A reconstructed view of Sinornithosaurus – one of the Dromaeosauridae, the feathered Dinosaur ancestors of Aves, Avians – today’s birds. And just as the Dromaeosauridae are gone, and the 10,000 species of birds remain as a reminder of Age of Dinosaurs, the reign of the last of the Persian Shahs – Yazdegerd III is gone – but the Persian Empire remains in the dating system of an entire religion – that of Zoroasterianism. It is still the reign of Shah Yazdegerd III (d. 651) for those who follow Ahura Mazda – the Good God of the Prophet Zoroaster. And 2012 is the 1,380th year of his reign.

Today is a day of conquests and destruction, big winners and even bigger losers. Mostly, of course, it’s the Arabs doing the winning and it’s everybody else doing the losing. But that’s life in the latter 600′s – the story of the first great expansion of Islam. Not that it’s all easy pickings for the Arabs – it’s not. It’s a long, long series of continuous battles. But the Arabs luckily stumble upon two empires destitute after twenty years of exhausting world war, and they get to pick up the broken pieces of Rome and Persia that are lying all over the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Cities, castles, provinces, nations, armies, subject peoples, all for the asking.

It is the end of Persia, and the near-end of Rome.

It’s a big day, if you’re into change – change and the evanescent nature of human accomplishments in a militantly vicious and opportunistic world. Gotterdammerung – the Twilight of the Gods. Not to put too fine a Wagnerian point on it.

Map of the Aral Sea and the Oxus (Amu Darya – to the South) and the Jaxartes (Syr Darya – to the North) (Darya is river in Persian). Yazdegerd III lost his life trying to sell the royal jewels for passage across the Moghrab (?) in Merv a desert river just south of the Amu Darya. The Aral Sea of course, no longer exists, since the Amu Darya, like the Rio Grande, doesnt actually carry any water to its own delta, its entire flow is used up in irrigation before it ends.

The Romans and the Persians had been at each other’s throats for about 400 years (240′s – 600′s) when the latest set of skirmishes ended in a substantial Roman victory for the emperor Maurice, Maurice wedded his daughter Maria to the new Persian Shah Khosrua II ( a marriage recorded by a chronicler Michael the Syrian, of which some modern historians entertain doubts).

At any rate, Khosrau II had spent his youth among the Romans living in exile and so was a great friend of the last living family of the Justinian dynasty, esp. that is, of the emperor Maurice. And Maurice, once he’d defeated the Persians soundly, placed the exiled pretender Khosrau II firmly back on the Persian throne. Roman-Persian peace seemed assured. What could go wrong?

But no Roman emperor ever easily wears the purple. Later, in a typically Roman spasm of discontent, the Romans killed Maurice and raised Phocas (602-610) as emperor, which both pleased and infuriated Khosrau II (TANGENT: this is the Phocas of Phocas’s column – the last column raised by an emperor in the Roman Forum).

Khosrau had the excuse to go to war against the Romans and avenge their heavy losses under Maurice, and Khosrau had a just reason for war, as Maurice had been his friend and sponsor. And so began the Gotterdammerung of the Persian and Roman states, as the entire Eastern Mediterranean became one huge battlefield for over twenty years.

For the next decade, Persia stripped Rome of almost every province she had, utterly exhausting the Roman economy and its own in the process. The next decade or so saw the Emperor Heraclius (who deposed Phocas) spring back from total Roman defeat and through a long guerilla-style war, annihilate the Persians and their empire, destroying what was left of Sassanid strength and exhausting the Persian and Roman economy a second time, this time completely with the war-to-end-all-wars war effort. Complete victory came to Rome this time, ending the 400 year Perso-Roman battle for Mediterranean/Mid-East supremacy. That was 629. In 632 the Arabs invaded defeated Persia and took it. In 633 the Arabs invaded the prostate Roman Empire and took it.

Yazdegerd III‘s grandfather was the Roman Emperor Maurice. If it weren’t for the unfortunate war that lasted 20+ years between Persia and Rome, the Arabs might never have left the Arabian peninsula.

As it was, in 651 Yazdegerd died trying to pawn his royal jewels to cross a river (the Moghrab in Merv south of the mythical Aral Sea). And by 674 (23 years later) the Arabs mounted a nearly successful siege on the Roman capital itself, Constantinople, as the Roman empire evaporated like morning mist in the midday heat of the rising sun of Islam (forgive the florid metaphor-making).
 
 

Non-coin objects from the Furness Hoard – a Viking hoard from in England dating from the 900′s found in 2011 by optimistic and hardworking persons employing metal detectors. Note that the items that are precious metals are hacked into pieces. Gibbon points and laughs at the Arabs destruction of Art, by dividing the spoils of war into convenient pieces for distribution to underlings. But, just like the Arabs with their Roman and Persian spoils during the 700′s, the Vikings in the 900′s act in the same way. Its just that the actions of Scandinavian ancestors of English aristocracy had slipped from the national consciousness by the 1780s.

 
Gibbon makes a point of showing the naive simplicity of the Arab conquerors of the Persian Empire in a long page-long passage today. In his mind, Gibbon was referencing not only the Arabs of the 630′s but also the Arabs and Arab Mid-Eastern, Islamic culture of the 1780′s. Gibbon means to show that the simple men of the world, although numerous and powerful, will innocently and cheerfully destroy civilization every time if allowed the opportunity. Therefor, it must be the goal of civilized, enlightened men everywhere NOT to give them that chance. They must be protected from themselves, for their own good. Thus the Gibbon passage quoted below demonstrating the infantile actions of Early Arab conquerors.

Simple raiding and pillaging societies (like the Arabs) coming into contact with complicated nation-state-empires (like the Persians) is an old story. Gibbon’s own ancestors were probably those same simple, destructive people – nations that heedlessly ripped apart superior civilizations in the name of pillaging and wealth. This, however, was conveniently forgotten by the late 1700′s. Each invading nation, each people arriving to conquer England followed the same pillaging philosophy – be they Angles invading Roman Britain, Danes/Norwegians invading Saxon England, or Norman coming over in 1066 – the Norman Conquerors of Normandy were, after all, descendants of Vikings – Scandinavian pirates – war parties that had ravaged the Lower Seine for a hundred years and had finally blackmailed the French king into giving up French territory for them irrevecably. No one stood between a Norman and some movable, relatively-unprotected wealth. At least not for long.

Carolingian silver and gold statuary was clipped into pieces by Vikings (to be distributed among their own Viking war bands just like the Arabs distributed their booty between their own tribes on Jihad. They tore apart wealth just as eagerly as the Arabs (ex. the Furness Hoard) – in fact, in exactly the same way as the Arabs tore apart the Persian’s Chinese silk tapestries in the Gibbon quote below. But again, this had all been forgotten by the time of the Enlightenment and Gibbon.

Civilization versus Barbarism. The parallels to European expansion in the late 1700′s over the entire world are obvious, and Gibbon is smilingly making that point to his readers. Civilized white men from Europe are confronting traditional cultures everywhere on the globe – and it is the white man’s duty to civilize them.

Gibbon’s point is that the Arabs conquered the Persians but didn’t have the slightest idea what they had conquered. Gibbon says they are brave and hardworking, but ignorant and destructive. In Gibbon’s eyes, on the whole, that makes them not worthy of overlordship.

The Arabs are not like the English (in the 1780′s), who are brave and hardworking AND knowledgeable and constructive. There is more than a little paternal smirking and winking going on in this passage about the Arabs and their reaction to one of the big three (China, Persia, Rome) civilized, highly-organized states of the Late Antique, Early Medieval World.

This, from Gibbon:

The naked robbers of the desert were suddenly enriched beyond the measure of their hope or knowledge. Each chamber revealed a new treasure secreted with art, or ostentatiously displayed; the gold and silver, the various wardrobes and precious furniture, surpassed (says Abulfeda) the estimate of fancy or numbers; and another historian defines the untold and almost infinite mass, by the fabulous computation of three thousands of thousands of thousands of pieces of gold.

Some minute though curious facts represent the contrast of riches and ignorance. From the remote islands of the Indian Ocean a large provision of camphire had been imported, which is employed with a mixture of wax to illuminate the palaces of the East. Strangers to the name and properties of that odoriferous gum, the Saracens, mistaking it for salt, mingled the camphire in their bread, and were astonished at the bitterness of the taste.

One of the apartments of the palace was decorated with a carpet of silk, sixty cubits in length, and as many in breadth: a paradise or garden was depictured on the ground: the flowers, fruits, and shrubs, were imitated by the figures of the gold embroidery, and the colours of the precious stones; and the ample square was encircled by a variegated and verdant border. The Arabian general persuaded his soldiers to relinquish their claim, in the reasonable hope that the eyes of the caliph would be delighted with the splendid workmanship of nature and industry.

Regardless of the merit of art, and the pomp of royalty, the rigid Omar divided the prize among his brethren of Medina: the picture was destroyed; but such was the intrinsic value of the materials, that the share of Ali alone was sold for twenty thousand drams. A mule that carried away the tiara and cuirass, the belt and bracelets of Chosroes, was overtaken by the pursuers; the gorgeous trophy was presented to the commander of the faithful; and the gravest of the companions condescended to smile when they beheld the white beard, the hairy arms, and uncouth figure of the veteran, who was invested with the spoils of the Great King.

(DEF III, v.5, Ch.51, pp.242-243)
 
 

A very sad numismatic relic. Coin of last Sassanid Persian Emperor Yazdegerd III (Persian for -made by God) minted in RY (Regnal Year) 11 (643) – he reigned 632-651. As Zoroastrianism was the state religion of the Persians, the religious calendar of the Zoroaster was based on the regnal years of the Persian emperors. There were no other Persian Emperors after Yazdegerd III – at least no Zorasterians. So we are currently in the RY 1380 – of Yazdegerd IIIs reign and the Zorasterian calendar both – which are the same thing. The story behind this coin is that it was minted 6 years (643) after the fall of the capital, Ctesiphon, in 637, so that makes it a coin minted by a provincial mint acting for a government in exile – a government that was to disappear entirely in 8 years. As I said, sad.

Things From Long Ago – Zorasterian Dating and Dinosaurs

In today’s reading, the last of the Persian Shahs (Sassanid Empire (224-651) is defeated, hounded, betrayed, and dies. This is Yazdegerd III. The Persian Sassanids were inveterate Zoroasterians, and since the state supported priesthood was intimately involved in the government of Persia, the religious calendar followed the political calendar – dates were calculated based on the regnal year (reign-year) of the current Persian Shah.

But what happens to a state religion when the state disappears? Gibbon delights in examining just that when he discusses Christianity, Rome, and the Catholic Papacy. But we are looking at Persia just now. Actually, that very thing happened in Iran/Iraq in the late 600′s. Between 637 and 651, the Persian Zoroasterian state evaporated, replaced by Islamic territories in the newly-born Islamic Empire run by Islamic governors.

Well, if the supporting state disappears, apparently you are fossilized in place, at the moment of the state’s destruction. For the Zoroasterians, this meant the era of Yezdegerd III (regnal year starting 632) never ceased. We are currently in year 1380 (in 2012) of the reign of Yezdegerd, Persian Shah. This is the official date of the Zoroasterian religious calendar. A sad and interesting fact.

Like the once-ubiquitous and powerful clade of dinosauria (dinosaurs) surviving as the class Aves (birds), the Sassanid Persian Empire survives today in an obviously radically different form in the ongoing faith of Zoroasterians.

This from Wiki:

The Zoroastrian religious calendar, which is still in use today, uses the regnal year of Yazdegerd III as its base year. Its calendar era (year numbering system), which is accompanied by a Y.Z. suffix, thus indicates the number of years since the emperor’s coronation in 632 AD.

