Rise of Islam Discussion DUE Sunday by 9pm

In the overview for this unit, I brought up the fact that most Americans know very little about Islam (unless, of course, they happen to be Muslims). For your discussion entry this week, we will proceed with the idea that confession is good for the soul. So, what are the two most significant facts about Islam you learn from this unit? What two facts about Islam surprised you the most?

If you ARE Muslim, then I'd like to hear what two facts about Islam you feel Americans most need to understand.

Use your word processor to write your entry, which must contain more than 200 words and at least five significant uses of names and vocabulary terms from the study guide.

Go back to the Study Guide page for this unit. Notice the names and vocabulary terms in red. Incorporate at least five of those terms in your post. If I can't find at least five of those terms used significantly, your Discussion entry will earn no points.

When you’re done writing, click on the “Create Message” button that appears below. Then click on the "Enable HTML Creator" button. In the Message window, copy and paste your paragraph into the Message window.

These are the vocabulary words for the assignment:

1. Islam 2. Muslim 3. Kaaba 4. Qur’an 5. caliph6. sunna 7. jihad 8. muezzin 9. Umrah 10. Mecca11. Medina12. Hijrah13. Sharia14. Shiite15. the five “pillars” of Islam16. Ramadan

The Hajj

17. the Plain of Arafat18. Córdoba19. Alhambra20. Dome of the Rock

This is the reading material for this assignment:

IntroductionThis unit consists of a brief survey of the origins of Islam, beginning with the life of Muhammad and continuing through the spread of Islam in the eighth and ninth centuries. We focus on the historical differences between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, the pillars of Islam, and the Hajj. Along the way, we take virtual visits to Baghdad and Cordoba in the early Medieval period, and we also take a brief tour of the building known as the Dome of the Rock.

The Narration: Part One

Humanities 250: Ideas and Values in the Humanities. Hi. This is Richard Felnagle speaking, and this is the unit on the Rise of Islam.

I usually like to start the overview with a statement of my own, but this time, I’m going to let someone else set the stage for me.

In 1976 and 77, a British television producer name Ronald Eyre created and narrated a multi-part series on world religions for the BBC. The series was entitled The Long Search, and in the beginning of the program on Islam, Eyre made this statement:

When I told people here in Cairo what I was trying to do--search for Islam--they made one obvious suggestion: Become a Muslim. If you're not prepared to become a Muslim, you can't really want to know Islam. So here I was at the start of the search, identified as a Christian

although I never said I was one, a hostage—I suppose—to a thousand years and more of Muslim-Christian misunderstanding and wondering how far I was going to get.

Now, if you were born before—say—1965 or thereabouts, then something Eyre just said may have really struck you. I’m referring to his characterizing himself as a hostage to Muslim-Christian misunderstanding. If you were born after 1965, you may not recall the infamous Iranian Hostage Crisis that began in November of 1979 and ended in January of 1981.

Fifteen agonizing months during which fifty-nine American citizens were held hostage in the former American embassy in Tehran. Fifteen demoralizing, exasperating months when our entire nation seemed helpless to do anything about the situation. It was as if we were all being held hostage together.

And my memory of those times is that most of us really didn’t understand why it happened. Most people today don’t know. We did understand at the time that Iran was in the throes of something called Islamic Fundamentalism, and we clearly understood that those people we saw on the television really hated us. And we started to hate them back. And that’s why this unit is very important.

In this unit, we are going to study the origins of Islam and some of its most important guiding principles, and the purpose is to try to free the hostages by promoting understanding, but in this overview, I’m going to go in a different direction. I want to explore that misunderstanding a bit further. I am a firm believer that nothing fosters misunderstanding more than short memory. So, let’s step back in time a bit.

In the 19th century, Britain and Russia began using Iran as a kind of political pawn because it sat between Russia and British India, and it was also next door to Turkey, which was then the seat of the Ottoman Empire. And right around the turn of the century, everybody started getting interested in oil.

In 1901, the British managed to acquire exclusive rights to search for oil in Iran.

And I think they did it kinda the same way Peter Minuit, the director general of the Dutch colony of New Netherlands, bought Manhattan from the Indians for $24 in 1626.

Anyway, Britain eventually parlayed that agreement into a controlling interest in the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Meanwhile, Russia had invaded northern Iran and was expanding its influence there. The Iranian people were understandably concerned that the shah, or king, was allowing foreign powers to have too much influence, and in 1905, and they forced the king to agree to the creation of an elected parliament with a Prime Minister and a constitution that proscribed the shah’s powers. Neither Britain nor Russia was happy about this development because they preferred a weak government that they could manipulate.

Then, World War I came around, and Iran declared itself a neutral party, but the British and

the Russians used Iran as a staging area to launch attacks against the Ottoman Empire, which was an ally of Germany, and a lot of Iranian people became collateral damage.

After the war, resentment against foreign interests just continued to build, and by 1925, a coup installed Reza Shah Pahlavi as the new leader of Iran. He began a series of public works projects designed to modernize the country, and in the process, he tried to distance himself from Britain, which still controlled all of Iran’s oil resources, for which the British generously paid Iran a rather small percentage of its profits. Advisers from countries other than Britain were given contracts, and a number of advisers from Germany were in Iran when World War II broke out.

Of course, Britain and Russia were allies against the Germans again, and when the shah refused to evict all the German nationals, the Brits and the Russians jointly invaded Iran and deposed the Shah, thank you very much, and just took over. But the allies didn’t want Iran, so in 1942, they installed Reza Shah Pahlavi’s son . . .

Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi to succeed his father and made him promise to rule the country as a constitutional monarchy.

Well, after the war, the issue of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company surfaced again. The Iranians were tired of getting ripped off, and they began to talk openly about nationalizing the oil industry. The group supporting this option was led by a member of the Iranian parliament: Mohammad Mossadeg, and in 1951, that parliament passed a bill nationalizing Iran’s oil resources and made Mossadeg Prime Minister, all over the objections of the shah. Britain responded with a blockade on oil exports. And that’s when the United States got involved.

It wasn’t about the oil. Not really. This was the early 1950s, and the United States was paranoid about the spread of Communism, and for various reasons. the United States worried Mossadeg’s actions might precipitate a revolution and overthrow the shah’s government, and then the Soviet Union, which was next door, remember, would get involved, and the next thing you know, Iran would be a Communist satellite. So, in 1953, the British and the American CIA decided to take out Mossadeg, and they initiated a coup. Initially, it was a disaster, and an armed revolution did break out, the very thing they had hoped to prevent. The shah and his family fled the country, but eventually Mossadeg was arrested, and the shah returned.

After the smoke cleared, the oil interests in Iran were divided up among a new consortium of British, Dutch, French, and US oil companies, and the share paid to Iran was increased. Or rather the share paid to the shah and his family was increased, and he was encouraged to start ruling with a firmer grip. So, he became a dictator and used a secret police to silence opposition. In 1961, he even dissolved the parliament.

