The Islamic Revolution and Africa

I. The Arabian Peninsula


A.  Nomadic pastoralists--domesticated camels about 1000BCE,  but lived by herding livestock from oasis to oasis across the peninsula.

1.     Social Organization by clan--no real state at this time, obligations instead due to clan; social disruptions (murder, theft, etc.) seen as an insult to one’s clan, had to be avenged through retaliation and blood feuds.

2.     Religious  beliefs--prayed to a variety of local or clan deities, which they carried with them from place to place--like the Ark of the Covenant.

3.     Sedentary groups--besides the nomads, the peninsula also contained more sedentary groups, who lived with there herds near the oasises. Some of these areas  grew into towns and cities, reliant upon trade and some small manufacturing

B.   Mecca--at the southern edge of the peninsula was the  trading city of Mecca

1.     Nomadic values of clan allegiance did not translate well with the emerging trading cities of the Arabian Peninsula. many of the people of these cities had already converted to some variety of Judaism or Christianity.

2.     Towns like Mecca became centers for religious ferment as different theological philosophies vied for allegiances, which created a state of flux in these settlements.

3.     This conflict was exacerbated by the deteriorating political situations in both Persia and Byzantium (the Eastern Roman Empire), which added to the sense of conflict.

C.   Mohammed the Prophet--an orphan, formerly a member of one of the lesser trading families in Mecca

1.     Visions from Allah--which he dictated to others to develop the Koran (Q’ran).

2. Mohammed’s visions were undoubtedly shaped by the religious ferment of his hometown, and by his exposure to the various religious practices there.

D.  Shared religious tenets (practices and beliefs)--the message that Mohammed preached had many commonalities with Judaism and Christianity.

1.     One single  god (Allah)

2.     Universal obligations  to all fellow believers substituted for those owed to one’s tribe or clan

Ramadan Badshahi Mosque Lahore, Pakistan

3.     Appealed to the poor by providing protection against arbitrary oppression, but did not spurn rich as long as they practiced charity toward the poor.

4.     Some appeal to women; although Mohammed still preached inferiority of women to men, it also demanded that men respect rather than mistreat women.

E.   Political program--Islam had more of a political agenda than did either Judaism or Christianity. Mohammed called for reforming society, replacing “barbarism” of competition, often armed, between tribes and ruling families, with  an ordered umma community ruled  under a single written code of laws.

1.     Political program but Mohammed and his followers came into conflict with the ruling families in Mecca, and he and his followers were banned to Medina

2.     Mohammed returned to Mecca in 630 and captured the city.

a)     Mohammed’s success lay in not only his ability to attract a number of young men with religious fervor, but also in striking alliances with other groups who wanted to throw off their oppressors--or just get a cut of the loot.

3.     Mohammed died  in 632 CE, but his caliphs Abu Baku and Umar retained Mohammed’s allies, and re-directed their energies toward Damascus, the Persian capital of Ctesiphon, the Egypt city called Babylon (now a part of Cairo), and Alexandria, all of which Muslim invaders captured between 636 and 642 CE.

a)     This demonstrates not only the tremendous mobility of Muslim forces, but also the immense unpopularity of the remaining “Roman” rulers in these cities.

b)     The Muslims ruled with a relatively light hand at first, leaving peasants their land and only demanding a relatively light tax to be paid as tribute, while confiscating state lands and those belonging to nobles who continued to resist them.

c)     Religious tolerance--like the Romans, Muslim rule was marked by tolerance of other religious practices--particularly for other “people of the book,” Jews and Christians.