(Yazdegerd III in Wikipedia)

This is also a Page in the Header above.
Ongoing Table of Names

I should have done this long ago, but was overcome by blog-sloth and blog-entropy – that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. I’m only doing it now because sometimes it takes a good five minutes for me to figure out how Benjamin Franklin would have spelled the names of Persian shahs or Arabic cities in order to link it to the modern spellings you find in current references online (say Wikipedia). 18th Century Englishmen had a field day with non-Latin alphabet transliteration. Very imaginative. So, once I’ve done it and I’ve got a link, I figure, well, I ought to save you some of that trouble. Thus the table below.

Although, to be truthful, I could have been doing this all along, for the last 2 years and the table (including Latin, Greek, Chinese, Turkish, Arabic, Russian, etc) would have extended to hundreds if not thousands of entries by now.

But here it is now, today, such as it is. As you can see, I’m still lazy. It’s not much of a table. But it’s a start.

File this under P for It All Depends On Your Perspective. Here is yet another feathered Dinosaur, Dromaeosaurus. Feathered like a bird, because, in actuality, as it turns out, all birds are Dinosaurs – like House Sparrows they are of the Clade Dinosauria. I heard on a NOVA special – The Four Winged Dinosaur – one of the hosts mentioning that there are 5,700 species of mammals and there are 10,000 species of birds – which means we are effectively STILL IN the Age of Dinosaurs. Its just that we newbies, the mammals, well, in our self-absorbed universe, we just don’t want to see it that way. And, likewise, 1400 years later, the Iranians still (at least up till the 1960′s) called their leaders Shah – just like Yazdegerd III.

Rare historical evidence of the existence of a Late Antique Monastic Meal Breaks – image from a page of the Liber Exlunchialis

 
For the holidays, and maybe a little while after, we’ll be taking a brief break from the exciting world of Gibbon’s Overview of Arabic History. As I’ve said before, we’re probably a month or two or three away from getting back to Roman History – but we’ll get there, I promise. Although, at the rate I’m writing it will probably be 2015 – but eventually we’ll get there.

And, after reviewing my last few entries, I see I seem to be settling down into a kind of comfortable, consistent, incoherent babbling. Maybe a little less words, maybe a little more editing is what I need to put my energies into. Taking a break might help.

And I have to learn to fall back in love with Gibbon, so I can enjoy the last 700 pages or so of this long, long ride into the 15th century. Enjoy it, despite the fact that I think Gibbon, at this point, feels the Decline and Fall has turned into a sort of never-ending nightmare for him – and endless, nearly thankless task. But we will see him through until the end, and at the very least we can cheerfully accompany him down this long slide into madness and pain and loathing as he enters the Early Middle Ages.

So, I’ll take this opportunity to breathe, refocus, re-energize, and re-think my constant whining and complaining about Gibbon. There actually is a lot of interesting stuff to cover. I’m sure of it. I know it’s there. Just have to give Gibbon a chance.

and with that it’s…

Hasta El Gibbon, Dudes and Dudettes out there – - –

What if the U.S. government cut taxes and allowed retailers to organize their own armies and city states on foreign soil? Gibbon (in 1780′s) comments on governmental expenditures today, voicing the majority opinion of the time that a small government with broad privatization was best – a failed policy that exploded in the collective face of Imperial Britain in India in the 1860′s. J C Penney store photo (Wikip)

A short(er) day – we finish Chapter 50 with a rolling, thunderous summation of Mohammed and his life – which, of course, is actually to us a summation of Gibbon’s view of an entirely antagonistic and alien culture – that of Islam (the Turks mostly to Gibbon) in the late Eighteenth Century.

Then on to Chapter 51 – a long tale of the Islamic Empire – today, we re-hash the first decades of glorious, unstoppable expansion, and bloody civil war. And, of course, mostly Gibbons 1780′s viewpoint of early Islamic history.

As even remotely factual histories of the Middle East were only being written in the previous century or so, and all in France and in French, Gibbon is once again on the cutting historical edge, when he tackles Islam – and he does so with his usual contrarian, rebellious stance. If he were to rank religious feeling (and he does in these 10 pages) they rank: Anglican Church, Protestants in general, Muslims, and finally, Catholics.

And, Gibbon pauses a second to throw in a few Gentlemanly Observations about Low Taxes and Government Economy. How did the British Government lower expenditures as the empire expanded? They privatized the government – example: The East India Company on the Indian Subcontinent. A little like the U.S. allowing J.C. Penneys to organize a private army and take over Northern Mexico to consolidate their hold on the Maquiladora factories there. Privatization saves money, but it leaves huge sectors of the economy and politics beyond the control of the citizens of the country that sponsors the corporation in the first place. Uncontrolled monopoly is never a good idea. The British learned that in the Great Rebellion of 1867 in India when the British were almost kicked out because the government had little say in the conduct of its “privatized” armies. They rapidly DE-PRIVATIZED India after that.

Rational Historiagraphy – Gibbon notes that Arabic historians – in his opinion, the Asiatic Historian – are much less likely to report facts as to Praise the current Regime – this is an image of the Greek (1180s) historian Michael Psellos (left) with his student, Roman (Byzantine) Emperor Michael VII Doukas. From a manuscript from Mount Athos Pantokrator Monastery, 12th – 13th cent. Which would make it a possible contemporary portrait of Psellos.

What everyone loves to hate, including Gibbon

On the Extremely Desirable and Obvious Reasonableness of the British Protestant Anglican Church

Gibbon cannot help, even in a chapter given over entirely to Islam, not extending his hands and painfully poking the Catholic church repeatedly in its kidneys. He has the easy Late Eighteenth Century Assurance that all-things-British automatically represent the highest good, with a brief congratulatory nod to Protestant Calvinists in Geneva (since he is, after all, en ex-pat living in Switzerland). But the in Gibbon’s eyes, the rational man’s pecking order remains (from best to worst): British Protestant Anglicanism, Certain Other Protestants, Islam, and finally in a limping, peevish, desultory last place, Catholicism.

It is not the propagation, but the permanency, of his religion, that deserves our wonder: the same pure and perfect impression which he engraved at Mecca and Medina, is preserved, after the revolutions of twelve centuries, by the Indian, the African, and the Turkish proselytes of the Koran. If the Christian apostles, St. Peter or St. Paul, could return to the Vatican, they might possibly inquire the name of the Deity who is worshipped with such mysterious rites in that magnificent temple: at Oxford or Geneva, they would experience less surprise; but it might still be incumbent on them to peruse the catechism of the church, and to study the orthodox commentators on their own writings and the words of their Master.

(DEF III, v.5, Ch.50, p.230)

Someone is paying their taxes – Largest Interstate System on Earth – The Chinese Interstate (Trunk Roads) System – this is G106-Jingkai Expressway, Southern Beijing (2004) (Wikip).

Gibbon, like any upper-class Englishman, wants a strong central government that provides reliable services – army, post office, taxes, duties, manage internal/external politics, policing, etc – he wants all that, but doesn’t want to pay for it. Since the Magna Carta, Brits have been telling their king and their central government to “live on your own, and leave us and our money alone.” It’s the whole reason there was a British Parliament in the first place – a venue for the King to plead and wheedle money out of his subjects, and a place for the King/Queen’s subjects to dig their heels in and “just say no”.

That apparent contradiction – wanting services, but not wanting to pay for them lives on unfortunately today in the U.S. where whole generations of Americans want to save $100 a year in taxes and let rot (for example) 4 decades of work on the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System. Sometimes you can’t spend money on a new pair of jet skies or an ATV and still have a highway to get to the lake/sand with.

There are countries (see China), where the idea of building for tomorrow instead of only pleasuring yourself today is rising – an example is the Interstate System of China which surpassed the U.S. as the largest Interstate System in the world in early 2011 – starting from nothing in 1993. There is a difference between yelling “me, me, me” and “us, us us”. But, again, unfortunately, people usually don’t see that until they’ve trashed the hard work of a century and trillions of man-hours in a decade or two of outrageous self-pleasuring.

But what does that have to do with Gibbon and the rise of the Islamic state?

Well, I’m glad you asked.

Gibbon praises (again being contrarian for the 1780′s) Muslim rulers, in particular, AbuBekr and his noted FRUGALITY. This is the primary virtue (in Gibbon’s account) of AbuBekr (besides Courage) – his PARSIMONY.

Yet the abstinence and humility of Omar were not inferior to the virtues of Abubeker: his food consisted of barley bread or dates; his drink was water; he preached in a gown that was torn or tattered in twelve places; and the Persian satrap, who paid his homage to the conqueror, found him asleep among the beggars on the steps of the mosch of Medina. Oeeconomy is the source of liberality, and the increase of the revenue enabled Omar to establish a just and perpetual reward for the past and present services of the faithful.

Careless of his own emolument, he assigned to Abbas, the uncle of the prophet, the first and most ample allowance of twenty-five thousand drachms or pieces of silver. Five thousand were allotted to each of the aged warriors, the relics of the field of Beder; and the last and meanest of the companions of Mahomet was distinguished by the annual reward of three thousand pieces.

One thousand was the stipend of the veterans who had fought in the first battles against the Greeks and Persians; and the decreasing pay, as low as fifty pieces of silver, was adapted to the respective merit and seniority of the soldiers of Omar. Under his reign, and that of his predecessor, the conquerors of the East were the trusty servants of God and the people; the mass of the public treasure was consecrated to the expenses of peace and war; a prudent mixture of justice and bounty maintained the discipline of the Saracens, and they united, by a rare felicity, the despatch and execution of despotism with the equal and frugal maxims of a republican government. The heroic courage of Ali, (7) the consummate prudence of Moawiyah, excited the emulation of their subjects; and the talents which had been exercised in the school of civil discord were more usefully applied… etc etc etc

(DEF III, v.5, Ch.51, p.236)

Gibbon just slides this one into his narrative. You know, sometimes writers of Histories were known to have been rewarded by Kings with generous lifetime pensions. The truly enlightened Kings did that sort of thing. And the noble Muslim Caliphs were known to do that sort of thing. Gibbon’s just sayin’…

And, perhaps, it wasn’t the ECONOMY of AbuBekr that allowed him to grant generous pensions (something an English gentleman, desirous of Royal Pensions to live off of, would be particularly observant of, as we have noted above). PERHAPS, rather than the ECONOMY of the Central Government, it was the fact that the Muslims were PILLAGING TWO OF THE WEALTHIEST and LARGEST EMPIRES on EARTH at the time (Rome and Persia) and had spoils, tribute, booty, plunder, men, money, cities, roads, land, slaves, ships, gold and silver, etc. etc. coming out the yin-yang and to spare. Perhaps it was that.

Or maybe AbuBekr just kept taxes low and spending lower. Yeah, that makes more sense.

On the Absence of History Among Asiatics

Gibbon bemoans his fate as a historian of Arabs. It’s a thankless job. You’re not thanking him. No one’s thanking him. And no one’s helping. Least of all the Arabs. Because, let’s face it, no ASIATIC can write or has written what any Englishman would call a proper history. Hasn’t been done. Thus, the huge, thankless job facing Gibbon.

It’s interesting to note he allows himself to use the faintly derogatory Christian word “Musselmans” in referring to Muslims in this passage, rather than the “faithful”, “Adherents of Mohammed”, “Mahometans” etc, he has obstinately used before – in his contrarian way, to irritate the more conservative among his subscribers and readers.

Gibbon, I hope you’ll note, even takes this opportunity to throw in a disdainful reference to monks and monasticism. Tow things Gibbon can never hate too much.

Yet I must excuse my own defects by a just complaint of the blindness and insufficiency of my guides. The Greeks, so loquacious in controversy, have not been anxious to celebrate the triumphs of their enemies. After a century of ignorance, the first annals of the Mussulmans were collected in a great measure from the voice of tradition.

Among the numerous productions of Arabic and Persian literature, our interpreters have selected the imperfect sketches of a more recent age. The art and genius of history have ever been unknown to the Asiatics; they are ignorant of the laws of criticism; and our monkish chronicle of the same period may be compared to their most popular works, which are never vivified by the spirit of philosophy and freedom.

The Oriental library of a Frenchman would instruct the most learned mufti of the East; and perhaps the Arabs might not find in a single historian so clear and comprehensive a narrative of their own exploits as that which will be deduced in the ensuing sheets.