Because the CIA had been involved in the coup against Mossadeg, many Iranians saw the shah as a puppet of foreign interests. That impression was strengthened when be began to put

through a lot of Western-style cultural reforms that angered a lot of conservative Muslims, but did virtually nothing to benefit the common people. And what were some of those cultural reforms?

Well, among other things, he allowed casinos and nightclubs and the consumption of alcohol, which is anathema to devout Muslims, and he even tried to loosen up the dress code for women. Traditionally, Muslim women are expected to dress modestly in public, which means covering all but their faces and hands. Most women in Iran then observed this custom, or hejab.

But the shah tried to discourage this practice—in the name of Westernization—and women observing hejab were not permitted to participate in public institutions, such as schools. The result was not exactly liberating—many young women stayed away from the schools rather than violate hejab.

Meanwhile, opposition to the shah was led by a Muslim cleric named Ruhollah Khomeini. In 1964, the shah exiled Khomeini, rather than take the chance on making a martyr out of him, and Khomeini then set up shop in Iraq and continued to remain in contact with his partisans in Iran.

In 1976, the Shah further outraged most Muslims by throwing out the traditional Islamic calendar and replacing it with a new imperial calendar, which numbered the years starting with the founding of Persia about twenty-five centuries before.

Two years later, Iranian police tried to shut down a demonstration by pro-Khomeini supporters, and a riot broke out which ignited mass demonstrations all over the country. In early 1979, the shah removed himself from Iran again, and two weeks later, Khomeini returned. In triumph. An election was held in which the people voted overwhelmingly to create an Islamic republic.

The shah was granted entry to the United States, and that caused many Iranians to fear that the United States might try to intervene again as it had done in 1953. To try to deter the United States from taking such action, a group of Iranian students stormed the American embassy in Tehran and took sixty-six people hostage.

At first, the US responded by freezing Iranian assets in US banks and enforcing trade sanctions.

When that didn’t go anywhere, President Carter authorized a military rescue action, which ended in utter failure, producing even more humiliation for the United States and confirming what the Iranian people had feared all along.

Fifteen months after it started, the fifty-nine Americans were released.

And one more little detail. In the fall of 1980—right in the middle of the whole schmertz—Iraq, then under the leadership of Saddam Hussein, decided to invade Iran.

The majority of the Muslims in Iraq were Sunni Muslims, but the leaders of the Iranian revolution were Shiite Muslims—and we go into all that in the study unit—and Saddam Hussein was afraid that the Shiites in Iraq would be inflamed by the success of their Shiite neighbors in Iran, and so he decided on a pre-emptive strike. The war between Iran and Iraq dragged on for eight horrible years, one of the very worst and most pointless conflicts of the twentieth century, producing more than a million casualties on both sides.

And of course, in 1982, the United States apparently entered that war on the side of Saddam Hussein by supplying arms and aid to Iraq. No surprise there, given all the bad feelings toward Iran that remained from the Hostage Crisis. We didn’t like him any better in 1982, but we liked the Iranians a whole lot less.

End of Part One

The Narration: Part Two

Now, I bring up all this unpleasantness for two good reasons. First, whether you remember it or not, the Iranian Hostage Crisis was a major turning point in the development of Christian-Muslim misunderstanding in this country. Up to that point, I don’t think most Main Street, Middle Class, television-watching, white, God-fearing Americans had ever thought too much about Islam.

Sure, some Americans had traveled abroad and been to see the pyramids in Egypt. And we were fully aware that Israel wasn’t getting along with its neighbors, but we didn’t think of that as an Islamic problem. Israel’s neighbors are Arab states, and Israel’s problems were with the Palestinians. We didn’t hear all that much about Islam then.

And before that, we had heard something about Islam during the Civil Rights movement of the fifties and the sixties. For some strange reason a boxer named Cassius Clay one day changed his name to Muhammad Ali, and a playwright named Leroy Jones one day became Amiri Baraka.

And before that, we might have learned in school that Ferdinand and Isabella chased the Moors out of Spain, and we were told that was a good thing. And we may have learned that Mehmet the Conqueror wiped out Byzantine Empire in 1453 when his cannons flattened the walls around Constantinople. And that doesn’t sound very nice. And then there were all those Crusades, which took place between then eleventh and the thirteenth centuries. You know, Richard the Lion Hearted and Robin Hood and all that. And we may remember that the

purpose was to take the Holy Lands back from the Muslims.

Sounds like we got ripped off and had to take back what was ours to begin with, right? And so a lot of history we vaguely misremembered helped to fuel the anger we felt over the Iranian Hostage Crisis. And that’s the second reason why I bring up all of this unpleasantness. We need a little reality check.

First off, the word Islam means “submission” as in, to God, and a “Muslim” is one who has submitted. And the god of the Muslims is the same one worshipped by both the Christians and the Jews. In fact, the pre-Islamic Arabs traced their ancestry back to Abraham and the Hebrew patriarchs.

Early in the seventh century, an Arab merchant named Muhammad experienced a miraculous vision in the desert. God revealed himself to Muhammad and informed him that there was only one God, Allah, and Muhammad had just been appointed his prophet. Muhammad then began spreading god’s word as ordered, but Muhammad’s teachings were in direct conflict with the polytheistic beliefs of the other Arabs at that time.

As Muhammad began to attract followers, they began to be perceived as a threat to the established order. In 622, he and his followers took over the city now known as Medina, where the messages Muhammad received from Allah were written down and became the book we know as the Koran. In 630, Muhammad and his forces entered the city of Mecca, which became his capital.

Two years later, Muhammad died, but his followers kept up the campaign to unify the Arab world. By 650, the Muslims had taken over Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Persia. By 740, they were also occupying North Africa and even Spain.

Now Europe, during those same years, was a mess—just a lot of fur-clad barbarian tribes running around and hitting each other over the head. But, by the middle of the eighth century, Islamic culture had produced the most sophisticated, must cultured, most cosmopolitan city in the world: Baghdad, which was then located at a nexus of trading routes, just as Athens had been more than a thousand years before. Scholars, scientists, artists, poets, and more caused a great flowering of culture there.

Among other areas of innovation, the Arabs excelled in mathematics, and Arabic mathematicians, borrowing from the Hindus, developed the numerals that we use today. And we should also note the career of Al-Khwarizimi, from whom the modern word algorithm is derived.

Also, Muslim physicians made great advances in medicine. They were the first to develop an awareness that diseases were transmitted through tiny airborne organisms, and when the first medical schools were started in the west, the first teachers were Muslims.

Learning in all fields was so important to the Muslim world that in the eighth century, they borrowed from the Chinese and began writing on paper. You would be amazed at how many of the great works of the Greeks are known to us today because they were translated into Arabic and preserved in Muslim libraries.

And, Islam was and is extremely tolerant of other religions, particularly Judaism and Christianity. In fact, one of the reasons why Islam spread across North Africa so quickly was because Muslims were more than willing to tolerate the heretical Christian sects, such as the Coptic Christians and the other groups that the Orthodox Church in Constantinople was working actively to suppress.

