Between these varied communities, living in a wide circle of lands stretching from the Atlantic to the

Gulf, separated by deserts, subject to dynasties which rose and fell and competed with each other
for
control of limited resources, there was nevertheless a common link: at first a dominant group, and
then later a majority of their members, were Muslims, living under the authority of the Word of God,
the Quran, revealed to the Prophet Muhammad in the Arabic language. Those who accepted Islam
formed a community (umma). You are the best umma brought forth for mankind, bidding unto good,
rejecting what is disapproved, believing in God:1 these words of the Quran express something
important about the adherents of Islam. By striving to understand and obey Gods commandments,
men
and women created a right relationship with God, but also with each other. As the Prophet said in
his
pilgrimage of farewell: know that every Muslim is a Muslims brother, and that the Muslims are
brethren.2
Certain acts or rituals played a special part in maintaining the sense of belonging to a community.
These were obligatory for all Muslims capable of observing them, and they created a link not only
between those who performed them together but between successive generations. The idea of a
silsila, a chain of witnesses stretching from the Prophet to the end of the world, and handing on the
truth by direct transmission from one generation to another, was of great importance in Islamic
culture; in a sense this chain formed the true history of mankind, behind the rise and fall of
dynasties
and peoples.
These acts or rituals were commonly known as the Pillars of Islam. First of them was the
shahada, the testimony that there is no god but God, and Muhammad is the Prophet of God. The
making of this testimony was the formal act by which a person became a Muslim, and it was
repeated
daily in the ritual prayers. It contained in essence those articles of faith by which Muslims
distinguished themselves from unbelievers and polytheists, and also from Jews and Christians who
lay within the same tradition of monotheism: that there is only one God, that He has revealed His
Will
to mankind through a line of prophets, and that Muhammad is the Prophet in whom the line
culminates
and ends, the Seal of the prophets. A regular affirmation of this basic creed should be made daily
in
the ritual prayer, salat, the second of the Pillars. At first, salat was performed twice a day, but it later
came to be generally accepted that it should take place five times a day: at daybreak, noon,
midafternoon,
after sunset, and in the early part of the night. The times of prayer were announced by a
public call (adhan) made by a muezzin (muadhdhin) from a high place, usually a tower or minaret
attached to a mosque. Prayer had a fixed form. After a ritual washing (wudu) the worshipper
performed a number of motions of the body bowing, kneeling, prostrating himself to the ground
and said a number of unchanging prayers, proclaiming the greatness of God and the lowliness of
man
in His presence. After these prayers had been said there might also be individual supplications or
petitions (dua).
These prayers could be performed anywhere except in certain places regarded as unclean, but it
was thought a praiseworthy act to pray in public together with others, in an oratory or mosque
(masjid). There was one prayer in particular which should be performed in public: the noon prayer
on Friday was held in a mosque of a special kind (jami) possessing a pulpit (minbar). After the
ritual prayers, a preacher (khatib) would mount the pulpit and deliver a sermon (khutba), which also
followed a more or less regular form: praise of God, blessings invoked on the Prophet, a moral
homily often dealing with the public affairs of the community as a whole, and finally an invocation of
Gods blessing on the ruler. To be mentioned in this way in the khutba came to be regarded as one
of
the signs of sovereignty.
A third Pillar was in a sense an extension of the act of worship. This was zakat, the making of gifts
out of ones income for certain specified purposes: for the poor, the needy, the relief of debtors, the
liberation of slaves, the welfare of wayfarers. The giving of zakat was regarded as an obligation on
those whose income exceeded a certain amount. They should give a certain proportion of their
income; it was collected and distributed by the ruler or his officials, but further alms might be given
to men of religion for them to distribute, or else given directly to those in need.