There were other men who claimed leadership from God and tried unsuccessfully to lead the Arabic tribes after Mohammed’s rise. I’d never heard of subsequent false prophets in Islam before. Although, technically, I guess a false prophet is outside Islam by definition. But, still its interesting. Whats even more interesting to me is that there isnt even a Wikipedia page for Moseilama in English Wikipedia. Guess the West is still somewhat ignorant of Muslim history. This image is NOT a muslim prophet – it is the False Prophet Card from the AeGen4 game

Gibbon makes a short note of a man who challenged Mohammed for leadership of the Arab tribes as the chief of Monotheism, something you don’t hear much about. It is from a quick reference in the Koran Chapter 47 “The Victory.” Apparently he was one of many, many men who tried to follow in Mohammed’s footsteps and claim a higher and subsequent divine revelation as a prophet of God and leader of the Monotheists of Islam. I’d never heard of this before.

These were Banu Honeifa, who inhabited al Yamâma, and were the
followers of Moseilama, Mohammed’s competitor; or any other of those tribes
which apostatized from Mohammedism,5 or, as others rather suppose, the
Persians or the Greeks.

Koran, Ch. 47, The Victory (Gutenberg.Org 1891 Annotated Edition of Koran)

And here is Gibbon’s 1780′s take on it:

At the head of the fugitives and auxiliaries, the first caliph was reduced to the cities of Mecca, Medina, and Tayef; and perhaps the Koreish would have restored the idols of the Caaba, if their levity had not been checked by a seasonable reproof.

“Ye men of Mecca, will ye be the last to embrace, and the first to abandon, the religion of Islam?”

After exhorting the Moslems to confide in the aid of God and his apostle, Abubeker resolved, by a vigorous attack, to prevent the junction of the rebels. The women and children were safely lodged in the cavities of the mountains: the warriors, marching under eleven banners, diffused the terror of their arms; and the appearance of a military force revived and confirmed the loyalty of the faithful.

The inconstant tribes accepted, with humble repentance, the duties of prayer, and fasting, and alms; and, after some examples of success and severity, the most daring apostates fell prostrate before the sword of the Lord and of Caled. In the fertile province of Yemanah, between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Persia, in a city not inferior to Medina itself, a powerful chief (his name was Moseilama) had assumed the character of a prophet, and the tribe of Hanifa listened to his voice. A female prophetess was attracted by his reputation; the decencies of words and actions were spurned by these favourites of Heaven; and they employed several days in mystic and amorous converse.

An obscure sentence of his Koran, or book, is yet extant; and in the pride of his mission, Moseilama condescended to offer a partition of the earth. The proposal was answered by Mahomet with contempt; but the rapid progress of the impostor awakened the fears of his successor: forty thousand Moslems were assembled under the standard of Caled; and the existence of their faith was resigned to the event of a decisive battle.

In the first action they were repulsed by the loss of twelve hundred men; but the skill and perseverance of their general prevailed; their defeat was avenged by the slaughter of ten thousand infidels; and Moseilama himself was pierced by an Aethiopian slave with the same javelin which had mortally wounded the uncle of Mahomet. The various rebels of Arabia without a chief or a cause, were speedily suppressed by the power and discipline of the rising monarchy; and the whole nation again professed, and more steadfastly held, the religion of the Koran.

The ambition of the caliphs provided an immediate exercise for the restless spirit of the Saracens: their valour was united in the prosecution of a holy war; and their enthusiasm was equally confirmed by opposition and victory.

(DEF III, v.5, Ch.51, p.234)

It’s obvious in retrospect, but there have been (as with Christianity) many false prophets in Islam. Here is a brief history of two from an Annotated Koran from 1891 – the annotated history of Koranic events being taken from Arabic sources (I include the sources and footnotes

As success in any project seldom fails to draw in imitators, Mohammed’s
having raised himself to such a degree of power and reputation by acting the
prophet, induced others to imagine they might arrive at the same height by the
same means. His most considerable competitors in the prophetic office were
Moseilama and al Aswad, whom the Mohammedans usually call the two liars.

The former was of the tribe of Honeifa, who inhabited the province of
Yamâma, and a principal man among them. He headed an embassy sent by his
tribe to Mohammed in the ninth year of the Hejra, and professed himself a
Moslem:1 but on his return home, considering that he might possibly share with
Mohammed in his power, the next year he set up for a prophet also, pretending
to be joined with him the commission to recall mankind from idolatry to the
worship of the true GOD;2 and he published written revelations, in imitation
of the Korân, of which Abulfargius3 has preserved the following passage, viz.:

“now hath GOD been gracious unto her that was with child, and hath brought
forth from her the soul, which runneth between the peritonæum and the bowels.”

Moseilama, having formed a considerable party among those of Honeifa, began to
think himself upon equal terms with Mohammed, and sent him a letter, offering
to go halves with him,4 in these words: “From Moseilama the apostle of GOD, to
Mohammed the apostle of GOD. Now let the earth be half mine, and half thine.”
But Mohammed, thinking himself too well established to need a partner, wrote
him this answer:

“From Mohammed the apostle of GOD, to Moseilama the liar.
The earth is GOD’S: he giveth the same for inheritance unto such of his
servants as he pleaseth; and the happy issue shall attend those who fear
him.”5

During the few months which Mohammed lived after this revolt,
Moseilama rather gained than lost ground, and grew very formidable; but Abu
Becr, his successor, in the eleventh year of the Hejra, sent a great army
against him, under the command of that consummate general, Khâled Ebn al
Walîd, who engaged Moseilama in a bloody battle, wherein the false prophet,
happening to be slain by Wahsha, the negro slave who had killed Hamza at Ohod,
and by the same lance,6 the Moslems gained an entire victory, ten thousand of
the apostates being left dead on the spot, and the rest returning to
Mohammedism.7

1 Abulfed. p.160.
2 Idem, Elmac. p. 9.
3 Hist. Dynast. p. 164.
4 Abulfed. ubi sup.
5 Al Beidâwi, in Kor. c. 5.
6 Abulfed. ubi sup.
7 Idem, ibid. Abulfarag, p. 173. Elmac. p. 16, &c. See Ockley’s Hist. of the
Saracens, vol. i. p. 15, &c.

Al Aswad, whose name was Aihala, was of the tribe of Ans, and governed that
and the other tribes of Arabs descended from Madhhaj.1 This man was likewise
an apostate from Mohammedism, and set up for himself the very year that
Mohammed died.2 He was surnamed Dhu’lhemâr, or the master of the ass, because
he used frequently to say,

“The master of the ass is coming unto me;”3

and pretended to receive his revelations from two angels, named Sohaik and
Shoraik.4 Having a good hand at legerdemain, and a smooth tongue, he gained
mightily on the multitude by the strange feats which he showed them,
and the eloquence of his discourse:5 by these means he greatly increased his
power, and having made himself master of Najrân, and the territory of al
Tâyef,6 on the death of Badhân, the governor of Yaman for Mohammed, he seized
that province also, killing Shahr, the son of Badhân, and taking to wife his
widow, whose father, the uncle of Firûz the Deilamite, he had also slain.7

These news being brought to Mohammed, he sent to his friends, and to those of
Hamdân, a party of whom, conspiring with Kais Ebn Abd’al Yaghûth, who bore Al
Aswad a grudge, and with Firûz, and al Aswad’s wife, broke by night into his
house, where Firûz surprised him and cut off his head. While he was
dispatching he roared like a bull; at which his guards came to the chamber
door, but were sent away by his wife, who told them the prophet was only
agitated by the divine inspiration.

This was done the very night before Mohammed died. The next morning the conspirators caused the following
proclamation to be made, viz.:

“I bear witness that Mohammed is the apostle of GOD, and that Aihala is a liar;”

and letters were immediately sent away to Mohammed, with an account of what had been done: but a messenger from heaven
outstripped them, and acquainted the prophet with the news, which he imparted
to his companions but a little before his death; the letters themselves not
arriving till Abu Becr was chosen Khalîf.

It is said that Mohammed, on this
occasion, told those who attended him that before the day of judgment thirty
more impostors, besides Moseilama and al Aswad, should appear, and every one
of them set up for a prophet. The whole time, from the beginning of al
Aswad’s rebellion to his death, was about four months.8

1 Al Soheili, apud Gagnier. in not. ad Abulf. Vit. Moh. p. 158.
2 Elmac. p. 9.
3 Abulfed ubi sup.
4 Al Soheili, ubi sup.
5 Abulfed. ubi sup.
6 Idem, et Elmac. ubi sup.
7 Idem, al Jannâbi, ubi sup.
8 Idem, ibid.

In the same eleventh year of the Hejra, but after the death of Mohammed, as
seems most probable, Toleiha Ebn Khowailed set up for a prophet, and Sejâj
Bint al Mondar1 for a prophetess.

Toleiha was of the tribe of Asad, which adhered to him, together with great
numbers of the tribes of Ghatfân and Tay. Against them likewise was Khâled
sent, who engaged and put them to flight, obliging Toleiha, with his shattered
troops, to retire into Syria, where he stayed till the death of Abu Becr: then
he went to Omar and embraced Mohammedism in his presence, and, having taken
the oath of fidelity to him, returned to his own country and people.2

Sejâj, surnamed Omm Sâder, was of the tribe of Tamîm, and the wife of Abu
Cahdala, a soothsayer of Yamâma. She was followed not only by those of her
own tribe, but by several others. Thinking a prophet the most proper husband
for her, she went to Moseilama, and married him; but after she had stayed with
him three days, she left him and returned home.3 What became of her
afterwards I do not find. Ebn Shohnah has given us part of the conversation
which passed at the interview between those two pretenders to inspiration; but
the same is a little too immodest to be translated.

In succeeding ages several impostors from time to time started up most of
whom quickly came to nothing: but some made a considerable figure, and
propagated sects which continued long after their decease.

1 Ebn Shohnah and Elmacinus call her the daughter of al Hareth.
2 Elmac, p. 16, al Beidâwi, in Kor. c. 5.
3 Ebn Shohnah. Vide Elmac. p. 16.

from (Gutenberg.Org 1891 Annotated Edition of Koran)

Map of Muslim Conquests

Mausoleum of Ali in Najaf, Iraq – Ali is a pivotal personage in the spiritual lives of many Muslims – Shiites consider him, as he was the blood-nephew of the prophet Mohammed, to be the keystone to spiritual authority in the Muslim world – he was the first of the 12 Imams – the spiritual inheritors of Mohammeds authority and understanding

A little shaky on my feet but getting through Arabic history – Gibbon has another 180 pages and 2 long chapters to go before he’s through and we stumble back to the Roman Empire and its Decline and its Fall. Granted all this Middle Eastern history was probably well worth the subscription rate for Gibbons fifth book in his third volume for all his English readers, BUT, I HAVE TO SAY, I am pining for some solid Roman history.

At the rate I’m reading now – that won’t be for another six months – *sigh* *heavy sigh* – no one said life would give no bitter with the sweet, and if reading Arabic history is the worse thing that ever happens to me, well, I should just shut the heck up…

so…

Gibbon ventures into territory that would have been completely opaque to the average Gentleman Reader of the 1790′s – the difference between Sunni and Shiite, and some further pages on the succession/reigns of the early Caliphs – esp. the descendants of the tragic Ali, whom Gibbon takes quite a shine to.

REMEMBER – the odd spellings used in all this Arabic History comes from the more free-wheeling days of late Eighteenth Century English – for the most part I just use Gibbon’s spelling to make it easier, as some of these names’ transliteration (Arabic script to Latin Letters English) etc (like Chinese transliteration from characters to Latin Letters English) have changed more than once in the last 225 years – so if the Arabic names are odd and quaint – you know the reason.

No, not this kind of Knight, although Batman is an icon of sorts of selfless giving – and extremely liberal giving was one of the most important qualities a noble knight could have – according to his followers – who often were on the recieving end of the noble giving – the noble virtue of Liberalitas – a scene from the 2012 Batman movie – The Dark Knight Rises

The cult of the wildly benevolent, extraordinarily courteous gentleman is a complicated subject. Gift-giving as a way of cementing social relationships shows up globally, across our entire species, and over a long period of time.