Yes, of course, factions exist in Islam, most notably between the Shiites and the Sunnis, but come on! Was there ever a religion more divided by mutually intolerant factions than Christianity? Think about how iconoclasm literally split the church between east and west in the eleventh century.

The fact is that the Muslims, as I said a moment ago, believe that they and the Christians and the Jews all worship the same god. They also accept Moses and Jesus as god’s prophets—a courtesy, I might add, that is generally not reciprocated! It’s just that, according to the Muslims, Muhammad was god’s last prophet, and therefore their version of worship, Islam, is the most correct.

And I need to point out, too, that all three of these religions are divided among themselves and among each other by cultural as well as theological differences, and I hope by now, you can see how cultural as well as political problems—more than religious issues—led to the Iranian Hostage Crisis.

True, the crisis was precipitated by some very angry religious extremists, but let’s be clear on this point, too. History is drenched in blood spilled by religious extremists of all faiths, so we must always be careful to separate the dictates of the faith from the dictators who exploit the faith for their own purposes.

Now, I hope what I have done here is to make you aware of some of the sources of prejudicial thinking that some people—present company excepted, of course!—might possibly bring to this little introductory study of Islam. But we have to acknowledge our prejudices before we can begin to view things with an open mind. And I hope that is how you will approach this unit now. Time to get started, and I’ll see you next time.

Note: News footage of the Iranian Hostage Crisis from Great Events of the Twentieth Century, Vol. 6, produced by British Pathe, Ltd., released by Marathon Music & Video, 1995, 1999.

Excerpt from The Long Search, "Islam: There Is No God But God," BBC 1977, released by Ambrose Video Publishing, Inc., 1980.

Section One: The Life of the Prophet

[Note: For much of the information in this section about the life of Muhammad, I am indebted to the PBS Empires series Islam: Empire of Faith , from which I have also provided several video clips throughout this study unit. For other information, I am indebted to Microsoft® Encarta® Reference Library 2002.]

At the beginning of the overview, I inserted Ronald Eyre's comment about his feeling as he were "a hostage [ . . . ] to a thousand years and more of Muslim-Christian misunderstanding." I then tried to sketch out some of the last century's events that have inflamed that misunderstanding. In the unit on the High Middle Ages, we will explore the origins of that misunderstanding, and in HUM251, we will look at how that misunderstanding escalated to violence and terrorism in the latter part of the twentieth century. For now, though, our goal is just understanding, and so we start at the very beginning with the life of Islam's founder, Muhammad.

But before we go any further, I need to comment briefly on a very mundane matter—spelling. For example, throughout unit, I have tried to be consistent in the way I spell the name of the Prophet: "Muhammad." That spelling is the one I see most frequently, but if you go looking around, you will see other spellings, including "Mohammed," "Mohamed," "Mahomet," and others. Why?

Back in the section on the Bronze Age in the Early Civilizations unit, we talked about language groups, and I included a chart that locates English in the Germanic sub-group of the Indo-European family of languages. (Click here to see that chart again to refresh your memory.) We also covered how the Indo-European family itself derives from an even older language group usually called Proto-Indo-European. The Arabic language is one of the Semitic languages, which are themselves a sub-group of the Afroasiatic family, and that whole family also evolved from the Proto-Indo-European group but in a completely different way from the Indo-European languages.

The big difference comes in the way that words are formed in Arabic. From Wikipedia's article on Semitic languages:

In Semitic languages] word roots are not themselves syllables or words, but instead are isolated sets of consonants (usually three, making a so-called triliteral root). Words are composed [ . . . ] by filling in the vowels between the root consonants (although prefixes and suffixes are often added as well). For example, in Arabic, the root meaning "write" has the form k – t – b. From this root, words are formed by filling in the vowels, e.g. kitāb "book," kutub "books," kātib "writer," kuttāb"writers," kataba "he wrote," yaktubu "he writes," etc.

Westerners who can speak and read Arabic are much in demand today.

Think you might like to improve your career options by learning Arabic?

MCC offers elementary and intermediate courses. Click here to see a short

intro to Arabic with a list of English words derived from their Arabic

counterparts.

So, to cut to the chase, trying to spell out Arab words using our Latin alphabet involves more art than science. (Click here for a very interesting and more detailed discussion of this problem.) Therefore, you have to get over the idea that there is only one correct spelling of Arab words in English. Throughout this unit and elsewhere, you will see Arabic names and words in various spellings. The reason is not sloppy proof-reading. No standard spellings exist. (By the way, that situation may be about to change thanks to the proliferation of the Internet and services such as Google and Facebook. Click here to learn about the Arabic chat alphabet.)

Mecca Before Muhammad

The story of Islam begins in the year 570 AD with the birth of the prophet Muhammad in the city of Mecca (today part of Saudi Arabia). However, the story of Mecca did not begin with the birth of Muhammad.

The map on the right shows you the modern state of Saudi Arabia. The capital city is Riyadh, and the city of Mecca, which is located about forty miles inland from the port city of Jedda on the Red Sea coast. Notice also the location of the city of Medina, about three hundred miles to the north. While non-Muslims may visit Saudi Arabia, only Muslims are allowed to enter Mecca and Medina, considered the two holiest cities in Islam. (For that reason, you won't find the usual links to tourist sites here!)

At the time of Muhammad's birth, Mecca had already achieved great religious significance to the tribes in that part of the world because in the heart of Mecca was (and still is) a shrine call the Kaaba (an Arabic word meaning "cube," pronounced "KAH-buh"). Supposedly, the original Kaaba had been constructed by the Biblical prophet Abraham and his son Ishmael on foundations that had been put there by Adam after being expelled from the Garden of Eden. Inside the Kaaba were kept icons and totems sacred to all the tribes of the area—plus an object of unusual significance: the black stone, a rock that had fallen from the sky and supposedly a gift to man directly from God.

The Fall of Man?

While Islam, Judaism, and Christianity all share common roots, the three

faiths don't always see the same things in the same ways. For example, the Hebrews and the Christians see the story of Adam and Eve as a story of disobedience and punishment. For Christians, this sin has been inherited by Adam and Eve’s followers, and Jesus Christ was sent to earth to redeem humans from this sin.

However, Islam suggests that Adam and Eve did their time and were then forgiven by God. As a result, they were honored by being appointed as God’s stewards on earth and entrusted with the care of the earth.

If you're curious, the Islamic Center of of Columbia, SC, known as Masjid al-Muslimiin, maintains a useful website with articles on various aspects of Islam. Click here to read their explanation of how Adam and Eve are treated in the Qur'an, the Muslim holy book which includes all of Muhammad's recitations.

