandments of the fire worshipers [Zoroastrians, O.D.S.]. He put great zeal into it and punished all those who broke religious commandments. He built a large mosque [on the site of an idolatrous temple, O.D.S.] and ordered the people to perform Friday prayers there.” (quoted in DE LA VASSIÈRE)

The Chinese conquests of Central Asia during the Tang (and later Qing or for that matter Russian conquest in modern times) also had assimilating tendencies, as it has in Xinjiang today.

This raises questions about the effects of coercion on religious belief transmitted from one generation to the next and by what means generations down the line respect the ideas present in society and emulate them sincerely or through which orifice subversively different or older traditions seep in. E.g. in Spain communities who secretly practiced Judaism or Christianity or Islam for centuries, depending on which religion was in power, are well-documented (FERNANDEZ-MORERA).

Traditions of statecraft, starting with the system of taxation, were replaced early on by Islamic law in both Spain and Central Asia (FERNANDEZ-MORERA & DE LA VASSIÈRE). Yet by the Early Middle Period (10th to 12th c.) were ‘corrupted’ by anterior theories and practices that elites within the dar-al-islam still greatly respected, as evidenced by the political Mirror literature (MARLOW), including the name of Aristotle, if not his Politics, which never was translated into Syriac nor therefore Arabic. Assembling multiple sources of canonical writing seems the inevitable outcome over time, leading to contradictory sources on which to build a political problem-solving method. Which methods took precedence in the Mirror literature (that in turn was added to the political canon for centuries to come) reveals more accurately what the practical approach to economics, administration or even cultural tutelage amounted to. This top-down approach, however, was not the whole reality (since it lacked the backing of a bureaucracy akin to that of China), so I’m on the lookout for sources documenting local governance, which on the one hand might reveal abusive extractive practices (of the kind endemic in Roman Sicily denounced by Cicero in his speeches against Verres) or on the other some level of autonomy.

I intend to study one case in particular: The battle of Manzikert 1071 opposed two rival traditions of statecraft (for which Mirror literature is extant on both sides), the Romans of Constantinople and the Seljuks based in Chorasan (the administrator who wrote the influential Mirror in question is from Tus: Nizam al-Mulk). Both based themselves on older traditions of political philosophy, including Aristotle, or rather, Pseudo-Aristotle (a text originally written in Arabic), in the case of the Seljuks. It caused the retreat of the Roman state, which eventually disappeared, its Greek political philosophy books migrating to Western Europe (especially Northern Italy), similary the An Lushan rebellion of 755 caused the Chinese to retreat back from Central Asia, leaving it vulnerable to islamisation. However, the motive of conquest during the early decades of the Arab conquest vs. the 11th century Suljuk conquests might have significantly shifted its focus to rival religious factions within dar-al-islam as a geopolitical priority, just as the later 16th c. creation of the Mughal empire in India described in the Baburname autobiography of its founder may have had less still to do with establishing fundamentalism.

Seljuk empire, Image Source: https://youtu.be/wctorrNMHzA (video about the life of Nizam al-Mulk)