Romans had their “patrons and clients” – wealthy heads of Roman clans had large groups of poorer people they gave gifts to, who supported them in return. Still, it was an occasion for what Romans considered “civilized” ostentatious giving.

Potlatch among the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest was a festival of reciprocal gift-giving, having less to do with superior/inferior relationships (as the Romans) than to the commonality of possessions – another example on another continent of ostentatious giving.

The hallmark of a Viking leader, and indeed most of Late Antique Europe was the ability of the war-lord to lead his troops of young men out to pillage and battle, guaranteeing them much wealth and plunder in the process. To go a-viking means just that – go pillaging under a war-leader, the leader getting all the spoils, but “giving back” much of it to his loyal battle-friends.

Charlemagne’s empire in the 800′s – the Holy Roman Empire – was built on war-raids against the Saxons as Charlemagne conquered Germany for the Franks and for romanitas or “civilization”. Giving to one’s followers is what a nobleman does. In the Middle Ages, Liberality – i.e. a nobles ability and tendency to give lavishly to his followers was considered (by followers) to be the most important quality (for obvious selfish reasons) in a leader. Thus it entered all the knightly romances.

Arabic mores are not dissimilar. Lavish giving to one’s followers, before and after Mohammed, was considered an admirable, noble, civilized trait.

Thus, here is an example of Gibbon – relating how a son of Ali reacted to his servant, when his servant drops a dish of scalding broth upon him. It’s interesting in that it supposedly shows piety, but actually shows typical values of Arabic nobility, and the desperate, devious, and successful pleading of a much inferior man in the hands of a lawfully furious superior. There’s a picaresque kind of William Tell, Robin Hood, weaker-man-wriggling-out-from-under-the-thumb-of-the-mighty-and-in-turn-thumbing-his-nose-at-him sort of thing going on here too.

A familiar story is related of the benevolence of one of the sons of Ali. In serving at table, a slave had inadvertently dropped a dish of scalding broth on his master: the heedless wretch fell prostrate, to deprecate his punishment, and repeated a verse of the Koran:

“Paradise is for those who command their anger: ” —— “I am not angry: “
“and for those who pardon offences: ” —— “I pardon your offence: “
“and for those who return good for evil: ” —— “I give you your liberty and four hundred pieces of silver.”

(DEF III, v.5, Ch.50, pp.225-226)

Modern photo of potlatch – a time of reciprocal giving and celebration – of the Pacific Northwest – giving was also a sign of a noble heart and a pious one in Islam, as Gibbon points out today in our ten pages

A very likeable man, and an avid breeder and racer of horses in France. 49th Imam of the Naziri Ismailis – a part of the Shia – Shiite – party of Islam. Aga Khan IV in 1959 accepting a sample of Trinitite – residue of green, glassy rock formed by first U.S. atom bomb test Trinity

Aga Khan – 49th Imam (desc of Moh, leader of spiritual community of Islam) (head of Ismaili “path” of Shia “branch” of Islam). The first great break in Islam is between the adherents of the bloodline of Mohammed (Ali through Fatima), and the battle-chosen leaders of Islam – AbuBekr and following, the Ummayads. Those favoring Mohammed’s blood as the deciding factor were of the Party of Ali (Shiate Ali – or Shiite’s).

They in turn broke away from each other over the centuries into pieces, depending on which man you followed of the later 12 Imams – you got your name by the number of shared Imams you held to be valid – thus the Twelvers (all and largest group now), the Seveners (1st 7 – Ismailis), the Fivers (1st 5). The Ismailis (the Fivers) broke down into parties over the centuries. Only the Naziri party of the Ismailis are left now, for the most part.

Logo for Aga Khan Studs – showing Aga Khans racing colors – all green with red shoulders

They follow the Imam Aga Khan IV – a man confirmed inhis spiritual mission by the British empire in 1866 by Sir Joseph Arnold, Chief Judge of the High Court of Bombay – who legally (for the British Empire) nailed down the identity of the first Aga Khan, settling a long dispute over assets and authority, and from whom the 4th and current Aga Khan gets a portion of his legitimacy, at least in terms of proving his unbroken succession.

The British must have been anxious to quell religious violence after the Uprising of 1857, so perhaps the legal recognition of spiritual leadership was very much a part of British policy of the day.

It’s fascinating that a political body which no longer exists – the British Empire – lives on spiritually by virtue of an obscure court decision in a province (India) and funds an enormous horse-racing-horse-breeding-machine now in Northern France (Aga Khan Stud Farm in France).

Naziri Ismailiis

>Islam
—> Sunni (don’t focus on the concept of Imam – spiritual, hereditary voice of Islam – of the blood of Mohammed)
—> Shia (Shiatu Ali) (the Party of Ali – devoted to the blood desc’s of Mohammed)
Once many more, now five main “Paths” of Shia Islam
—–> Twelvers (biggest group – Ithna Ashariyya – hold 12 Imams as auth.) – the 12 Imams that follows Ali – see above and the readings from today
—–> Seveners (next biggest – the Ismaili) (once,many many paths)
——-> Nazir Seveners – largest surviving path within the Ismailis – Aga Khan leads this group – the 49th Imam of Islam, dir desc of Moh. – only hold 7 Imams as auth., hold Aga Khan as curr leader)
—–> Fivers (Zaidi – accept 1st five Imams)
—–> Alawis
—–> Druze

Aga Khan Family – from Mohommed, to Persia, to Afghanistan, to India, via the British Empire, to the Outskirts of Paris

Abu Khan IV is the 49th Imam of the Naziri Ismailis. The history of his family is fascinating. Lest you think this is all idle scholarship – below an excerpt from an online Indian (Subcontinent India)

NIZARI IMAMS COME TO INDIA.
Imam Shah Khalilu’llah took up his temporary residence at Yezd, leading a retired life. People had great regard for him and Fateh Ali Shah, who was then ruling over Persia, himself held him in the highest esteem. This excited the bitter jealousy of a Mullah who instigated some fanatics to murder him. The dastardly crime created quite a sensation in the country, and the faithful followers of the Imam were in no mood to tolerate it.

Fateh Ali Shah realising the seriousness of the situation took prompt measures to allay it. He administered severe punishment to the guilty ones and invited Hasan Ali Shah, the young son of the deceased Imam to his palace where he publicly recognized him as the head of the Ismailis with the title of Aga Khan, and later gave to him one of his daughters in marriage. With the death of Fateh Ali Shah in 1834, civil war broke out and the situation of Agha Hasan Ali Shah, the first Aga Khan was changed. Soon after, he left for Sind via Afghanistan where he was enthusiastically welcomed by the Talpur Amirs of Sind who with other followers had long been his zealous supporters.

THE KHOJA CASE:
The Khoja Case heard by Sir Joseph Arnold, then Chief Judge, in 1866 confirmed beyond doubt the claim of Imam Agha Hassan Ali Shah, the first Aga Khan, as being the direct descendant of Prophet Muhammad, through Ali and Fatima.

In setting out the prominent facts established in the High Court of Bombay, Sir Joseph Arnold declared: – “The question ‘Who is the Aga Khan?’ has thus been already partly answered: Mahomed Hussain Hooseinee otherwise Aga Khan, or as he is more formally styled when addressed or mentioned in official documents by the Bombay Government – ‘His Highness Aga Khan, Mehelati,’ is the hereditary Chief and Imam of the Ismailis – the present or living holder of the Musnud of the Imamate – claiming descent in direct line from Ali, the Vicar of God, through Ismail, the son of Jaffir Sadick.’ Writing on the case, John Norman Hollister says:-

“The case was heard by Sir Joseph Arnold. A great deal of information concerning the sect was elicited. Such Sunni practices as the plaintiffs presented were explained by the defendants as being in accordance with the Shiite principle of taqiya. The judgment was rendered in favor of the Agha Khan on all points.” 40

“As a result of this judgment, ” writes A.S. Picklay. “the rights of the Aga Khan as the Spiritual Head of the Shia Imami Ismaili were firmly and legally established much to the discomfiture of a few discontented persons.”

from the Ismaili.net page of the Holy Imams – On The Geneaology of the Imams

Aga Khan

This from Wikipedia, on the Aga Khan

His Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan IV (Aga Khan is also transliterated as Aqa Khan and Agha Khan), NPk, NI, KBE, CC, GCC, GCIH, GCM; born December 13, 1936; is an international business magnate,racehorse owner and breeder,as well as the 49th and current Imam of Nizari Ismailism – a denomination of Ismailism within Shia Islam consisting of approximately 5–15 million adherents (under 10% of the world’s Shia Muslim population).He has held this position of Imam, under the title of Aga Khan IV, since July 11, 1957, when, at the age of 20, he succeeded his grandfather, Sir Sultan Muhammad Shah Aga Khan III.

The Aga Khan claims to be the direct descendant of Prophet Muhammad through the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, Ali, considered the first Imam in Shia Islam, and Ali’s wife Fatima az-Zahra, the Prophet’s daughter from his first marriage. As the Imam of Nizari Ismailism, the Aga Khan IV is considered by his followers to be the proof or hujjah of God on earth as well as infallible and immune from sin (just as an Imam is viewed in most other denominations of Shia Islam). He is further considered by his followers to be the carrier of the eternal Noor of Allah (“Light of God” – a concept unique to certain denominations of Shia Islam).

In 1986, the Aga Khan ordained the current Ismailia Constitution – an ecclesiastical decree affirming to Nizari Ismailis his “sole right to interpret the Qur’an and provide authoritative guidance on [all] matters of faith” and formalizing his sole discretion, power and authority for the governance of Nizari Ismaili jamats (places of worship) and institutions.

Forbes describes the Aga Khan as one of the world’s ten richest royals with an estimated net worth of $800 million USD (2010). Additionally he is unique among the richest royals as he does not preside over a geographic territory. He owns hundreds of racehorses, valuable stud farms, an exclusive yacht club on Sardinia, a private island in the Bahamas, two Bombardier jets, a 12-seat helicopter, a £100 million high speed yacht named after his prize racehorse, and several estates around the world, including an estate called Aiglemont in the town of Gouvieux, France – just north of Paris.

His philanthropic institutions, funded by his followers, spend more than $600 million per year – primarily in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. In 2007, after an interview with the Aga Khan, G. Pascal Zachary, of the The New York Times, wrote, “Part of the Aga Khan’s personal wealth [used by him and his family], which his advisers say exceeds $1 billion [USD], comes from a dizzyingly complex system of tithes that some of the world’s 15 million Ismaili Muslims pay him each year [one of which is called dasond, which is at least 12.5% of each Nizari Ismaili's gross annual income] – an amount that he will not disclose but which may reach hundreds of millions of dollars annually.”

Among the goals the Aga Khan has asserted he works toward are the elimination of global poverty; the promotion and implementation of secular pluralism; the advancement of the status of women; and the honoring of Islamic art and architecture. He is the founder and chairman of the Aga Khan Development Network, one of the largest private development networks in the world. The organization has said it works toward improvement of the environment, health, education, architecture, culture, microfinance, rural development, disaster reduction, the promotion of private-sector enterprise and the revitalisation of historic cities.

Since his ascension to the Imamate of Nizari Ismailis in 1957, the Aga Khan has been involved in complex political and economic changes which have affected his Nizari Ismaili followers, including the independence of African countries from colonial rule, expulsion of Asians from Uganda, the independence of Central Asian countries such as Tajikistan from the former Soviet Union and the continuous turmoil in Afghanistan and Pakistan. During his visit to India in 1983, the Aga Khan said:

“ There are those who enter the world in such poverty that they are deprived of both the means and the motivation to improve their circumstances. Unless these unfortunates can be touched with the spark which ignites the spirit of individual enterprise and determination, they will only sink back into renewed apathy, degradation and despair. It is for us, who are more fortunate, to provide that spark.