The Kaaba was also central to Mecca's success as a major commercial center. The area around the Kaaba was a kind of demilitarized zone, and no matter who was fighting whom, they had to lay down their arms and behave peacefully around the Kaaba. Since everybody had to play nicely together inside the city, Mecca was a great place to do business. Otherwise, the area around Mecca was unstable. No central government or no one leadership body claimed authority over all the people of Arabia. The various nomadic tribes and clans ran their own affairs and made their own laws. Struggles over grazing lands and control of trading routes were open, frequent, and often vicious. (In many ways, conditions may have been similar to what we think of as the early American West of the cowboy movies—ranchers, gold miners, gamblers, profiteers of all kinds in a uncontrolled territory without any central authority. And that's why, Roy, we need you to stay here and be our sheriff!)

Revelations from God

When Muhammad was six years old, both of his parents died, and he was taken under the protection of his uncle, who was the chief of his clan. For the next several years, Muhammad adopted the profession of his clan and became a merchant involved in trading (buying and selling). In this capacity, he returned frequently to Mecca, which was then a fairly cosmopolitan place where Muhammad frequently interacted with Jews and Christians as well as other Arabs.

At this time, no one religion dominated the area (no central authority, remember?), and Arabia was profoundly polytheistic, although everyone seems to have regarded the Kaaba as sacred. Supposedly, this exposure to many different faiths and beliefs stimulated Muhammad to become interested in religious issues, and he is said to have spent much of his time discussing matters of faith with the people he met in Mecca. From time to time, he would also leave the city and go to a cave near Mecca (pictured on the right) to meditate and to pray.

When he was twenty-five, Muhammad married a wealthy widow, Khadijah, and for the next fifteen years, his life followed a fairly predictable course as he became a successful businessman. That all came screeching to a halt one day when he was forty. He was meditating in his cave when the angel Gabriel appeared to Muhammad and instructed him to recite various messages in the name of God, the Almighty, and the first message was that there is only one god and Muhammad is his prophet.

Over the next thirteen years, more such revelations came to Muhammad, and they were all eventually collected and written down as the Qur'an, which means roughly “Recitation.”

Muhammad continued to recite the words God had given him to say, and he also began to teach. Just like Ancient Egypt when Akhenaten had tried to convert everyone to his brand of monotheism, the Arab world wasn't entirely on board at first. The notion of there being only one god took some getting used to, but the idea appealed to many people because it implied that all people are equal before God, and therefore, ethnicity, national origin, class, etc., were irrelevant. In effect, all Muslims—all people who have submitted to God—are one people. Thus, Islam began to unify the disparate parts of the Arab world in a new way.

Inevitably, Muhammad's teachings provoked a backlash. Some people, chiefly the merchants and traders, began to worry that Muhammad's teachings might somehow negate the importance of the Kaaba, the town's chief tourist attraction. (Remember that the Kaaba housed the relics and idols of many religious faiths.) If all this "one god" nonsense caught on, Mecca could lose its safety buffer, and business would suffer. However, Muhammad still enjoyed the protection of his uncle, so silencing Muhammad was no simple matter.

That situation changed in 619 when Muhammad suffered two life-changing events: First, Khadijah died, which was a personal tragedy, but soon after, his uncle died, and Muhammad's protected status was no longer guaranteed. Instead of talking about Muhammad the prophet, we might now be talking about Muhammad the martyr instead, but out of the blue, an interesting opportunity dropped into Muhammad's lap.

Hijrah: The Journey to Medina

In any part of the world where there is no clearly defined central authority, there tends to be no clearly defined justice system either. May not seem like a big deal to you, but believe me, it is because human beings are human beings, and they get into disputes all the time—somebody buys a cow from you and then the cow gets sick and dies and the buyer wants his money back, or you paid somebody to allow your camels to drink at his oasis and then he changes his mind and won't return your shekels, or somebody promises to pay you a big dowry to marry your daughter and then only pays you half of what was promised, etc. Often, it's just your word against his, and if you don't want every argument to turn into clan warfare, you need somebody who is wise and fair and has been given the authority to settle such disputes. In other words, you need a judge.

Just when Muhammad's enemies were getting ready to give him the bum's rush out of Mecca, the citizens of Yathrib (now known as Medina, about three hundred miles north of Mecca), found

themselves in desperate need of a judge, and they'd heard Muhammad was a real whiz-bang arbitrator. They made him an offer, and since he didn't exactly have any reason to stay in Mecca, he agreed to relocate to Yathrib in exchange for a promise of safe refuge for himself and his followers.

Muhammad's journey from Mecca to Yathrib is celebrated as a key moment in the development of Islam. This journey is known as the Hijrah, and it took place in 622 AD. On the way, Muhammad and his followers symbolically cut ties with their old community and founded a new community bound together by a common faith. Muslims like to say that Islam was born in this move.

In Yathrib, Muhammad's mediation skills made him very successful and very popular. Eventually, the city was renamed Medina, an Arab word meaning, basically, "city." Why this name change took place is not entirely clear (to me, at least), but the city sometimes has the longer name madinah al-nabi "the city of the prophet."

Are We There Yet?

This is a little off the subject, but the actual name of many cities is often different from the short form by which they are more generally known. For example, everybody knows that Los Angeles is where all the smog comes from in Southern California, and these days, it's hardly "angelic." But "Los Angeles" is the city's abbreviated name. Care to guess the longer original Spanish name for LA?

Click here for the answer.

Meanwhile, Muhammad continued to receive revelations, and one of them instructed all those in prayer to face in the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca while praying. Even though the Kaaba was still filled with a variety of pagan idols sacred to the various tribes, it was nevertheless the shrine constructed by Abraham, the founder of monotheism.

In time, Muhammad's enemies organized an army, and for three years, the new converts to Islam found themselves at war with most of the rest of the Arab world. However, most of the battles went their way, and other Bedouin tribes began to sign on, so the small forces of Muhammad expanded over time into a sizable army of more than 10,000—a sizable number for a nomadic population.

Eventually, Muhammad and his forces staged a triumphant return to his old home town, where the locals all expected the conqueror to sack the city and sell all the women and children into slavery—the usual outcome of tribal war on that scale. Instead, Muhammad embraced his former enemies. He then took his troops to the Kaaba, marched around it seven times, entered it, and

smashed the icons—leaving only the "black rock," which is still a permanent part of the Kaaba today (pictured on the left).

Struggle for Succession

Two years after the siege of Mecca—632 AD—Muhammad died, and his successors faced the task of choosing his immediate successor as their spiritual leader. As usual, this process did not go well. Some of the faithful believed that before Muhammad's death, he had designated his son-in-law and cousin, Ali, to succeed him, but others believed that Muhammad had left instructions that the people should choose their own leader from among the elders. The elders then retired to Medina, which by then was considered the capital of the Muslim world, and they elected Muhammad’s father-in-law, Abu Bakr, to lead the community. He took to calling himself the “khalifat Rasul Allah” (meaning “successor to the Messenger of God”), from which the term “caliph” (meaning “successor”) is derived. Those people who thought Muhammad had wanted son-in-law Ali to take over felt they had been betrayed.

