Roads of Arabia

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ROADS OF ARABIA
who wished to rival Muhammad. The Medinese caliphs, Muhammad’s direct successors
whom the Muslim tradition designates as “Rightly Guided”, rashidun, all came from
Muhammad’s Meccan tribe. They belonged to his close circle and were his oldest companions.
They were able to preserve the intertribal alliance, albeit recent, which had been
formed. At the cost of several battles they soon controlled the entire Arabian peninsula. The
Arab tribes’ first incursions beyond their familiar territory historically conformed to the
peninsula tribes’ traditional forays. But this time – entirely unexpectedly – the initial impetus
led them much further, towards outer lands, whether it be Iraq and Iran ruled at the time
by the Sassanid Persians, or Syria, Palestine and Egypt, tributaries of the Byzantine Empire.
However these conquests cannot be claimed to have been in the name of religion, as for over
a century and a half after the tribes’ exit from Arabia the populations of the conquered countries,
who did not belong to the tribal society, were not at all urged to convert to Islam. This
tendency was only discontinued under the dynasty of the Baghdad Abbasids who overthrew
the Umayyad caliphs in the mid-8th century.
The great Muslim conquests of the second quarter of the 7th century seem more like a
series of opportunistic raids, which sustained their progression with their successes and
belief in the effective protection of a god granting victory. In the east they were aided by the
war of succession ravaging the Sassanid Empire which sank without trace. In the west the
conquerors took advantage of the difficulties the Byzantine Empire encountered in the
management, in particular religious, of the Near East populations. The progression of the
conquests was halted for ten years or so under the Medinese caliphate due to internecine
conflicts. They show the difficulties encountered by the men of the tribe, in such a short
lapse of time, in governing societies and territories which in no way resembled the collective
living conditions they knew in their native habitat. The Meccan family of the
Umayyads triumphed over what we might describe as an adaptation crisis and growing
pains. Henceforth settled in Damascus, which became the political capital of the caliphate,
it pursued the Muslim expansion until the 7th century. This empire extended from the
Iberian Peninsula, which was almost entirely controlled, all the way to the great steppe of
the plains of Central Asia and the eastern part of the Iranian dominion, present-day
Afghanistan, including all the territories of the southern coast of the Mediterranean and
temporarily some of its islands, such as Sicily. The Damascus Umayyads directly governed
this huge empire for over a century. However in the early days of the dynasty a second
internecine conflict arose involving in particular the two prophetic cities of Mecca and
Medina. In fact the caliph Yazid, son and successor of Mu‘awiya, founder of the dynasty,
as soon as he began his reign in 680 had to grapple with the revolt of several important
Meccan families who refused to yield the monopoly of caliphal power to the Umayyad
clan. The uprising, led by the Zubayrid family, was crushed in 693. Mecca was not spared;
during the various assaults of the caliph’s troops, catapults were used, destroying in part
the Ka‘ba, which was subsequently devastated by a fire. The rebel Abd Allah, son of al-
Zubayr, who still occupied the city, had the edifice rebuilt with countless precautions,
fearful of incurring a divine curse. The Black Stone, al-hajar al-aswad, the holy stone,
placed in the east corner of the building, had been broken in three pieces. It was returned
to its place and mounted in a silver ring. The Umayyads having seized the city restored
the edifice and its immediate surroundings to their original configuration – which had
been altered by the Zubayrid, who had included in its north-west part the semi-circular
area called hijr containing, according to some traditions, the tombs of Ishmael and his
mother, Agar.
The city of Medina equally suffered during this troubled period: the battle of the
Harra in 683 is said to have led the victorious troops to commit many acts of violence in
the city. The holy site of the Prophet’s mosque remained unscathed. The original mosque
consisted of a large inner courtyard overlooked by the rooms of the Prophet’s wives. The
place was used as the home of the Prophet, his wives, his daughter Fatima, married to Ali,
and her two boys, Hasan and Husayn, the Prophet’s grandsons. The Prophet’s mosque was
also a headquarters and place of worship, prefiguring the mediaeval role of the jami’, the
“great mosque” for the Friday common prayer but also for sheltering pilgrims and teaching
students, who formed a circle around their masters seated at the base of a column.
Actually the city of Medina, politically downgraded under the Umayyads, became a
refuge for the important families excluded from power, distinguished itself as a scholarly
city playing the role of a crucible for the study of the holy text and the first Muslim historiographic
tradition. The mosque was successively enlarged under the Medinese caliphs
and then rebuilt again and expanded in the early 8th century by the Umayyad Caliph al-
Walid who had the minarets raised. With successive extensions the mosque incorporated
not only the Prophet’s tomb but also the graves of the two first caliphs and then those of
the Prophet’s wives.
Historiographic tradition, which only began to be written in the Abbasid period, presents
the Umayyads as worldly rulers, muluk, scarcely mindful of religion. It is true that
Muslim religious thinking only began to be formulated, through its exegesis of the Quranic
text, its legalism, theology and mysticism, after the fall of the Umayyads. The Damascene
sovereigns were still very close to their original tribal world where the religious is mostly
expressed in terms of alliance. The massive hybridization of Islam with the non-tribal populations
who joined Islam as of the Abbasid period had not yet taken place. We should do
justice to the Umayyads: by the end of the 7th century they strived to show the world the
specificity of their belief compared to the rival religions. This was particularly aimed at the
Christianity of the Byzantine imperial adversary. This dynasty was especially responsible for
the promotion of Jerusalem as the third holy city of Islam, beside Mecca and Medina. A
magnificent monument highlights the religious and political ambitions of the Umayyad
dynasty: the Dome of the Rock, highly visible on the Temple Mount, and of which the
golden dome overlooks the entire city of Jerusalem. This monument dates to 691. It is not
a mosque as we might assume. The mosque known as “of ‘Umar”, Muhammad’s second successor,
is located nearby on the esplanade but is clearly apart from the dome. Unique in
Islam, this octagonal edifice covers a rock on which was grafted the non-Quranic legend of
the “ascension” to Heaven of Muhammad, the mi’raj. But the inscriptions on the mosaic
cover running along the top of the building are of the highest interest. Quranic verses are
inscribed there, like a challenge flaunted in this city which was Christian at the time of its
conquest in 638. These verses in particular claim that Jesus was the son of Mary (and not
the son of God) and reject the dogma of the Trinity (Quran, 4, 169–171). The conquest of
these lands – which were Byzantine – was accompanied by the claim of a new religion displaying
its truth. The three holy cities are so intricately linked in the Muslim collective
imagination since its Classical period that some mediaeval authors were led to consider that
Jerusalem belongs to the Hijaz, the geographic territory which unites the city of Mecca to
that of Medina.
Aerial view of Haram al-Sharif with the Dome
of the Rock and the Mosque of ‘Umar in Jerusalem
Bibliography:
Chabbi 1997; Chabbi 2008; Quran 1955; Déroche
2009; Donner 1981; McAuliffe 2001–06; Paret 1977;
Prémare 2002; Prémare 2004; Sourdel 1968; Watt
1953; Watt 1956.
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