There were two more obligations no less binding upon Muslims, but to be fulfilled less frequently,
coming as solemn reminders of the sovereignty of God and mans submission to him, at a certain
time
in the liturgical year. (For religious purposes the calendar used was that of the lunar year, which
was
approximately eleven days shorter than the solar year. Thus these ceremonies might be performed
at
different seasons of the solar year. The calendar used for religious purposes, and generally
adopted in
cities, could not be used by cultivators for whom the important events were rains, the flooding of
rivers, the variations of heat and cold. For the most part they used more ancient solar calendars.)
These two Pillars were sawm, or fasting once a year, in the month of Ramadan, and Hajj, or
pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in a lifetime. During Ramadan, the month in which the Quran
was
first revealed, all Muslims above the age of ten were obliged to abstain from eating and drinking,
and
from sexual intercourse, from daybreak until nightfall; an exception was made for those who were
too
physically weak to endure it, those of unsound mind, those engaged in heavy labour or war, and
travellers. This was regarded as a solemn act of repentance for sins, and a denial of self for the
sake
of God; the Muslim who fasted should begin the day with a statement of intention, and the night
might
be filled with special prayers. In drawing nearer to God in this way, Muslims would draw nearer to
each other. The experience of fasting in company with a whole village or city would strengthen the
sense of a single community spread over time and space; the hours after nightfall might be spent in
visits and meals taken in common; the end of Ramadan was celebrated as one of two great
festivals of
the liturgical year, with days of feasting, visits and presents (id al-fitr).
Once in a lifetime at least, every Muslim who was able to make the pilgrimage to Mecca should do
so. He could visit it at any time of the year (umra), but to be a pilgrim in the full sense was to go
there with other Muslims at a special time of the year, the month of Dhul-Hijja. Those who were not
free or not of sound mind, or who did not possess the necessary financial resources, those under a
certain age and (according to some authorities) women who had no husband or guardian to go with
them, were not obliged to go. There are descriptions of Mecca and the Hajj made in the twelfth
century which show that by that time there was agreement about the ways in which the pilgrim
should
behave and what he could expect to find at the end of his journey.
Most pilgrims went in large companies which gathered in one of the great cities of the Muslim
world. By the Mamluk period it was the pilgrimages from Cairo and Damascus which were the most
important. Those from the Maghrib would go by sea or land to Cairo, meet the Egyptian pilgrims
there, and travel by land across Sinai and down through western Arabia to the holy cities, in a
caravan organized, protected and led in the name of the ruler of Egypt. The journey from Cairo took
between thirty and forty days, and by the end of the fifteenth century perhaps 3040,000 pilgrims
made it every year. Those from Anatolia, Iran, Iraq and Syria met in Damascus; the journey, also by
caravan organized by the ruler of Damascus, also took between thirty and forty days and it has
been
suggested that some 2030,000 pilgrims may have gone each year. Smaller groups went from
West
Africa across the Sudan and the Red Sea, and from southern Iraq and the ports of the Gulf across
central Arabia.
At a certain point on the approach to Mecca, the pilgrim would purify himself by ablutions, put on
a white garment made of a single cloth, the ihram, and proclaim his intention to make the pilgrimage
by a kind of act of consecration: Here am I, O my God, here am I; no partner hast Thou, here am I;
verily the praise and the grace are Thine, and the empire.3
Once he arrived in Mecca, the pilgrim would enter the sacred area, the haram, where were various
sites and buildings with hallowed associations. By the twelfth century at the latest these had taken
the
shape which they were to keep: the well of Zamzam, believed to have been opened by the Angel
Gabriel to save Hagar and her son Ishmael; the stone on which Abrahams footstep was imprinted;
certain places associated with the imams of the different legal madhhabs. At the heart of the haram
stood the Kaba, the rectangular building which Muhammad had purged of idols and made the
centre
of Muslim devotion, with the Black Stone embedded in one of its walls. The pilgrims would go round
the Kaba seven times, touching or kissing the Black Stone as they passed it. On the eighth day of
the
month they would go out of the city in the eastern direction to the hill of Arafa. There they would
stand for a time, and this was the essential act of the pilgrimage. On the way back to Mecca, at
Mina,
two more symbolic acts would be performed: the casting of stones at a pillar signifying the Devil,
and
the sacrifice of an animal. This marked the end of the period of dedication which had begun with the
putting on of the ihram; the pilgrim would take off the garment and return to the ways of ordinary
life.