Azamour – a horse of Aga Khans – racing – note the green racing colors with the red shoulders – the signature colors of the Aga Khan Stud Farms

Aga Khan Stud Farm in Bonneval France – one of two, the other is in Ireland – this one about 30 miles southeast of Caen in Northern France – a beautiful place – and horse-racing is, after all, the sport of Kings, and Caliphs, and Imams

Death of Mohammed (face visible) – provenance unknown

A little tired out today – forgive me if I ramble on and on and on a little more vacuously than I usually do.

Today we follow Gibbon as he follows the death of Mohammed, Mohammed’s character, his wives, and the first three Caliphs. It’s an interesting day for once. We have something that looks a lot more like actual history.

We quickly cover the first 24 years after Mohammed’s death (632-654). We journey down a long tangent by Gibbon on Mohammed’s character (this is a usual Gibbon-theme, after the death of a significant man/woman in his history he gives the pros and cons, virtues and faults of that individual – an encomium/diatribe that, of course, reveals more about Gibbon and Late Eighteenth Century English Gentlemen than the person he is discussing).

We also include 4+ pages (about 40% of the reading for today) on Gibbon’s take on Mohommed’s marital/sex life – something Gibbon is especially keen on. Remember, Gibbon was going through a particularly nasty disease at the time and his days of wine and roses were far, far behind him, although he, Gibbon (being a particularly proud and prickly man when it came to appearance and status in society) did not probably want to see it that way. Thus the emphasis on sex and multiple wives in today’s reading.

We also see the first three Caliphs (Abubekr, Omar, Othman) and Ali, the fourth, and most contentious, provocative, and controversial to this day (being one of the fundamental reasons for a split between the two great Muslim sects – Shiite (for Ali), and Sunni.

Death of Mohammed in grotto (face invisible) – with anachronistic Mongol warriors present provenance unknown

Gibbon continues to be stubbornly contrarian – defending the Muslims against Christian superstition whenever he can. Not the normal Christian-chauvinist Englishman. In only one sentence does Gibbon gently hint, insinuating even, that Mohammed wasn’t the head of the only valid monotheistic religion on the planet. Although he goes out of his way to show that Mohammed was, in fact, actually, very much, a man – in every sense of the word. You’ll see.

But still, he’s HUGELY MULTI-CULTURAL and ETHNICALLY/RELIGIOUSLY SENSITIVE for an Eighteenth Century man. You can bet no American author, no New England historian would have written from his viewpoint – well, maybe a Deist president like Thomas Jefferson might have – but not many others.

Anyways…

I digress… On to… The Early Caliphate

What Gibbon says 18th Cent.Christians say levitate at the heart of Mecca

Christian Calumnies

As we move on, Gibbon takes one last look at the founder of Islam.

Gibbon relates the curious episode of Mohammed asking, on his deathbed, if he still owed anyone money – someone asks for 3 pieces of silver and Mohammed pays. There are all kinds of cultural values playing about here. Why would Mohammed ask? Why would someone demand restitution from the prophet? More importantly, why did Gibbon choose to relate all this to his gentlemanly English audience? Is it some kind of odd, REVERSE-Judas-thirty-pieces-of-silver reference? To show Mohammed’s humanity in “cheating” someone of money? To show his honesty in promptly paying? Obviously there is some 7th cent. Arabic cultural norm being played out here – the honest sheikh? – that Gibbon is using to his own purposes.

Till the age of sixty-three years, the strength of Mahomet was equal to the temporal and spiritual fatigues of his mission. His epileptic fits, an absurd calumny of the Greeks, would be an object of pity rather than abhorrence; but he seriously believed that he was poisoned at Chaibar by the revenge of a Jewish female. During four years, the health of the prophet declined; his infirmities increased; but his mortal disease was a fever of fourteen days, which deprived him by intervals of the use of reason. As soon as he was conscious of his danger, he edified his brethren by the humility of his virtue or penitence.

“If there be any man,” said the apostle from the pulpit, “whom I have unjustly scourged, I submit my own back to the lash of retaliation. Have I aspersed the reputation of a Mussulman? let him proclaim my faults in the face of the congregation. Has any one been despoiled of his goods? the little that I possess shall compensate the principal and the interest of the debt.”

“Yes,” replied a voice from the crowd, “I am entitled to three drams of silver.”

Mahomet heard the complaint, satisfied the demand, and thanked his creditor for accusing him in this world rather than at the day of judgment.

(DEF III, v.5, Ch.50, pp.210-211)

Gibbon handily dismisses what he terms crude Christian disparagements of Mohammed – that he was epileptic

The epilepsy, or falling-sickness, of Mahomet is asserted by Theophanes, Zonaras, and the rest of the Greeks; and is greedily swallowed by the gross bigotry of Hottinger, (Hist. Orient. p. 10, 11,) Prideaux, (Life of Mahomet, p. 12,) and Maracci, (tom. ii. Alcoran, p. 762, 763.) The titles (the wrapped-up, the covered) of two chapters of the Koran, (73, 74) can hardly be strained to such an interpretation: the silence, the ignorance of the Mahometan commentators, is more conclusive than the most peremptory denial; and the charitable side is espoused by Ockley, (Hist. of the Saracens, tom. i. p. 301,) Gagnier, (ad Abulfedam, p. 9. Vie de Mahomet, tom. i. p. 118,) and Sale, (Koran, p. 469 – 474.)

(DEF III, v.5, Ch.50, pp.210, fn 149)

And that his coffin levitates in the air in Mecca, by means of magnetism

The Greeks and Latins have invented and propagated the vulgar and ridiculous story, that Mahomet’s iron tomb is suspended in the air at Mecca Laonicus Chalcondyles, de Rebus Turcicis, l. iii. p. 66), by the action of equal and potent loadstones (Dictionnaire de Bayle, MAHOMET, Rem. EE. FF.). Without any philosophical inquiries, it may suffice, that,

1. The prophet was not buried at Mecca; and,

2. That his tomb at Medina, which has been visited by millions, is placed on the ground(Reland, de Relig. Moham. l. ii. c. 19, p. 209 – 211. Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 263 – 268.).

(DEF III, v.5, Ch.50, pp.211,fn 151)

Like Gibbon, a man of the easy and openly ribald Enlightenment – this frontier guy from Pennsylvania knew his way around 18th cent.Paris and the ladies of 18th cent. Paris equally well – the smile of reason might have had other sources than pure intellectual pleasure during the wild and untamed times of the Enlightenment

Gibbon, in the best 18th cent. tradition of polite whispering campaigns detailing the scandalous behavior of the famous, lures us into a false sense of security as he defends Mohammed. Then he proceeds into a many-paged expose of Mohammed’s marital life. In a kind of bored monotone. With the most salacious of details, of course. It’s actually a little embarrassing. But it illustrates the values of the 1770′s, a looser, slipperier, wilder time. Ben Franklin, in Paris as the U.S. ambassador wore himself out on the ladies there and had to forcibly remind himself to be a little more “moderate” in terms of “Venery” – as he tells us in his Autobiography. You have to imagine them like it’s the Summer of Love. Sex, Wine, and the Minuet. Gibbon is unashamed and interested in the masculine history of Mohammed.

Here he speaks of one of his wives – Mary, at first forbidden to him, then granted him. Also Gibbon notes Mohammed’s devotion to Cajidah, his 1st wife who stuck with him through the hardest times –

In his adventures with Zeineb, the wife of Zeid, and with Mary, an Egyptian captive, the amorous prophet forgot the interest of his reputation. At the house of Zeid, his freedman and adopted son, he beheld, in a loose undress, the beauty of Zeineb, and burst forth into an ejaculation of devotion and desire. The servile, or grateful, freedman understood the hint, and yielded without hesitation to the love of his benefactor.

But as the filial relation had excited some doubt and scandal, the angel Gabriel descended from heaven to ratify the deed, to annul the adoption, and gently to reprove the apostle for distrusting the indulgence of his God. One of his wives, Hafna, the daughter of Omar, surprised him on her own bed, in the embraces of his Egyptian captive: she promised secrecy and forgiveness, he swore that he would renounce the possession of Mary.

Both parties forgot their engagements; and Gabriel again descended with a chapter of the Koran, to absolve him from his oath, and to exhort him freely to enjoy his captives and concubines, without listening to the clamours of his wives. In a solitary retreat of thirty days, he labored, alone with Mary, to fulfil the commands of the angel. When his love and revenge were satiated, he summoned to his presence his eleven wives, reproached their disobedience and indiscretion, and threatened them with a sentence of divorce, both in this world and in the next; a dreadful sentence, since those who had ascended the bed of the prophet were forever excluded from the hope of a second marriage.

Perhaps the incontinence of Mahomet may be palliated by the tradition of his natural or preternatural gifts; he united the manly virtue of thirty of the children of Adam: and the apostle might rival the thirteenth labour of the Grecian Hercules. A more serious and decent excuse may be drawn from his fidelity to Cadijah.

During the twenty-four years of their marriage, her youthful husband abstained from the right of polygamy, and the pride or tenderness of the venerable matron was never insulted by the society of a rival. After her death, he placed her in the rank of the four perfect women, with the sister of Moses, the mother of Jesus, and Fatima, the best beloved of his daughters.

“Was she not old?” said Ayesha, with the insolence of a blooming beauty; “has not God given you a better in her place?”

“No, by God,” said Mahomet, with an effusion of honest gratitude, “there never can be a better! She believed in me when men despised me; she relieved my wants, when I was poor and persecuted by the world.”

(DEF III, v.5, Ch.50, pp.216)

And here he (of course in Latin, and in the juicier footnotes) relates a scene from Mohommed’s deathbed. Once again, various cultural values are at play here. there’s Arabic values – which wish to show Mohommed as a virile, vital man – like Moses with his “natural moisture” unabated even at an elderly age. There’s Eighteenth Cent.Gibbon interested in the spicy conversational sexual tidbit, and there’s us, readers of the 21st cent. who know ithyphallicism or Death Erections are not a completely uncommon medical occurrence. In fact, this incident makes it into a footnote in the above Wikipedia article.

Sibi robur ad generationem, quantum triginta viri habent, inesse jacteret: ita ut unica hora posset undecim foeminis satisfacere, ut ex Arabum libris refert Stus Petrus Paschasius, c. 2. (Maracci, Prodromus Alcoran, p. iv. p. 55. See likewise Observations de Belon, l. iii. c. 10, fol. 179, recto.).

Al Jannabi (Gagnier, tom. iii. p. 287) records his own testimony, that he surpassed all men in conjugal vigor; and Abulfeda mentions the exclamation of Ali, who washed the body after his death,

“O propheta, certe penis tuus coelum versus erectus est” in Vit. Mohammed, p. 140.

(DEF III, v.5, Ch.50, pp.211,fn 151)

The translation of the first – from Latin – Mohammed was able to satisfy 11 women in one hour. Although, I have to say, this looks like some nebulous quote from a hateful monk as the reference is only to an “Arab book” – but it’s impressive if it’s true.

The translation of the second – “O Prophet, certainly your penis stands pointed towards heaven.”

Just as ribald as Gibbon, Benjamin Franklin appears here in the fur frontier hat that landed so many ladies in his lap

How I feel coming upon the merest, smallest crumb of Roman History in this Third Volume of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall – It’s Alive! – Still from the film Frankenstein 1931

Hey there – feeling weak and sick but willing to blunder onward through Islamic history. I’d forgotten what Roman history was until the last paragraph of this week’s 10 pages where Gibbon mentions Heraclius. It was like giving a mostly-dead, dehydrated man a sip of cool, clean, glacier water. Suddenly I feel alive!

