Transcript Chapter 8 - HCC Learning Web

Chapter 9
The Rise and Spread of Islam:
A New Religion
Copyright © 2015, 2012, 2008 by Pearson Education Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
What are the principal tenets
of the Muslim faith?
Copyright © 2015, 2012, 2008 by Pearson Education Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
• Beginning in 610 CE, the Muslim Prophet Muhammad
began to recite messages from God through the
agency of the Archangel Gabriel
• Muhammad dictated the messages to scribes, who
collected them to form the scriptures of Islam, the
Qur’an (or Koran)
• At the core of Muhammad’s revelations is the concept
of submission to God or Allah, who is all-powerful, allseeing, and all-merciful
• Like Christians, Muslims believe that human beings
possess immortal souls
• Muslims dedicate themselves to the five pillars of Islam:
Witness (Shahadah), Prayer (Salat), Alms (Zakat),
Fasting (Sawm), and Pilgrimage (Hajj)
Copyright © 2015, 2012, 2008 by Pearson Education Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
• Another important source of Islamic tradition is the
collections of hadith, which contain the sayings of
Muhammad and anecdotes about his life
• After fleeing from Mecca to Medina, Muhammad
created a community based on common submission
to the will of God
• The community of all Muslims became known as the
Umma
• At Medina, Muhammad built a house with a large
open courtyard serving as a community gathering
place
• Muhammad’s house inspired the masjid or mosque
• In Muhammad’s time, women were welcome in the
mosque
Copyright © 2015, 2012, 2008 by Pearson Education Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Why did Islam spread so
rapidly?
Copyright © 2015, 2012, 2008 by Pearson Education Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
• The successes of Islam can be attributed to its appeal
both as a religion and as a form of social organization
• Islam denied neither Judaism nor Christianity; it
merely superseded them
• Islam opened its arms to everyone without drawing
any special distinction between the clergy and the laity
• The mosque served as a community meeting house,
courthouse, council chamber, military complex, and
administrative center
• By the eleventh century, a madrasa, or teaching
college, was attached to mosques, turning them into
learning centers as well
• The madrasas contributed to the rise of an intellectual
elite, the ulama
Copyright © 2015, 2012, 2008 by Pearson Education Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
How would you characterize
Islam in both Africa and
Spain?
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Islamic Africa
• In the eighth and ninth centuries, Muslims came to
dominate the trans-Saharan trade routes, and Islam
became the dominant faith in North and West Africa
• Muslims traded in salt, gold, and slaves
(Muhammad had authorized the practice of
enslaving conquered peoples, with the exception of
Muslims)
• In 1312, the Malian ruler Mansa Moussa, a devout
Muslim, built the Djingareyber Mosque in Timbuktu
• Under Moussa’s patronage, Timbuktu grew in wealth
and became a center for scholars and the arts
Copyright © 2015, 2012, 2008 by Pearson Education Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
• In 1334, Moussa embarked on a pilgrimage to
Mecca
• As part of his pilgrimage, Moussa distributed
more than two tons of gold among the poor in
Egypt
Copyright © 2015, 2012, 2008 by Pearson Education Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Islamic Spain
• Like Islamic Africa, Islamic Spain maintained its own
indigenous traditions, thus creating a distinctive
cultural and political life
• The Umayyad caliph Abd ar-Rahman (r. 756–788)
built a magnificent new mosque in Córdoba
• Under the Umayyad caliphs, Muslim Spain thrived
intellectually
• Religious tolerance was extended to all (however,
Muslims were exempt from taxes, while Christians
and Jews were not)
• By the time of Abd ar-Rahman III (r. 912–961),
Córdoba had grown into the most important center of
Learning in Europe
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• The mosque-affiliated madrasa that Abd arRahman III founded was the earliest example
of an institution of higher learning in the
Western world
• Under the Umayyad rule, the Jewish
population flourished, marking this time as
the Golden Age of Jewish Culture
• With the collapse of the Umayyad caliphate
in the eleventh century, Spain became less
tolerant and persecutions began
Copyright © 2015, 2012, 2008 by Pearson Education Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
How do Islamic music, book
design, narrative, and poetry
reflect calligraphy’s emphasis
on abstract rhythms of
pattern and repetition?
Copyright © 2015, 2012, 2008 by Pearson Education Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
• According to the hadith, Muhammad opposed imagemaking
• As a result, the art of calligraphy assumed a central
place in Islamic visual culture
• Especially the bismillah rose to importance—
consisting of the phrase “In the name of Allah, the
Beneficent, Ever-Merciful”
• By its emphasis on abstract rhythms of pattern and
repetition, calligraphy influenced music, book design,
narrative, and poetry
Copyright © 2015, 2012, 2008 by Pearson Education Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
Music in the Islamic World
• Music was central to Islamic culture
• In the call to prayer, each of the call’s seven
phrases is sung, with a long pause between
each phrase and each phrase becoming more
melodic than the last
• Traditional Arabic music is based on intonations
and rhythms closely related to the inflections of
words
• The Arabs were the first to put into writing the
concepts of scale that would become second
nature in European theory
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The Art of the Book
• In the eighth century, the art of papermaking
was introduced into the Arabic world from
China
• Early in the ninth century, the book had
become the prime medium, and Baghdad had
grown into a major publishing center
• The book manifested cultural eloquence and
made it transportable
• Islamic learning—and with it Islamic faith—
spread throughout the world
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• One of the most widely illustrated poems of
the Middle Ages is the Haft Paykar (“Seven
Beauties”)
• Haft Paykar is a romantic epic, which is a
poem that celebrates love between a man
and a woman as a cosmic force for harmony
and justice
• The story of Bahram and his seven wives is a
narrative device known as a framing tale
• This form allows the poet to unite different
tales—in this case seven—under an
overarching narrative umbrella
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• The Thousand and One Nights is a
compilation of prose tales from various
sources—Persian, Arabic, and Indian
• The various tales were united into a single
narrative between the eighth and ninth
centuries in Baghdad
• The framing tale derives from the Indian
story of Sheherazade
• The Thousand and One Nights embodies
a tension that pervades Islamic culture to
this day and, it is fair to say, Western
culture as a whole
Copyright © 2015, 2012, 2008 by Pearson Education Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.