This controversy is the origin of the split between the Sunni and the Shiite (pronounced "SHE-ite") Muslims. The Sunnis recognize the legitimacy of the succession begun by the election of Abu Bakr; the Shiites take the position that Ali should have been Muhammad's successor, and they recognize only the descendents of Ali and Fatima, Muhammad’s daughter, as the legitimate heirs to the caliphate. Because Abu Bakr was widely accepted, the Shiites were relegated to the role of minority dissenters, and they remain the minority in Islam today.

The term Sunni comes from the word “sunna,” which means something like “middle of the road” or “mainstream.” The key principles of the Sunni faith became established in the late ninth century and were organized into a formal theology in the tenth. To some extent, the codification of the articles of the faith were in reaction to ideas being advanced by splinter groups, including the Shiites. Among other beliefs, the Sunnis emphasize God’s power and predetermination (as opposed to free will). The Caliphate evolved as both the religious and secular leader of the community (not unlike the situation in Constantinople, where the emperor was also head of the church). The Caliph presided over a theocracy based on Sharia, the moral guidelines of Islam as the basis for the law. The Sunnis regard the reign of the first four caliphs as the “golden age” of Islam.

Today, somewhere around 90% of all Muslims are Sunni Muslims, but the map on the right shows where the majority of Shia Muslims are found in the Middle East.

Nevertheless, not all people (notably, but not exclusively, the Shiites) accepted the Sunni caliphate, and as was the case in the early phases of Christianity, there were many doctrinal conflicts among the faithful. According to Encarta,

The Shiites developed a doctrine of the infallibility, sinlessness, and divine right to authority of the descendants of Ali, whom they called imams. The main body of Shiites recognize 12 imams and are called the “Twelvers”; the Ismailis recognize 7 and are called the “Seveners.” The last

imam disappeared in 880, and Shiites to this day await his return, when they believe that justice will be established on earth.

Fearing persecution by the Sunnis, the Shiites became a kind of underground movement. Like the heretical Christian sects, the Shiites developed their own interpretation of the Qur’an, emphasizing hidden levels of meaning known only to the imam, who has the power to reveal these hidden meanings to the faithful. Also, Shiites pay a tax called zakat to their religious leaders (not unlike tithing with a church). As a result, Shiite leaders tend to possess considerable financial resources. Today, Shiites dominate affairs in Iran, and they are also prominent in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, India, Pakistan, and parts of Central Asia.

Tactics?

I suspect that Time magazine may have done more harm than good with this deliberately scary cover photo in March of 2007, to dramatize the antipathy that exists between Shia and Sunni Muslims. The actual article, though, is less biased than the cover picture would suggest. "Behind the Sunni-Shi'ite Divide" presents a relatively good overview of this schism. If you look at the article, keep in mind that some of the information is out of date, but the historical summary is still useful.

Expansion

In the next two hundred years, Islam expanded rapidly throughout the Arab world and then into eastern Europe, north Africa, and Spain.

One of the reasons why expansion was so rapid is that the Muslim invaders tended to be tolerant of other religions—particularly the Jews and the Christians, whom the Muslims recognized as being also "people of the book," (i.e., the Bible). After all, they all worshipped the same god, but they followed different prophets. To understand that point of view, we need to look next at the some of the fundamental beliefs of Islam.

Section Two: Pillars of Islam

The key article of faith for all of Islam is the belief that God revealed to Muhammad the ultimate version of God’s plan for human beings. Because this revelation was perfect and complete, God will not speak again directly to any more prophets.

These revelations are preserved in the Qur’an (also frequently spelled Koran). The text of this book includes the exact words that the angel Gabriel spoke directly into Muhammad’s ear. To recite the words of the Qur’an yourself means to contact the word of God directly. Consequently, oral recitation of passages from the Qur’an are an important act of devotion. There are some “reciters” who are considered experts, much like opera stars in the world of music.

Islam recognizes the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible as holy books, but according to Muslim tradition, they have been changed over time—presumably rewritten by men to suit their

own purposes. The Qur’an, on the other hand, is perfect and unchangeable. Any Christians and Jews who refuse to acknowledge the supremacy of the Qur’an will then be held accountable for their error on the Day of Judgment.

However, during Muhammad’s lifetime, no definitive version of the Qur’an existed. It is thought that the various written fragments and memorized fragments were first collected into a single volume during the reign of the third caliph, about twenty years after Muhammad’s death. From Encarta:

The Qur’an is divided into 114 chapters, or suras, each of which is further divided into a number of ayat (verses). The chapter titles were taken from images or events included in the suras. The chapters are customarily classified as either Meccan or Medinan, in reference to the two cities in which Muhammad lived and reportedly received the revelations. However, some chapters are composite, with Meccan verses inserted in the midst of a largely Medinan chapter and vice versa. For the purpose of recitation the Qur’an is divided into various schemes, such as 30 equal ajza (parts) so that it can be read in full during Ramadan, the holy month of fasting, by reciting one part per day.

A key concept of the Qur’an’s message is that human beings are expected to live according to the moral principles of God’s law. God chose Muhammad to explain to humanity how to life a just life, but—as the Hebrew Bible suggests—following God’s law faithfully is not going to be easy. When the Day of Judgment occurs, all people will be held accountable for their success or failure with the struggle to obey God’s law. Again, from Encarta:

Parts of the Qur’an are recited on many different occasions. A Muslim who observes the five daily prayers will recite several short chapters from the Qur’an each day. Passages are recited at birth to the newborn and at death to the dying. All the great events of life and the rites of passage in the Muslim world are marked by recitation of the Qur’an. Parts of the holy book are incorporated into the rites of marriages and funerals. A new venture of any kind, whether in public or private life, is inaugurated by the recitation of blessings from the Qur’an.

The Qur'an is not an easy read, but if you'd like to have a look, I think this site is about as good as any that offer the Qur'an in English translation. Click here to visit a site where you may read or browse. If you don't care for this version, there are many others online, and some with commentaries.

The Sharia

The Sharia (Islamic law) is, thus, a perfect system reflecting God’s final plan for humanity. However, like any other code of law, it depends on interpretation for application to specific circumstances. Thus, the law itself is inviolable and unchanging, but different schools of interpretation exist.

The law comes in part from the Qur'an, but other sources include the Sunnah (a collection of stories from the life of the Prophet), “ijma” (or “consensus”) of the past applications of the law (i.e., legal precedents), and ways of reasoning by analogy (or “qiyahs”), which are the basis for new applications for the pre-existing laws. The various interpretations of the Sharia are represented today in five different schools of law, the judgments of which are sometimes contradictory but considered equally valid.

So, how do you lead an upright life according to God? That’s where the five pillars come in—the five great principles of behavior that God expects from us all: the profession of faith (shahada), prayer (salat), almsgiving (zakat), fasting (sawm), and pilgrimage (hajj).