I know, I know… whine, whine, complain, complain. How I yearn for the long, snide but well-written asides on Roman Imperial Christianity and Roman Imperial monks, now that we are mired deep in the twilight of pre-literate Arabic history. And again, reading Gibbon – a man who was writing 230 years ago, is more of a sociological-anthropological study of Late Enlightenment English Historians than it is reading actual history. But we have some text to get through here – so onwards…

A Day of Battles

Today Gibbon takes us through the 1st 8 or 9 battles of Mohammed, from his difficult taking of Medina, to the rounding up of the Tribes of the Arabian Peninsula, to his first tentative assaults on the huge (but exhausted) Roman Empire of Heraclius. Rome will be surprisingly easy to capture – after Heraclius had successfully concluded the Persian Wars, won back the Middle East, destroyed the Persian dynasty, and alienated and exhausted most of his citizenry. Of course, the prostrate Persians will fall just as easily, maybe more easily – they barely had a central government back in place when the Bedouins hit them.

Tremissis of the emperor Heraclius (610-641) – the Roman who saw the wealthiest of his provinces lost to Islam – just after winning them all back from the Persians in a 20 year Gotterdammerung of Roman-Persian World War – poor guy – what a life he led

The conquests of Islam were NOT a foregone conclusion in the 620′s. Every forward move by the forces of Monotheism under Mohammed were blocked and questioned and opposed. The taking of Arabia was a long affair, more a matter of persistence and luck than blitzkrieg. The initial forays into Roman territory were little more than raids. After all, Mohammed’s forces were cobbled together with religious zeal and the prospect of unheard of plunder from raiding.

The Roman Empire was certain to field an army against them that was a war machine, backed by the strongest power in the Mediterranean, one that had just fought a 30 year war against one of the greatest powers in the hemisphere (Persia) and won. Arabs against Romans – well maybe it would have seemed (to the world at large) like the Afghans marching on Moscow. Raiding people expected. Booty, yes. Burnt towns, cattle, gold, slaves, jewelry yes, yes, and yes. But complete conquest? The world would have said, probably not. Mohammed was barely keeping his current forces loyal.

But in this case, the world would have been wrong.

 
Muslim Conquests – 620′s through 640′s or so – the Green is Mohammed, the Pink and Purples, Persia and Rome – it was a slow (relatively) laborious process
 

Illustration from 800 years later of Heraclius – Heraclius returned the cross in the 600′s but Helen the mother of Constantine supposedly found it in the early 300s – Bernat – Saint Helena and Heraclius taking the Holy Cross to Jerusalem

The poignant thing about Heraclius and Mohammed is that Heraclius had just accomplished what Romans had been attempting for the last 500 years – the annihilation of the Persian Empire. What Gibbon writes about now is the hurricane of Arab/Islam martial activity that seemed to burst upon the Mediterranean from out of nowhere, but actually was a long, difficult, and indirect set of conquests starting with Mohammed in Medina and Mecca and only a handful of men.

It ends of course, with almost all of the 1,300 year old Roman state converting to Islam, obedient politically and religiously to Mohammed’s successors. Seldom has history been more tragic and cruel on such an epic scale.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Maybe what a future graph of interactions in a Historical Analysis of a 23rd Century History Student would look like – contingent, chaotic, partially predictable – this is actually a Graphical Result of a collision in the Particle Accelerator at Fermilab in Switzerland-France

It always cracks me up now when I see a “scholarly article” as this one on Muslim Conquests in Wikipedia that features a quote from Gibbon the Historian (in caps) as if quoting a known authority. No competent historian lists Gibbon as a reference today. You could do it. But why? You’d have to make so many adjustments, changes, etc to his writing – adjusting for his viewpont, taking into account recent discoveries, undoing the considerable amount of prejudice and just plain inadvertent ignorance there is in his text – well, you’d end up using nothing at all of Gibbon and using all of the HUGE VOLUME of historical data produced in the last 50 years (we’re actually living in a kind of Historian’s Golden Age right now – although you don’t hear much about it).

It’s pretty. It’s art. But it’s no longer really science. And certainly no longer history.

And that’s O.K.

Because we (the 21st cent. historians of the Roman past, we most likely will be just as useless to 23rd cent. historians (who will probably be mind-linking directly to vast data-centers exuding socio-anthropological-historico-cultural patternings tailor-designed for the very specific questions posed). Our infant-like, credulous, net-based data structures of the last 10 years will seem – quaint – to put the best spin on it possible, and – criminally negligent – if attacked by some righteous twenty-something historian in 2310′s who refuses to believe her/his remote ancestors could ever have been that naive.

And that’s the stuff running through my head as I read Gibbon.

You could use Lewis and Clark’s journals from their exploratory Expedition to the Northwest that President Jefferson sent them on – you could use that to – with a great deal of extrapolation and thought – to navigate the Interstate and Federal and State highway systems and find your way in 2012 from St Louis to Seattle. You could do it. With a huge amount of work. But why? When youve got a 2012 Rand Macnally atlas with 200 years of research and map-work behind it to navigate over the same terrain? – this is why modern historians DONT USE Gibbon to navigate Roman history – - – Lewis and Clark Expedition Route – 1802-1804 – from Wiki

What the last volume of Gibbon is – hype, infotainment, grandstanding, Enlightenment glitz and glamor, a spectacular fireworks display of cunning historical prose designed to delight and confound the discerning subscriber

A little under the weather, but persevering.

I have to say though, I’ve been unhappily peeking ahead a couple of hundred pages and we will still be detailing the history of Islam as a state and a religion for the next couple of hundred pages – not an especially pleasing prospect if what you’re really interested in is actual Roman history. Its good background. But for 400 pages?

Gibbon’s 3rd volume is basically all non-Roman unfortunately. He spends 2,000 pages on about 350 years of history. Now he has 900 years to go. You do the math (answer: that would leave Gibbon about 5,000 pages left to write – we actually have only about 800 pages left – mucha condensacion as the Spanish would say). You can tell he is getting tired and is down to dotting his “i”s and crossing his “t”s, SLOGGING THROUGH the last 1000 years of Roman history like a man trying hurriedly to load his plate at last call at the legendary buffet at Caesar’s Palace in fabulous (literally) Las Vegas (see above image for everyday sight in the aforementioned fabled city).

Gibbon just grabs what he’s interested in, or what he thinks might sell, or whatever’s nearest and easiest to grab and rushes disdainfully through the rest. He doesn’t ignore it because he’s tired of Rome, he ignores it because it’s eminently ignorable. Trust me, Gibbon says. I know what I’m doing. And we do, because he’s Gibbon and he can write like 99 demons when he sets his mind to it.

Still it’s mostly “info-tainment” from here on out to the end.

But I digress…

Gibbon’s wit and prose

That puts us basically up against New Years before we return to what Gibbon refers to as the history of the “Greeks”. Even when he gets back to talking about Rome now, he’s not REALLY all that interested. There’s a reason why in French the “Byzantine” empire is called the Bas-Empire (low empire). For literate 18th cent. men (read Gibbon) brought up on Cicero and Ovid, Livy, Caesar and who could forget Catullus (whose name I recently realized could be understood as either clever or kitten – a very Catullan conceit), it’s all slumming as far as the eye can see from now on.

The Arab stuff is undeniably interesting but not particularly Roman – except that Islam will occupy in the East (along with the Serbs and Bulgars in the West) the continuous attention of Constantinople and Rome until the 1200′s – of course in 1202 (with the 4th Crusade and what has been justly referred to as the last barbarian invasion) Constantinople becomes a little preoccupied with France, especially when the French sack and take her. I’m sure we’ll get a history of France out of Gibbon also, in 6 months or so. Until then, for the next few months we will be mired in a 1790′s view of the 630′s takeover of a desert peninsula and its society’s religious sensibilities.

Again, his history is mostly interesting from a sociological/anthropological view nowadays, modern scholarship has swamped his pioneering but small Gibbonian boat of research like a tsunami falling on a sandcastle (to freely mix metaphors in the most confusing way possible). In other words, what was cutting edge in 1790, now doesn’t merit a footnote in 2012 – EXCEPT extremely ironically, in that Gibbon himself has become a primary reference for modern day socio-historians following the mentalities of English philosophes of the late Eighteenth Century. From fêted radical to hoary artifact. An evolution we all will follow should our work be so fortunate as to be read centuries from now, as Gibbon’s has .

Gibbon takes a surprisingly positive view of the whole Rise-of-Islam arc of history – again, doing so in a very Gibbon-like contrarian way – partly to shock modern (18th cent.) readers to be sure, but also trying to write decent history about an entire religion that had been described with ignorance, fear and loathing mostly heretofore. For that he is to be praised.

But as for Roman history – the pickings continue to be at the very least, slim. If not non-existent. But that’s my own personal gripe. Your’e probably getting tired of it.

However, be that as it may gentle reader,

we continue onwards…

and upwards…

both literally and metaphysically…

The Rise of Mohammed. Did you ever wonder how Mohammed went from being an orphan who had angelic revelations in a cave to being the head of a unified, theocratic state extending across the Arabian peninsula at his death? Gibbon leads us though it today, in our 10 pages. I invite you to enjoy his prodigious prose-pyrotechnics with me…

An obviously non-contemporary propaganda poster commemorating the 400th anniversary of the Shmalkaldic League – that the League didn’t actually start until 1531 underlines the -propaganda- nature of the poster I suppose. Church and State working hand in hand. Unity. An old dream. Germany like Arabia experienced an attempt at a complete changeover in religion in the early 1500′s with the Reformation, the Wars of Religion, the process coming to a temporary halt with the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. But in 1925! What a time to produce such a poster! Germany between the wars, runaway inflation starting, the beginning of the rise of the Nationalist Socialist Party, society unravelling at the seams – perhaps the intent was to show that if warring religions could be reconciled, warring political parties could also, but the Weimar Republic was not fated to survive the tumult of the 20′s

Lutherans versus Catholics – the middle and late 1500′s were one long continuous battle between rival kingdoms, economic forces, empires, small states, and yes, Protestants and Catholics. And, like the expansion of Islam, where political control and rapid conquest brought about swift changes of religion, political control dictated religious change in Sixteenth Century Europe – the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 was based upon it and it set up a dividing line between Lutherans and Catholics (Anabaptists and Calvinists were still heretics) in Germany that continued for centuries.

Cuius Regio Eius Religio (literally “whose realm his religion” left the spiritual state of millions in the hands of the consciences of the individual rulers of each state. Short of emigration, your personal spiritual journey was dictated by negotiators between the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and the German princes of the Schmalkaldic League.

Rulers deciding for citizens is not new. All this is maybe something like the gradual assimilation over a decade or so, tribe by tribe rather than individual by individual, of the nations of the Arabian peninsula into Mohammed’s new unitary religious and civil state.

Common calligraphic script representation of the name of Mohammed

Gibbon makes two points which have become commonplace today, but perhaps were closer to the views of the radical, possibly lunatic fringe of Enlightenment historians (in the late 1700′s) in the Europe of 3 centuries ago: that is:

1) Follow the Money – Gibbon is actually benignly nebulous for the most part on commenting on the religious or revelatory spects of Mohammed and Islam, but he is mercilessly exact when it comes to finding an ECONOMIC IMPETUS to the extremely rapid rise of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula during the decades of the 620′s and 630′s, and

2) Working With The Materials You Have At Hand – Gibbon again makes his case for the rapid rise of Islamic Arab tribes by explaining that Mohammed made use of the already vigorous cultural values of raiding and pillaging your neighbor – thus the jihad was a natural extension of a reflex already deeply embedded in the Bedouin culture. You make use of what you have. Mohammed serendipitously has raiders and pillagers for co-religionists, so he uses a raiding and pillaging kind of war for the purposes of his proselytizing among the Arabs, and later the Mediterranean and Asian world.

Gibbon says as a purely economic motive, embracing Mohammed’s cause was fruitful – that the passionate Bedouin would later, after signing on to Mohammed’s guerrilla bands raiding Meccan caravans, discover submission to the One God and thereby save himself eternally. This, per Gibbon, was all part and parcel of Mohammed’s plan.

Realistic portrait of a Ninth Century Viking. Given a strong dose of monotheism, could another rather desolate and remote peninsula – Scandinavia – have conquered half the civilized world too?