The pilgrimage was in many ways the central event of the year, perhaps of a whole lifetime, that in
which the unity of Muslims with each other was most fully expressed. In a sense it was an epitome
of
all kinds of travel. Those who went to pray in Mecca might remain to study in Madina; they might
bring goods with them in order to pay the expenses of the journey; merchants would travel with the
caravan, with goods to sell on the way or in the holy cities. The pilgrimage was also a market for the
exchange of news and ideas brought from all parts of the world of Islam.
The famous traveller Ibn Battuta expressed something of what the experience of pilgrimage meant:
Of the wondrous doings of God Most High is this, that He has created the hearts of men with an
instinctive desire to seek these sublime
sanctuaries, and yearning to present themselves at their illustrious sites, and has given the love of
them such power over mens hearts
that none alights in them but they seize his whole heart, nor quits them but with grief at separation
from them.4
The Hajj was an act of obedience to Gods command as expressed in the Quran: It is the duty of
all men towards God to come to the House a pilgrim, if he is able to make his way there.5 It was a
profession of belief in the one God, and also a visible expression of the unity of the umma. The
many
thousands of pilgrims from all over the Muslim world made the pilgrimage at the same time;
together
they went round the Kaba, stood at Arafa, stoned the Devil and sacrificed their animals. In doing
so,
they were linked with the whole world of Islam. The departure and return of pilgrims were marked by
official celebrations, recorded in local chronicles, in later times at least depicted on the walls of
houses. At the moment when the pilgrims sacrificed their animals at Mina, every Muslim household
too would kill an animal, to usher in the other great popular festival of the year, the Feast of
Sacrifice
(id al-adha).
The sense of belonging to a community of believers expressed itself in the idea that it was the duty
of Muslims to look after each others consciences, and to protect the community and extend its
scope
where possible. Jihad, war against those who threatened the community, whether hostile
unbelievers
outside it or non-Muslims within it who broke their covenant of protection, was usually regarded as
an obligation practically equivalent to one of the Pillars. The duty of jihad, like the others, was based
on a Quranic saying: O you who believe, fight the unbelievers who are near to you.6 The nature
and
extent of the obligation were carefully defined by the legal writers. It was not an individual obligation
of all Muslims, but an obligation on the community to provide a sufficient number of fighters. After
the great expansion of Islam in the early centuries, and with the beginnings of the counterattack
from
western Europe, jihad tended to be seen in terms of defence rather than expansion.
Of course, not all who called themselves Muslims took these obligations with equal seriousness, or
gave the same meaning to the fulfilment of them. There were different levels of individual
conviction,
and differences in general between the Islam of the city, the countryside and the desert. There was
a
spectrum of observance ranging from the scholar or devout merchant of the city, performing the
daily
prayers and annual fast, able to pay zakat and make the pilgrimage, to the ordinary beduin, not
praying regularly, not fasting in Ramadan because his whole life was lived on the edge of privation,
not making the pilgrimage, but still professing that there is no god but God and Muhammad is His
Prophet.
THE FRIENDS OF GOD
From the beginning there had been some followers of the Prophet for whom external observances
were of no worth unless they expressed a sincerity of intention, a desire to obey Gods commands
from a sense of His greatness and the littleness of man, and unless they were regarded as the
elementary forms of a moral discipline which should extend to the whole of life.