F. Muslim dissent

1.     Shi’atu Ali--the party of Ali, or just Shi’a. After Mohammed’s death, a power struggle ensued for control of his legacy. The caliph Umar was murdered in 644, and power shifted to Uthman, and early supporter of Mohammed, but also a member of a powerful Mecca merchant family; his rule was greatly resented by a number of believers,  who believed Uthman represented many things that Mohammed had opposed--and resulted in his murder in 656. Power was then bestowed upon Mohammed’s cousin and son-in-law, Ali, who was murdered by some of his followers, known as Khariyites, who objected to Ali’s attempts to reconcile with the sect’s enemies. In his place a cousin of Uthman assumed power, and established the Umayyad dynasty.

a)     The Umayyad’s were, of course, illegitimate in the eyes of many, and this further split the Islamic movement.

2.     Rise of the Abbasids--Abu I Abbas was able to exploit this disenchantment with the Umayyad line to foster the ascent of his family to a position of power.

a)     Reformed the movement to provide non-Arabs the same treatment as Arabs, and opened the way for more than a century of economic advancement.

b)     Baghdad became  the center of learning (from about 800 CE), where knowledge from other civilizations--Greek, Roman, Indian, Chinese--was translated into Arabic

c)     The economic growth also fostered by the geography of Baghdad, which is located in the heart of Mesopotamia  between the Tigris and  Euphrates Rives (making producing a surplus easier, and therefore fostering its growth as an urban area), plus the fact that it lied along a major overland trading route between east and west.

d)     Era of relative peace--although a number of European peoples would dispute this assessment,  the Abbasid period ushered in a period of relative peace--or, at least, internal peace within the movement. Muslim forces did move into the Iberian Peninsula, eventually controlling the entire area except for the northwestern corner, which remained under Christian control, from 711 CE. After that period until the  beginning of the Crusades, Islam and Christian forces remained at peace. Europe entered the so-called “Dark Ages,” and had little of value for Muslims to lust after; Europe, for the most part, was a cultural backwater during this period.

G.  Center of Learning--after the fall of Rome, European elites largely concentrated upon consolidating their political power within their particular fiefdoms. Muslim leaders, on the other hand, were commissioning scholars to translate ancient works into Arabic, as well as consolidating the knowledge the Arabs themselves had already gained.

1.     Did the Irish Save Civilization? Or Did Islam?

2.     Sharia law--certainly has a bad connotation today, but when it  was formulated it reflected the values of traders, merchants,  and artisans, whom it protected from arbitrary rule by elites.

H.  Decline of Islam

1.     Lack of technological advancements--while trade expanded (benefiting merchants), after the initial infrastructure improvements were made in the countryside, the infrastructure was ignored by ruling elites in favor ofever  more opulent palaces and monuments to themselves.

a)     Local officials began enriching themselves more with bribes and diverting a larger portion of state revenues to themselves.

b)     decreasing productivity on farms; increased salinity of the soil due to irrigation.

2.     Economic decline--Political instability--Further Economic Decline: as tax revenue fell, the imperial court increasingly attempted to finance itself at the expense of merchants, and gave governors the responsibility for finances; the governors used this power to further line their pockets.

3.     11th Century (1000 CE)--the empire had largely fallen apart; Muslims remained in power in some places for another 500 years or so (Iberia), and some places continued  to flourish (Egypt, Selukman Turkey), but  the  creative  synergy that had characterized Islam was gone.

II. Africa


A.  Production of the surplus--throughout the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, Europeans argued that  Africans were “a people without a history”--or, at least a history that did not involve their dominance by Europeans.

1.     West Africans--developed metalworking capabilities around 1000 BCE, about the same time as Eurasia--but independently of Eurasia, because they used significantly different techniques.



2.     Agriculture--Sub-Saharan Africa domesticated different plants than Eurasia, because the plants that grow naturally through much of Eurasia will no grow in tropical or sub-tropical climates.

3.     Trade--the creation of the surplus  gave sub-Saharan  Africans the opportunity to develop trade networks on the eastern coast of the continent--and connected them to traders from the Arabian Peninsula, India, and even the Far East.

B. Climatic Differences

1.     Eurasia v. Africa--the east-west orientation of the Eurasian land mass meant that people on the continent shared many food-raising techniques; Africa, because of its north-south orientation, did not share this advantage.