Before going on, though, we should note that some Muslims have also suggested there is a sixth pillar: jihad, sometimes understood to be holy war. However, the word translates from Arabic as “struggle,” in the sense of doing everything possible to please God. While the word is sometimes used to suggest a military action, the conventional understanding of the term is something more personal.

The Shahada

The first pillar, the profession of belief, involves making a simple statement. According to the ReligionFacts website, you say this:

La ilaha illa Allah wa-Muhammad rasul Allah.

There is no god but God and Muhammad is the prophet of God.

Want to Become a Muslim?

You become a Muslim when you declare yourself to be a Muslim and you declare your faith in front of two other Muslims. You don’t have to take a class or be confirmed by a priest or a rabbi or have your head dunked under water or undergo any ritual marking such as (ulp!) circumcision. You say you’re a Muslim, and you’re a Muslim.

Instructions are available on the Internet. Click here if you'd like to know more.

In the remainder of this section, we will look more closely at the next three pillars, and we'll take up the fifth pillar, the Hajj, in the next section.

Prayer (salat)

Muslims are required to pray five times a day, and in many cities, Muslims are reminded to pray when a muezzin ("crier") issues call to prayer (the adhan) from the minaret of a mosque.

When possible, Muslims are expected to pray communally, but only for the noon prayer on Friday are Muslim men required to pray together in a mosque. Women, the sick and elderly, travelers, etc., are not so required. This prayer is traditionally led by an imam, or prayer leader. (Note that the word "imam" has a different significance for the Shiites.) Otherwise, Muslims may pray wherever they like, singly or in groups, but they must always face towards Mecca during prayer.

The requirements for a mosque are fairly simple.

As you have already gathered, the faithful all sit on the floor in rows, but men and women worship separately. Why?

Charity (zakat)

The third pillar of Islam is zakat, or almsgiving (perhaps better translated as "charity"). Making contributions to the poor is considered not just an obligation but also a an expression of one's devotion to God.

However, the Qur'an makes a distinction between everyone's obligation to look after the poor and an obligatory contribution to the mosque or to the imam. As was mentioned above, zakat in this sense is understood to be a sort of tax that all Muslims are expected to pay to support their places of worship. Among Muslim clerics, the exact amount of this tax is a matter of debate. However, it is not uncommon for Muslims to pay one-fortieth (or 2.5%) of their earnings during a year.

Fasting (sawm)

Muslims are expected to fast during the month of Ramadan (the 9th month of the lunar year calendar). The fasting of Ramadan celebrates the fact that Muhammad is supposed to have received the first revelation from God during this month. During Ramadan, the chief activity for Muslims is that they may not eat, drink, or engage in sexual intercourse during daylight hours.

Before going on to discuss the fifth pillar, we need to talk about one more concept that comes from the Qur'an: the notion of modest dress.

Modesty

Many Westerners are under the mistaken impression that the Qur'an dictates that Muslim must wear a head scarf (or hijab) or a veil or a full body covering known as a berqa. Actually, the Qur'an only requires that men and women dress and behave modestly. Different cultures in the Muslim world have required women to cover themselves, but those requirements reflect cultural concerns.

Nevertheless, some women regard these customs as oppressive, while other women (notably Western women) tend to defend these customs. The 2002 WNET program Religion and Ethics Newsweekly provided a segment the role of women in Islam. In the following segment, reporter Darryl Davis focuses particularly on the issue of women's dress and women's rights. The first woman being interviewed in this clip is Riffat Hassan, from the University of Louisville.

Obviously, we are not going to settle this controversy here, but you need to know that such conventions of dress for women are determined by the local cultures of various Islamic countries. In some cases, the decision to wear a headscarf or a berqa may be a matter of personal choice. The Qur'an only says that men and women must dress modestly; the Qur'an does not tell men or women what they have to wear to be "modest."

Section Three: The Hajj

The fifth pillar of Islam requires all Muslims who are able to do so to make a pilgrimage to Mecca at some point in their lives. (Even so, one site that I visited while researching this topic suggests that fewer than 10% of all Muslims actually do.)

The primary focus of the pilgrimage is the Kaaba, the square stone building in the center of the Al Masjid Al-Haram (as pictured on the right). Even before Muhammad, Arabs would make pilgrimages to visit the Kaaba.

If you are not a Muslim, you are probably never going to see the Kaaba in person because, as I noted in the first section of this unit, access to Mecca and Medina is restricted by the Saudi government to Muslims only.

If you are a Muslim, then you can visit Mecca any time you like and make a holy visit to the Kaaba, also known as an Umrah (a "visit"). However, the pilgrimage required by the fifth pillar of Islam is more than just an Umrah. For one thing, you have to go at the right time. Hajj officially happens in the twelfth month (Thul-Hijjah ) of the lunar year. (In 2005, the Hajj season was in late January; in 2015 the Hajj season will be in late September.) All together, the Hajj is supposed to be a five-day experience taking place between the eighth and the thirteenth days of Thul-Hijjah.

Click here for an illustrated overview of the Hajj process from a site located

at Princeton University. (Note: If the diagram is too small to read,

increase your browser's magnification. Try holding the <Ctrl> key and

tapping the plus sign on your numeric keypad.) The link is to a page

called the "Virtual Hajj." Click on any of the pink boxes for more info and

pictures.

In 2003, the National Geographic Society released an impressive documentary entitled Inside Mecca, which documented three Muslim pilgrims and their Hajj (presumably in 2002). In the following sections, I have prepared excerpts from my personal copy of this program, which shows those of us who are not Muslims what the Hajj experience is really like for contemporary pilgrims. The complete program is available through Films on Demand, but in the wrong aspect ratio. You can also find the complete program on YouTube.

Three Contemporary Pilgrims

In the following video clips, you will see at various times three pilgrims chosen by the film's producers as focus points. One is a woman, and two are men. They represent three different countries and three different races.

The first is a woman, Dr. Fidelma O'Leary, a professor of neuroscience at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas. Born a Catholic, she converted to Islam while she was an undergraduate. The second is a black South African, Khalil Mandhlazi, who is a radio commentator (something like a radio evangelist) in Pretoria, South Africa. The third is a Malaysian businessman, Ismail Mahbob, and he is accompanied by his wife, although she is rarely seen in the program.

As you watch, keep in mind that Mahbob is a fairly wealthy man, Fidelma O'Leary is middle class, and Khalil Mandhlazi seems to be a man of modest means.

Much of the first third of Inside Mecca details the difficulties that the three pilgrims must endure to make their travel arrangements. Nearly two million pilgrims besiege the city of Mecca during the Hajj season. You can only begin to imagine the logistical problems.

The film also shows that before the official starting day for the Hajj, many pilgrims take a sort of optional side trip to Medina, which is where the Prophet is buried. There they can visit a mosque which has been built around the tomb of the Prophet, pictured above. They may also visit other holy sights in Medina.