Also, Gibbon makes the interesting sociological observation that a patriarchal raiding and pillaging society would be particularly susceptible to a religion that enshrines warfare and conquest as a means to gain salvation. Like pouring rocket fuel into a VW’s combustion engine, maybe (I’m no engineer, I know, the VW’s engine would probably cough and die -but work with me on this), you get a beetle that commands a great deal of respect.

Just think, if Charlemagne’s missionaries (in the late 700′s, early 800′s) had been also the leader of armies and promised salvation (and by the way, riches) to any who would join up – all of Viking Scandinavia (arctic bedouins who ingested Raiding and Pillaging with their mother’s milk) would have joyfully converted to the cause and conquered half the world before they were through. As it was they (the Vikings) took Western Western Europe, Sicily, Southern Italy and the Russias.

this, from Gibbon:

The Arab continued to unite the professions of a merchant and a robber; and his petty excursions for the defence or the attack of a caravan insensibly prepared his troops for the conquest of Arabia. The distribution of the spoil was regulated by a divine law: the whole was faithfully collected in one common mass: a fifth of the gold and silver, the prisoners and cattle, the movables and immovables, was reserved by the prophet for pious and charitable uses; the remainder was shared in adequate portions by the soldiers who had obtained the victory or guarded the camp: the rewards of the slain devolved to their widows and orphans; and the increase of cavalry was encouraged by the allotment of a double share to the horse and to the man.

From all sides the roving Arabs were allured to the standard of religion and plunder: the apostle sanctified the license of embracing the female captives as their wives or concubines, and the enjoyment of wealth and beauty was a feeble type of the joys of paradise prepared for the valiant martyrs of the faith.

“The sword,” says Mahomet, “is the key of heaven and of hell; a drop of blood shed in the cause of God, a night spent in arms, is of more avail than two months of fasting or prayer: whosoever falls in battle, his sins are forgiven: at the day of judgment his wounds shall be resplendent as vermilion, and odoriferous as musk; and the loss of his limbs shall be supplied by the wings of angels and cherubim.”

The intrepid souls of the Arabs were fired with enthusiasm: the picture of the invisible world was strongly painted on their imagination; and the death which they had always despised became an object of hope and desire. The Koran inculcates, in the most absolute sense, the tenets of fate and predestination, which would extinguish both industry and virtue, if the actions of man were governed by his speculative belief.

Yet their influence in every age has exalted the courage of the Saracens and Turks. The first companions of Mahomet advanced to battle with a fearless confidence: there is no danger where there is no chance: they were ordained to perish in their beds; or they were safe and invulnerable amidst the darts of the enemy.

(DEF III, v.5, Ch.50, pp.198-199)

Portrait of John Calvin, the famous Protestant Reformer of Geneva Switzerland. He and Mohammed shared vaguely similar views when it came to Fate or Predestination

Gibbon makes his own observation, as an Englishman not believing in fate or predestination particularly, that anyone who did believe it wholeheartedly would cease working and stop practicing virtue, as each man’s fate (and his salvation) would already have been written irrevocably before he was born.

NOTE: Gibbon’s foray into predestination above, is of course, natural and understandable, as he lived in Switzerland (Lausanne) for quite awhile. John Calvin of (Swiss) Reformed Church fame, just down the lake (Lake Geneva) in Geneva, Switzerland once debated in 1536 in Lausanne at the beginning of his career. Predestination. the idea that all events have been pre-willed by God is a strong tenet of both Islam and Calvinism.

Portrait of Edward Gibbon by Henry Walton – such a gentle, kind face – who would or could guess what razor sharp wit lurked behind those placid, innocuous brows? And that we would still be talking about him 200 years later?

Koran in Kufi script, 8th-9th century, showing Sura 2, 102 against witchcraft (Berlin State Library)

Tired and a little sick but blogging away…

We’re still struggling through a kind of miscellaneous wilderness of background information on the Arabs, Mohammed, and Islam – far from history and farther from Rome. But struggle we shall.

Today is all about a very ticklish text – the Koran – so it will be interesting to get Gibbon’s take – an Enlightenment, late 1700′s take – on the most important religious text, dictated by Mohammed himself, in all Islam. The Koran exists, of course, by itself, as a text, and as a continuously re-interpreted foundation of Muslim thought, but it also has a very different shadow-life in Christendom all its own – almost as if the “Christian” idea of the Koran and the actual text were two entirely different books.

As I said, an interesting chapter – at least from a socio-anthropological view of the texts of Islam as refracted through the mentality of an ex-pat English philosophe.

Gibbon has a sardonic, amused reaction to the Koran (which significantly he also had for organized Christian religion, as every good citizen of the larger Enlightenment had). He also assiduously maintained a knee-jerk reflexive admiration for all things English (and by inclusion Protestant and Christian) which he never gave up, no matter what the topic.

He both debunks “medieval” interpretations of the Koran and Islam and waxes deliciously sarcastic about specific tenets. The idea of tolerance was very new to the European Enlightenment scene, and Gibbon wasn’t incredibly good at it. But he tried. In general, after the Wars of Religion in the 1500′s and 1600′s, Christians in the late 1700′s were not particularly tolerant of each other, let alone of Muslims. Some of my ancestors were burning witches in Massachusetts a few decades before Gibbon. And Islam, of course, was not noted for its tolerance at this time. Just being Christian was reason enough to be conquered by the Ottomans. It was a great time for black and white, a poor time for shades of grey.

Islam was a still a militant and powerful force at this time. Remember, the Ottoman empire was past its peak, but only a hundred years before (The Siege of Vienna – 1683 (as far away in time to Gibbon as the First World War in 1914 is to us – in other words, not all that long a time), had overrun Middle Europe. Vienna was one of the last European capitals to raze its walls in the 19th century. They were there for a reason.

Gibbon – quoting the Koran – on its origins

But Mahomet was content with a character, more humble, yet more sublime, of a simple editor; the substance of the Koran, (91) according to himself or his disciples, is uncreated and eternal; subsisting in the essence of the Deity, and inscribed with a pen of light on the table of his everlasting decrees. A paper copy, in a volume of silk and gems, was brought down to the lowest heaven by the angel Gabriel, who, under the Jewish economy, had indeed been despatched on the most important errands; and this trusty messenger successively revealed the chapters and verses to the Arabian prophet.

Instead of a perpetual and perfect measure of the divine will, the fragments of the Koran were produced at the discretion of Mahomet; each revelation is suited to the emergencies of his policy or passion; and all contradiction is removed by the saving maxim, that any text of Scripture is abrogated or modified by any subsequent passage. The word of God, and of the apostle, was diligently recorded by his disciples on palm-leaves and the shoulder-bones of mutton; and the pages, without order or connection, were cast into a domestic chest, in the custody of one of his wives.

Two years after the death of Mahomet, the sacred volume was collected and published by his friend and successor Abubeker: the work was revised by the caliph Othman, in the thirtieth year of the Hegira; and the various editions of the Koran assert the same miraculous privilege of a uniform and incorruptible text. In the spirit of enthusiasm or vanity, the prophet rests the truth of his mission on the merit of his book; audaciously challenges both men and angels to imitate the beauties of a single page; and presumes to assert that God alone could dictate this incomparable performance.

(DEF III, v.5, Ch.50, pp.181)

Poster for the movie the 1968 Lion In Winter starring Katherine Hepburn, Peter O Toole, Henry II and the incomparable Eleanor

I love Henry II of England. My favorite movie when I was a kid (and still, as an adult) is “The Lion in Winter” – Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Katherine Hepburn, Peter O’Toole. An amazing piece of cinema. The script (like Eleanor’s bare breasts during the long ride from France to Palestine on Crusade) dazzled. Henry II was a man of many parts, and not unsurprisingly, was also the father of English Common Law, the basis for Civil Law in Commonwealth Countries and the U.S. (with the continual exception of Loiusiana which proudly harks back to Roman Law and to France and Napoleon). A new line of thinking links the beginnings of English Common Law, the middle 1100′s, Henry II, and the Sharia (Islamic “Common Law”) via the courts of Sicily.

The gist of it is briefly mentioned in a 2008 post in the Canadian online legal magazine SLAW in reference to a British House of Lords Decision to allow a refugee Lebanese women to appeal her deportation on the grounds that she would lose her son to her hostile husband upon her return since Sharia law only allows maternal legal rights until the age of seven – this being the reason she left Lebanon in the first place.

Sharia law is the moral code and legal code of Islam – an unfortunate combination since it encumbers and conjoins legal decisions with the will of God – an almost inescapable temptation the West has been consistently trying to avoid for the last half-century or so. Common Law is the development of law by juries, judges and precedent (previous decisions), as opposed to, perhaps, Roman Law which is promulgated by statutes of leaders or legislators.

The key point however, is that it is not the CONTENT of Sharia law that was passed to the West, but rather certain small points of the architecture of it. Three points – trial by jury, the action of debt (lawsuits to collect for damages), and a small point on the mechanism (a court, an assize – of novel disseisin to be precise, if you’re one of those who value extreme precision) to efficiently deal with returning illegally dispossessed property – all were a part of Islamic Sharia law in the 1100′s before these concepts entered English legal ideologies under Henry II.

Henry II was no proponent of a theo-centric law code administered by clerics. After all, Henry II was whipped by eighty monks for participating tangentially in the murder of the Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury – his opinions were the exact opposite – Henry tried to make English church clerks appear in lay royal courts for serious offenses in English society. Henry II clearly had a problem with a single set of rules which would comprise both moral and civil law.

So it only the architecture that was involved. I personally think the link is possible but not necessary. Islam obviously was the most advanced Mediterranean civilization in the 1100′s, especially economically. So it would make sense that Islam would have legal architecture far in advance of Western Europe. Anyone who has read Georges Duby (the great socio-economic French historian of the 1000′s, 1100′s, and 1200′s) and his landmark, rural-centric economic analyses (Rural Economy and Country Life in the Medieval West, The Early Growth of the European Economy: Warriors and Peasants from the Seventh to the Twelfth Century, etc) can see that Henry II was operating in the great boom-time of the 1100′s – the Reagan-Clinton-Bush years of wildly expanding prosperity after the great depression of the 800′s thru the 900′s and early 1000′s following the collapse of Charlemagne’s new empire and the new Scandinavian barbarian invasions of the Vikings. Henry was operating in an increasing economic complexity in a fit of economic expansion Europe had never seen before. Laws regarding debt and property would probably have been emended even in the complete absence of Islam (to make a broad, indefensible generality). Again, reading Duby, trial by jury has a long and tortuous history on the Eurasian peninsula and the British isles, quite apart from any Islamic influence.

It’s not that I have a cantankerous chauvinism that will not brook any non-Western sources of our current political/economic system in the West, it’s just that sometimes it seems that in an effort to appear multi-cultural and open to the rest of the world, in trying to undo a couple of centuries of colonial hysteria upholding the superior virtues of European civilization, sometimes historians can make themselves appear silly, by ignoring facts, twisting truths, and denying politically inconvenient events.

The boom of the late 1000′s and 1100′s was followed by the crazy fractal flowering of the medieval economy of the 1200′s, the population crash of the late 1300′s and recovery and expansion of Europe overseas in the 1400′s, leading to the modern world dominated by Western-style governments and economies. It doesn’t mean Europe and Europeans were first or better or smarter, it just means they stumbled on a mechanism that worked at the time and went with it. Regardless of how arrogantly they asserted themselves, it happened. The same way Islam took down the 2 mega-civilizations of the Mediterranean (Rome and Persia) in the last half of the 600′s. That happened also.

I guess I happen to feel that there is such a thing as truth apart from rhetoric, opinion and ideology – although I realize that some would think me hopelessly naive. Maybe they’re right. Truth is not for the weak-hearted or weak-minded. It requires a kind of ferocious honesty and continual practice of self-abasement. IMHO, of course.

This is actually the Namibian desert, not the Arabian - a very dry place - but it symbolizes the amount of historical interest (which in this case would be metaphorical humidity) this chapter is providing me, thus far - a very dry chapter

Again, this is a little bit out of order – an inability on my part to coordinate my blog-scheduling properly.