From an early date, the desire for purity of intention had given rise to ascetic practices, perhaps
under the influence of eastern Christian monks. Implicit in them was the idea that there could be a
relationship between God and man other than that of command and obedience: a relationship in
which
man obeyed Gods Will out of love of Him and the desire to draw near Him, and in so doing could
become aware of an answering love extended by God to man. Such ideas, and the practices to
which
they gave rise, were developed further during these centuries. There was a gradual articulation of
the
idea of a path by which the true believer could draw nearer to God; those who accepted this idea
and
tried to put it into practice came to be known generally as Sufis. Gradually too there emerged a
consensus, although an incomplete one, about the main stages (maqam) on the path. The first
stages
were those of repentance, a turning away from the sins of past life. This would lead on to
abstinence,
even from things which were lawful but could distract the soul from seeking its proper object. The
traveller on the path should go on to learn trust in God, reliance upon Him, and patient waiting upon
His Will, and then, after a period of fear and hope, there might come a revelation of the divine
Being:
a spiritual awakening in which all objects vanished and only God was there. The human qualities of
the traveller who had reached this point were annihilated, their place was taken by divine qualities,
and man and God were united in love. This momentary experience of the divine (marifa) would
leave its mark: the soul would be transformed once it returned to the world of everyday life.
This movement towards union with God was one which affected the emotions as well as the mind
and soul, and corresponding to the various stages there might be graces (hal, pl. ahwal), emotional
states or vivid experiences which could be expressed only, if at all, in metaphor or image. In Arabic
and the other literary languages of Islam, there gradually developed a system of poetic imagery by
which poets tried to evoke the states of grace which might come along the path towards knowledge
of
God, and the experience of unity which was its goal: images of human love, in which the lover and
beloved mirrored each other, of the intoxication of wine, of the soul as a drop of water in the divine
ocean, or as a nightingale seeking the rose which is a manifestation of God. Poetic imagery is
ambiguous, however, and it is not always easy to say whether the poet is trying to express human
love
or the love of God.
Serious and concerned Muslims were aware of the danger of the path; the traveller might lose the
way, the graces might beguile him. It was generally accepted that some human souls were able to
walk on it alone, suddenly rapt into ecstasy, or guided by the direct leadership of a dead teacher or
the Prophet himself. For most travellers, however, it was thought to be necessary to accept the
teaching and guidance of someone who had advanced further on the path, a master of the spiritual
life
(shaykh, murshid). According to a saying which became familiar, he who has no shaykh, the Devil
is his shaykh. The disciple should follow his master implicitly; he should be as passive as a corpse
beneath the hands of the washer of the dead.
In the late tenth and eleventh centuries, a further development began to take place. Those who
followed the same master began to identify themselves as a single spiritual family, moving along the
same path (tariqa). Some of these families continued over a long period and claimed a lineage
which
went back to some great master of the spiritual life, after whom the tariqa was named, and through
him to the Prophet, by way of Ali or else of Abu Bakr. Some of these paths or orders extended
over a wide area within the world of Islam, carried by disciples to whom a master had given a
licence to teach his way. For the most part they were not highly organized. Disciples of a master
could found their own orders, but in general they recognized an affinity with the master from whom
they had learned their path. Among the most widespread and lasting of the orders were some which
began in Iraq; such were the Rifaiyya which goes back to the twelfth century, the Suhrawardiyya in
the thirteenth century, and the furthest extended of all the Qadiriyya, named after a Baghdad
saint,
Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani (1077/81166), but which did not emerge clearly until the fourteenth century.
Of the orders which grew up in Egypt, the Shadhiliyya was to become the most widespread,
particularly in the Maghrib, where it was organized by al-Jazuli (d. c. 1465). In other parts of the
Muslim world, other orders or groups of orders were important: for example, the Mawlawiyya in
Anatolia and the Naqshbandiyya in central Asia. Some of these were later to spread in
Arabicspeaking
countries too.