Preparation: The Umrah

The rituals of the Hajj are based on two different sources. One is the life of the Prophet, and the other is the Biblical story of Abraham, Hagar, and Ishmael.

All pilgrims undertaking the Hajj are expected to be in a state of "ihram" (a state of ritual sanctity symbolized by the required dress). For men, the costume of ihram is two white towels—period. One can be belted around the waist, and the other is worn like a shawl. For women, the costume is slightly different, but the point is that all people are the same to God, and so they dress the same for their pilgrimage Starting with the eighth day, the first official day of the Hajj, all the pilgrims are required to be wearing the ihram costume.

The Hajj begins with a sort of pre-Hajj ritual known as the Umrah (I know—same word—confusing). This Umrah can be made anytime, but must precede a Hajj. This ritual begins when the pilgrim first makes a declaration of intention, which must be done at one of four specifically marked places in the city. Next, the pilgrim goes to the Al Masjid Al-Haram and walks around the Kaaba seven times. (The walk around the Kaaba is called Tawaf.)

Keith David mentions the ritual prayer called the Talbiyah. Roughly in English, "Here I am at Thy service O Lord, here I am. Here I am at Thy service and Thou hast no partners. Thine alone is All Praise and All Bounty, and Thine alone is The Sovereignty. Thou hast no partners."

Once the pilgrims have walked around the Kaaba and, if possible, touched or kissed the black stone (the Hajar al-Aswad), then the pilgrim re-enacts Hagar's search for water after Abraham abandoned her. According to the story, she ran between two small hills, Safa and Marwah, before the Angel Gabriel appeared and touched his staff to the ground, from which a spring appeared. That spring is known as the ZamZam.

Today, the run is a lot easier because the two hills have been completely enclosed within the air conditioned mosque!

Journey to Minna

The next day involves a journey to the Valley of Minna, about five miles east of Mecca. If you have the means, you can ride. Otherwise, you walk.

What awaits the pilgrims in Minna is a tent city, the likes of which are not found anywhere else on the earth.

The Plain of Arafat

After a restful night of tent camping with two million of your closest friends, all two million pilgrims leave Minna and walk to an area known as the Plain of Arafat, eight miles to the east of Minna. This is the place where Muslims believe that Adam and Eve found each other after their expulsion from Eden.

Once there, pilgrims rest and then ask God for forgiveness. This part of the ritual is considered the most important. This is the part where God cleanses the pilgrims of their sins.

Only after the sun has dipped below the horizon may the pilgrims leave Arafat and head for another desert location: Muzdalifah. Here, the pilgrims spend the evening praying and, if they are tired, sleeping under the stars. Also, pilgrims have to collect a certain number of stones to be used for the next important ritual. After midnight, women and people who are weak or elderly are allowed to leave and return to Minna. Otherwise, the pilgrims walk from Muzdalifah to Minna once the sun has risen for the next day.

The Jumrat and the Feast of the Sacrifice

This day involves several activities related to the story of Abraham. First, the pilgrims visit three stone pillars commemorating Abraham's struggle with Satan, who tried to talk him out of sacrificing his son, Ishmael. At each of these three pillars, the pilgrims throw seven stones that they collected the night before. This ritual is known as the Jumrat.

Following the Jumrat, pilgrims are required to sacrifice a ram, just as God required Abraham to sacrifice a ram after countermanding the order to sacrifice his son. That's one ram per pilgrim, or seven pilgrims may go in together on a camel. The sacrifice may be done by you personally or by your designated agent. This part of the ritual is documented in the National Geographic film, but I have spared you this footage. To assist the pilgrims, somewhere around 2000 Muslim butchers are bussed in to Minna for this event. The meat produced is then shipped off to poor people around the world.

Then, the pilgrims bathe and cut their hair as a gesture of humility. Some men even shave their heads completely at this point. From this point forward, the pilgrims are permitted to take off their towels and revert to their normal clothing, and in the evening, there is a sort of festival, The Feast of the Sacrifice.

On the next day, pilgrims return to Mecca for another Umrah, after which the state of ihram us officially lifted. Pilgrims are then encouraged to return to Minna for another night, but some pilgrims then leave for home.

Section Four: Islamic Culture

By the eighth century, Islamic civilization had flowered in the city of Baghdad, which had evolved into a remarkable city that was alive with learning and culture. As the center of the new Islamic universe, Baghdad also became a center of scholarship and scientific invention. The following excerpts from the 2001 PBS Empires series Islam: Empire of Faith, "Part Two: The Awakening," discusses how Baghdad achieved its exalted position and how Islam encouraged both scholarship and science. I think you will be surprised.

The playlist covered the establishment of the "think tank" called the "House of Wisdom," where scholars actively began to seek information from other cultures. I need to emphasize that the

library they assembled included many important Greek and Roman texts that would otherwise have been lost if not for their preservation by Islamic scholars.

I also want to emphasize that one of the reasons why the Muslims were able to achieve so much in the area of math was that the spread of Islam exposed them to a numbering system that had evolved in the Hindu world. Arabic scholars adapted this system and refined it, and the symbols used are what we know today as Arabic numerals. The following chart from the Arabic2000.com site shows you this evolution.

If you don't appreciate the significance of this development, let me ask you something, Have you ever tried to do math with Roman numerals?

Can you solve this problem: CLXXV-XXXIX=??? Click here to check your math

The Paper Revolution

As the Muslim world expanded east, it also encountered the Chinese, who were not exactly welcoming. Conflicts developed, and in 751, Arab and Chinese armies clashed in what is known as the Battle of Talas, in modern-day Kyrgyzstan. The Arabs were victorious and took prisoners, some of whom knew how to make paper. The Chinese had been making paper since the early first century, but they had strictly guarded the process. (The Chinese were equally concerned about concealing the secrets of making silk so that Westerners would continue to come to China to trade for fabrics made from silk and not start making their own.) The Arabs and other cultures had long known about Chinese paper but were unable to solve the problem of manufacturing it—until the Chinese POWS from the Battle Talas were persuaded to talk.

Paper production was soon underway in the Arab world, and by the ninth century, paper was being used to produce books. The scholars who came to Baghdad were eager to have their own copies of various texts, and the Arabs began producing books made from paper pages sewn with silk thread and protected by thick covers. According to Islam: Empire of Faith, Baghdad at one time had a street with more than a hundred booksellers. So, the Muslims didn't invent paper, but they are credited with the innovation of paper books. (Of course, the books were all hand-copied by scribes, a process that hadn't changed since the time of the Greeks. So book publishing in Baghdad was a high employment industry all the way around!)

Córdoba

Europeans gradually became aware of the innovations being produced in the Muslim world, but for the most part, Europeans didn't learn these things in Baghdad. Instead, they became introduced to Moorish culture in Spain, particularly in the city of Córdoba, which in many ways became the cultural capital of Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries. (We'll talk about how the Moors got to Spain in the next study unit.)