Not feeling so well today, not the best, but still determined to plod on, slogging through this Gibbonian travelogue chapter on the Arabian peninsula.

And not much to go on yet, we’re still in travel-pamphlet land – mainly Gibbon’s “impressions” of Arabia and Arabs garnered from his reading. Rather than history this could be titled “There’s More to Those People That Dress in Those Long Robes Than You Thought, Some Observations on the Arabs and Islam.”

Actually it’s not all that bad – it’s entirely refreshing and cutting-edge for the 18th cent. to have a historian review geographical, climatic, societal, and cultural values of a region/people before reviewing history, so I guess I shouldn’t be so hard on him. It’s just that MOSTLY, again, these shed MORE LIGHT on the GIBBON’S VIEWS of the world, than they do of the world it proposes to explain (that of the Arabs). But I guess we’ll take what we can get – it’s 2 and a quarter centuries old – that it’s mostly out of date and mostly irrelevant is not its fault. It makes it a little harder to read, but all the more interesting to have read it.

So…

Continuing with the Arab/Muslim world (this and the next 2 chapters), Gibbon gives an introduction to the Arab people, their character, wars, societal structure, poetry, generosity, hospitality – then goes on to discuss the “time of ignorance” before Muhammad – the religion, idolatry, Kaaba, and the rites of idolatrous Mecca.

Photo of man from the United Arab Emirates - Gibbon records the ancient war cry of the attacking Arab - it includes undressing and the victim's aunt - very strange

The Strangest War Cry Ever Recorded

Where does he get this stuff? Is he pulling our leg? (probably not).

I have in vain tried to find the source of this war cry. It might be Pliny the Gibbon prose is vague to say the least. Gibbon gives no reference, no footnote – which is unusual – not even to the passing reference to Pliny.

It all sounds more like someone doing the dozens on a playground (“your mama wears army boots”) than something a grown man would yell before he chopped you to pieces. It’s also kind of long and involved (it must be shorter and cleaner and without parentheses in pure classical Arabic). I guess the insult is 1) you have to undress, 2)I’m sleeping with your father’s/mother’s sister. It all sounds very involved, somewhat unlikely. Maybe it was all in Gibbon’s head. Who knows?

Anyways… here is Gibbon, addressing his English gentlemen, explaining how attacks are conducted by Arabs upon meeting a lone traveler in the desert:

They (the Arabs) pretend, that, in the division of the earth, the rich and fertile climates were assigned to the other branches of the human family; and that the posterity of the outlaw Ismael might recover, by fraud or force, the portion of inheritance of which he had been unjustly deprived.

According to the remark of Pliny, the Arabian tribes are equally addicted to theft and merchandise; the caravans that traverse the desert are ransomed or pillaged; and their neighbours, since the remote times of Job and Sesostris, have been the victims of their rapacious spirit.

If a Bedoween discovers from afar a solitary traveller, he rides furiously against him, crying, with a loud voice, “Undress thyself, thy aunt (my wife) is without a garment.” A ready submission entitles him to mercy; resistance will provoke the aggressor, and his own blood must expiate the blood which he presumes to shed in legitimate defence.

(DEF III, vol.5, ch.50, p.162)
 
 
 

The subtext under every Contrarian premise - being contrary = happiness by definition

 
Gibbon is above all else, a CONTRARIAN. But unlike the careful definition in WIKI (contrarians are people disagreeing with the majority-i.e. rebels or dissenters), I have to say that the the article sidesteps the obvious difference between a contrarian stance on political issues and a contrarian stance on, let’s say the fundamental physics of the universe – one is a legitimate difference of opinion, the other could get you killed if a “contrarian” were responsible for maintaining your aircraft.

The real irritation for me, is that often “contrarians” are the exact equivalent of that loud, obnoxious guy in the back of your math class in high school, desperate for attention and getting some “play”, willing to say or do anything to get it. It is pure rhetoric, without a basis in fact and provides (like the Jerry Springer show) a blast of hormonal excitement to the audience’s combined Endocrinol system – which is all O.K. – again, as long as it doesn’t involve any moral or physical equivalent to aeronautical repairs. It has nothing to do with TRUTH, it is pure TITILLATION. And that just seems irresponsible to me. But maybe that’s just my bête noire.

And what does it have to do with Gibbon?

Well, it’s finally hit me today (right at the point where Gibbon was denigrating Roma and Greece and praising the primitive but pristine Arab FREEDOM)

On solemn occasions they convened the assembly of the people; and, since mankind must be either compelled or persuaded to obey, the use and reputation of oratory among the ancient Arabs is the clearest evidence of public freedom. But their simple freedom was of a very different cast from the nice and artificial machinery of the Greek and Roman republics, in which each member possessed an undivided share of the civil and political rights of the community.

In the more simple state of the Arabs, the nation is free, because each of her sons disdains a base submission to the will of a master. His breast is fortified by the austere virtues of courage, patience, and sobriety; the love of independence prompts him to exercise the habits of self-command; and the fear of dishonour guards him from the meaner apprehension of pain, of danger, and of death. The gravity and firmness of the mind is conspicuous in his outward demeanour; his speech is low, weighty, and concise; he is seldom provoked to laughter; his only gesture is that of stroking his beard, the venerable symbol of manhood; and the sense of his own importance teaches him to accost his equals without levity, and his superiors without awe.

The liberty of the Saracens survived their conquests: the first caliphs indulged the bold and familiar language of their subjects; they ascended the pulpit to persuade and edify the congregation; nor was it before the seat of empire was removed to the Tigris, that the Abbasides adopted the proud and pompous ceremonial of the Persian and Byzantine courts.

(DEF III, vol.5, ch.50, p.112)

Much of Gibbon’s AVERSIONS are partially “calculated” to shock the sensibilities of his compatriots – gently-bred Englishmen of the late 18th century. He is, occasionally, contrarian. And it’s hard sometimes to tell if he really believes what he’s writing, or he’s writing what will shock and get attention. He, after all, has a subscription (readers who have subscribed to his 6 volume work on the Decline and Fall) to satisfy.

His loathing of monks, eunuchs (well, the eunuchs part was probably not contrarian), anti-christian attitudes, and here in this chapter, his almost unadulterated PRAISE of ARABS/MUSLIMS, (who were, by the way, still very active via the Turks in challenging Christianity in the 1780′s) was NOT the party line for men of his generation. They were foreigners, Saracens, unbelievers, and considered primitive. Gibbon goes out of his way to combat each of those points.

You can just see him at a salon dropping these bombshells with a knowing, civilized, eminently reasonable smile and watching the results as the shock waves spread throughout the room. Or didn’t spread. Either way, he was guaranteed of attention – even bad press is good exposure – and to me, that is the soul of the “contrarian” – not the truth of the conjecture, but the level of electric “famous-ness” (or fame for the more fastidious) it generates. Attention and fame is the goal of being contrary. And sometimes Gibbon seems to be guilty of it.

Of course, after all is said and done, the beauty of being a Contrarian (besides the VISIBILITY) is that SOMETIMES when all the other sheep are moving one direction, you can go innocently in the other direction and make a killing (ex. Contrarian investing). This is probably the source of much of the positive spin put on being Contrarian in the 21st century. Somehow it’s the attitude of winners. I imagine it’s kind of like the bug for gambling (a penchant I am fortunately free of, or I’d be even more poor/less rich than I am right now) – the logic being: if you’re CONTRARY enough times, one of these times you’ll HIT THE JACKPOT when you swerve left as everyone else swerves right. Besides being a rebel and disagreeing with everyone is just plain fun. Like I said even if it involves natural laws and physics. I guess it’s all fun until you poke someone’s eyes out and someone gets hurt.

Man! I’m irritiable today! A lack of content in the daily 10 page reading of Gibbon just brings that out in me

Anyways… whine, whine, complain, complain, blah, blah, blah! (I promise I’ll try and do better)

And thus endeth the rant for today.

A Contrarian's view of the world - clearly observable difference - and obviously clearly observable FAME

What Gibbon likes, exuberantly

(This posting is a little out of order, I thought it had already posted, but it had gone into a (most probably) self-imposed blog-scheduling black hole.

We start chapter 50, the first of 3 on the Arabs. Chapter 50 is primarily background about Arabia, and a history of Muhammad (ar in the late 18th cent English – Mahomet). There’s not really much to this first day of the first 10 pages – as you’ll see.

We look at Arabian peninsula geography today, a little about its peoples, a little about its animals, well, a little about everything. What is interesting, again, isn’t so much Gibbon’s description of it all (the world is a much, much smaller place in 2011 than it was in 1788) – but in the Arabs and their world refracted through late 18th cent. British eyes. It is a fascinating place, two centuries before the embargo and the oil crisis. I wonder what that part of the world will look like in another 200 years? Or the U.S?

Anyways… on to All Things Arabian…

View of Yemen city of Sana - with ancient skyscrapers in their typical style - a kind of Antique New York of the Arabian Peninsula

Arabian Peninsula from space - the bottom corner is Arabia Felix (Happy, fortunate Arabia, land of frankincense and myrrh) the rest except for the northern strip is Arabia Deserta - sandy Arabia, the north, Syria, is Arabia Petraea, Stony Syria - of course these being ROMAN NAMES, the Arabs saw the peninsula a little differently

Map of the Arabian peninsula, hanging below the European Peninsula - Map of Arabian Peninsula (projection = two point equidistant asia)

That Empty Space Over There

Granted, the Arabs themselves called the southern inland part of their peninsula Rub’al Khali the Empty Quarter. Gibbon goes a little further. It is a part of the great inland upland region of the Nejd (the Upland) (in Gibbonian=Neged) and has the famous Tuwaiq escarpment – which overlooks the capital of Saudia Arabia today in the 21st cent. Riyadh – in the central desert.

All this (from the perspective of a late 18th cent British historian) looks a little different:

In the vacant space between Persia, Syria, Egypt, and Aethiopia, the Arabian peninsula (2) may be conceived as a triangle of spacious but irregular dimensions.

(DEF III, vol.5, ch.50, pp.151-152)

A True Gibbonian Marvel – The Arabian Horse

Not enough can be said in praise, and no praise strong enough for the most royal of horses – the Arabian. It behooves (forgive me, I couldn’t help it) the English aristocrat to fall all over himself in praising horses, that most class-conscious of possessions, and Gibbon does not disappoint in this regard. It is, in fact, a little odd seeing him so UN-SARCASTIC. Here he is waxing equine-ly lyrical:

The same life is uniformly pursued by the roving tribes of the desert; and in the portrait of the modern Bedoweens, we may trace the features of their ancestors, (10) who, in the age of Moses or Mahomet, dwelt under similar tents, and conducted their horses, and camels, and sheep, to the same springs and the same pastures.

Our toil is lessened, and our wealth is increased, by our dominion over the useful animals; and the Arabian shepherd had acquired the absolute possession of a faithful friend and a laborious slave. Arabia, in the opinion of the naturalist, is the genuine and original country of the horse; the climate most propitious, not indeed to the size, but to the spirit and swiftness, of that generous animal.

The merit of the Barb, the Spanish, and the English breed, is derived from a mixture of Arabian blood: the Bedoweens preserve, with superstitious care, the honours and the memory of the purest race: the males are sold at a high price, but the females are seldom alienated; and the birth of a noble foal was esteemed among the tribes, as a subject of joy and mutual congratulation. These horses are educated in the tents, among the children of the Arabs, with a tender familiarity, which trains them in the habits of gentleness and attachment. They are accustomed only to walk and to gallop: their sensations are not blunted by the incessant abuse of the spur and the whip: their powers are reserved for the moments of flight and pursuit: but no sooner do they feel the touch of the hand or the stirrup, than they dart away with the swiftness of the wind; and if their friend be dismounted in the rapid career, they instantly stop till he has recovered his seat.

(DEF III, vol.5, ch.50, p.155)

Picture of an Arabian Horse - for once Gibbon has nothing bad to say