Only a minority of adherents of such orders devoted their whole lives to the path, living in
convents (zawiya, khanqa); some of these, particularly in cities, might be small buildings, but others
might be larger, including a mosque, a place for spiritual exercises, schools, hostels for visitors, all
clustered around the tomb of the master after whom the order was named. Most of the members of
the
order lived in the world, however; these might include women as well as men. For some of them,
affiliation to an order might be little more than nominal, but for others it implied a certain initiation
into doctrines and practices which could help them to move on the way towards the ecstasy of
union.
The orders differed in their view of the relationship between the two ways of Islam: that of
sharia, obedience to the law derived from Gods commands in the Quran, and that of tariqa, the
search for direct experiential knowledge of Him. On one side stood the sober orders, which taught
that, after the self-annihilation and intoxication of the mystical vision, the believer should return to
the
world of everyday activities and live within the bounds of the sharia, fulfilling his duties to God and
his fellow men, but giving them a new meaning. On the other side stood those for whom the
experience of union with God left them intoxicated with a sense of the divine presence, such that
their
real life was henceforth lived in solitude; they did not care whether they incurred blame by neglect
of
the duties laid down in the sharia, and might even welcome such blame as a way of helping them
to
turn away from the world (Malamatis). The first tendency was associated with those who claimed to
descend from Junayd, the second with those who looked to Abu Yazid al-Bistami as their master.
There was a process of initiation into an order: the taking of an oath of allegiance to the shaykh, the
receiving from him of a special cloak, the communication by him of a secret prayer (wird or hizb). In
addition to individual prayers, however, there was a ritual which was the central act of the tariqa and
the characteristic which marked it off from others. This was the dhikr or repetition of the name of
Allah, with the intention of turning the soul away from all the distractions of the world and freeing it
for the flight towards union with God. The dhikr could take more than one form. In some of the
orders
(in particular the Naqshbandiyya) it was a silent repetition, together with certain techniques of
breathing, and with concentration of the minds attention upon certain parts of the body, upon the
shaykh, the eponymous founder of the order, or the Prophet. In most, it was a collective ritual
(hadra), performed regularly on certain days of the week in a zawiya of the order. Drawn up in lines,
the participants would repeat the name of Allah; there might be an accompaniment of music and
poetry; in some orders there was ritual dancing, as in the graceful circular dance of the Mawlawis;
there might be demonstrations of particular graces, knives thrust into cheeks or fire into mouths.
The
repetition and action would go faster and faster, until the participants were caught up into a trance
in
which they lost awareness of the sensible world.
Surrounding these public acts was a penumbra of private devotions, praise of God, expressions of
love for Him, petitions for spiritual graces. Some were brief ejaculations praising God or invoking
blessings on the Prophet, others were more elaborate:
Glory to Him the mountains praise with what is on them;
Glory to Him whom the trees praise as they put forth their leaves;
Glory to Him whom the date-palms praise at the maturity of their fruits;
Glory to Him whom the winds praise in the ways of the sea.7
Collections of them came to be attributed to great masters of the spiritual life.
The idea of a path of approach to God implied that man was not only the creature and servant of
God, but could also become His friend (wali). Such a belief could find its justification in passages of
the Quran: O Thou, Creator of the heavens and the earth, Thou art my Friend in this world and the
next.8 Gradually a theory of sainthood (walaya) emerged. The friend of God was the one who
always stood near Him, whose thoughts were always on Him, and who had mastered the human
passions which took a man away from Him. A woman as well as a man could be a saint. There had
always been saints in the world and always would be, to keep the world on its axis. In time this idea
was given formal expression: there would always be a certain number of saints in the world; when
one died he would be succeeded by another; and they constituted the hierarchy who were the
unknown
rulers of the world, with the qutb, the pole on which the world turned, at their head.
The friends of God could intercede with Him on behalf of others, and their intercession could
have visible results in this world. It could lead to cures for sickness or sterility, or relief of
misfortunes, and these signs of grace (karamat) were also proofs of the sanctity of the friend of
God.
It came to be widely accepted that the supernatural power by which a saint called down graces into
the world could survive his or her death, and requests for intercession could be made at his or her
tomb. Visits to the tombs of saints, to touch them or pray in front of them, came to be a
supplementary
practice of devotion, although some Muslim thinkers regarded this as a dangerous innovation,
because
it interposed a human intermediary between God and each individual believer. The tomb of the
saint,
quadrangular, with a vaulted dome, whitewashed inside, standing by itself or in a mosque, or
serving
as the nucleus round which a zawiya had grown, was a familiar feature of the Islamic landscape
and
townscape.
Just as Islam did not reject the Kaba but gave it a new meaning, so converts to Islam brought into
it their own immemorial cults. The idea that certain places were the dwellings of gods or
superhuman
spirits had been widespread since very ancient times: stones of an unusual kind, ancient trees,
springs
of water gushing spontaneously from the earth, were looked on as visible signs of the presence of a
god or spirit to whom petitions could be addressed and offerings made, by the hanging of votive
rags
or the sacrifice of animals. All over the world where Islam spread, such places became associated
with Muslim saints and thus acquired a new significance.
Some of the tombs of saints had become the centres of great public liturgical acts. The birthday of a
saint, or some day specially associated with him, was celebrated by a popular festival during which
Muslims from the surrounding district or further afield would gather to touch the tomb or pray before
it and take part in festivities of various kinds. Some of these gatherings were of only local
importance, but others would draw visitors from further afield. Such national or universal shrines
were those of Mawlay Idris (d. 791), reputed founder of the city of Fez; Abu Midyan (c. 112697) at
Tlemen in western Algeria; Sidi Mahraz, patron saint of sailors, in Tunis; Ahmad al-Badawi
(c.11991276) at Tanta in the Egyptian delta, subject of a cult in which scholars have seen a
survival
in a new form of the ancient Egyptian worship of Bubastis; and Abd al-Qadir, after whom the Qadiri
order was named, in Baghdad.
In course of time the Prophet and his family came to be seen in the perspective of sainthood. The
intercession of the Prophet on the Day of Judgement would, it was commonly believed, work for the
salvation of those who had accepted his mission. He came to be regarded as a wali as well as a
prophet, and his tomb at Madina was a place of prayer and petition, to be visited for itself or as an
extension of the Hajj. The birthday of the Prophet (the mawlid) became an occasion of popular
celebration: this practice appears to have begun to grow by the time of the Fatimid caliphs in Cairo,
and it was widespread by the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
A living or dead saint could generate worldly power, particularly in the countryside where the
absence of organized bureaucratic government allowed the free play of social forces. The
residence
or tomb of a saint was neutral ground where people could take refuge, and members of different
groups which elsewhere were distant or hostile could meet to transact business. The festival of a
saint was also a country fair where goods were bought and sold, and his tomb could be the
guardian
of a permanent market, or of the granary of a nomadic tribe. The saint, or his descendants and the
guardians of his tomb, could profit from his reputation for sanctity; offerings from pilgrims would
give them wealth and prestige, and they might be called upon to act as arbitrators in disputes.
Men of learning and piety, with a reputation for working miracles and resolving disputes, could be
the point around which there could gather political movements, in opposition to rulers regarded as
unjust or illegitimate. In some circumstances, the prestige of such a religious teacher could draw
strength from a widespread popular idea, that of the mahdi, the man guided by God and sent by
him to
restore the rule of justice which would come before the end of the world. Examples of this process
can be found throughout Islamic history. The most famous and successful of those recognized by
their
followers as the mahdi was perhaps Ibn Tumart (c. 10781130), a religious reformer born in
Morocco who, after studying in the Middle East, returned to the Maghrib and began to call for a
restoration of the original purity of Islam. He and those who gathered around him founded the
Almohad Empire, which at its height extended throughout the Maghrib and the Muslim parts of
Spain,
and the memory of which was to confer legitimacy upon later dynasties, in particular the Hafsids of
Tunisia.
Notes