In the center of Córdoba, the Moors erected a magnificent mosque, most of which is still standing today. However, the Moors were run out of Spain in the 15th century, and a Catholic church was erected right in the middle of the mosque! The result is one truly peculiar building—but one very good tourist attraction.

You can't go to Mecca or Medina, but you can visit Córdoba, and you probably want to! In the YouTube clip linked below, travel writer and TV host Rick Steves shows us some views of modern Córdoba and takes us inside the cathedral.

The Alhambra

One of the great jewels of Muslim architecture is found in the Spanish city of Granada, a remarkable collection of buildings known popularly as the Alhambra. Actually, the Alhambra (from the Arabic word for "Red") is two different structures. One part is a fortress and palace constructed in the 14th century, and next to it is a complex of residential buildings and gardens called the Generalife (pronounced "hen-ay-rah-LEE-fay"), which dates back to the 12th century.

The clip linked above really only gives you a taste of this magnificent place. As you might expect, there is an official website, which discusses touring the structure and a bit of the history. Click here to visit the website, (It should come up in English, but some parts are in Spanish.) There is also an official tourism site for Granada, and this site has an excellent section on the Alhambra. Click here to visit the Granada site. Scroll down a bit, and you'll come to a list that "distinguishes the Muslim buildings from the Christian buildings." Each item on the list is a link to another page which describes that section and shows you exactly where it is within the whole complex.

The most important thing about the Alhambra, however, is not the architecture and the fountains but the magnificent Islamic decoration. To get a better look at the decorative elements, I recommend you look at the following 2010 YouTube clip, which appears to have been derived from an unnamed National Geographic video (probably the 2009 Ancient Megastructures—The Alhambra).

As a sort of footnote, you might be interested to know that American author Washington Irving (you know, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle") spent several months in Granada in 1828. For a time, he even lived in the Alhambra, and the result of his stay was a collection of essays and stories published in 1832: Tales of the Alhambra. The book was useful for introducing the Alhambra to readers in America and Europe and may have been instrumental in stimulating the first interest in restoring the buildings, an effort which continues today.

The Dome of the Rock

One more Muslim building requires our attention. Known as the Dome of the Rock, it is located very close to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, as the diagram below indicates.

Underneath that prominent dome is a large hunk of rock that is sacred to Muslims, Jews, and Christians. Father Abraham is supposed to have prepared an altar on that rock to sacrifice his son—the son in question being either Isaac or Ishmael, depending on your beliefs. The place is doubly sacred to Muslims who believe that same rock is the place where Muhammad ascended into heaven one night. The Qur'an contains a passage known "The Night Journey," which describes how the Archangel Gabriel appeared to Muhammad and took him from Mecca to Jerusalem. They rode a winged horse, and on the way, they stopped off at Mt. Sinai and Bethlehem before arriving at this place on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. There, they were received by Abraham, Moses, Jesus and other prophets. Then, Gabriel escorted Muhammad to the top of the rock, where a ladder of golden light materialized. Muhammad then used the ladder to ascend through the seven heavens for a private audience with Allah, from whom he received instructions for himself and his followers. Following this divine meeting, Muhammad was flown back to Mecca by Gabriel and the winged horse, arriving there before dawn.

Thus, the Dome of the Rock is actually a religious shrine. Some people mistakenly believe it is a mosque for public worship, but as you can see from the diagram above, the Al-Aqsa Mosque was constructed nearby.

The building dates from late in the seventh century. The Byzantine empire claimed Jerusalem as part of its holdings until the Persians redrew the map, and Jerusalem fell under their control. In 638, six years after the death of Muhammad, the Muslims took Jerusalem away from the Persians.

At that time, the most imposing structure in town was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The Muslims respected that structure and protected it, but the fact that it attracted a lot of Christian pilgrims was not lost on the city's new owners. Clearly, a new structure was needed, something that would rival the prestige of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and proclaim the supremacy of Islam—and, more to the point, bring lots of Muslim pilgrims to town. Some historians also suggest that the shrine's builder, al-Malik, may have had other motivations as well. He may have wanted to draw Muslim pilgrims away from Mecca specifically because he was trying to promote himself as the leader of the Muslim world. Al-Malik's rival lived in Mecca, and al-Malik may have hoped that erecting an impressive new shrine in Jerusalem would give him more Facebook friends.

Whatever the motivation, no expense seems to have been spared in the building's construction. Architects from Byzantium were commissioned to design the building—a good choice because the Byzantines clearly knew a thing or two about building spectacular buildings. Under their direction, the construction took place between 687 and 691, something of a speed record for such an elaborate building in the seventh century, and when the building was finished, everyone agreed that it exceeded expectations.

On the outside, the Dome of the Rock was stunning, and the shiny golden dome dominated the old buildings in the area. Even today, when you see views of the old town part of Jerusalem, the golden dome is unmistakable. (Originally, the dome actually was covered in gold, but the gold is long gone, and today, the surface of the dome is anodized aluminum.) The dominance of the

dome is further accentuated by two canny design decisions. First, the diameter of the dome and the height of the dome are almost the same (around eighty-two feet), which makes the dome unusually high and, therefore, quite visible from a distance. Second, the dome was constructed out of wood, not stone, so the whole affair is lighter than you might expect. As a result, there is no great weight pressing down on the walls, so no big, ugly external buttresses are required to support the superstructure and obscure the exterior decoration on the upper half of the outside walls.That decoration. as the picture above and to the right hints, consists of intricate mosaic work originally made from squares of glass tiles in the Byzantine style. The composite effect makes the exterior sparkle like a rare jewel. Today, the original tiles have been replaced by more durable porcelain tiles, but the design is the same as the original, and the effect is just as striking.

Inside the building, the relatively light dome requires no great massive stone piers to hold it up, as is true of the Hagia Sophia, so the interior seems open and light. It is said that when the Prophet Muhammad arrived in the Seventh Heaven, he saw a celestial vault in the colors of light, and that effect is what the designers wanted to achieve. In the picture on the right, you get a sense of the extravagant use of color amid the foliated scrolls, interlacements, arabesques, and mosaics of purple and gold. If you look carefully, you can see the sixteen stained-glass windows placed just below the dome itself to provide illumination for the arches, pillars, and columns that articulate the interior space. Entering this dazzling interior, the pilgrims must indeed have felt as if they had ascended to the Seventh Heaven. (It would be centuries before the designers of the Gothic cathedrals in Europe would begin to use light and color to achieve similar responses from the Christian faithful. And in the center of the space under the dome is the rock itself.

For more information about the building, including a cutaway view of the structure, click here to go the Masterpieces of Islamic Architecture page on the Dome. Note: the little pictures are all thumbnails; click on them to enlarge.

If you'd like to see more pictures and read some information to help you plan your trip to Jerusalem to see this remarkable place, click here to visit the Sacred Destinations page about the Dome.

Until your flight leaves, though, you'll just have to content yourself with this 2007 YouTube clip that gives you a just a little bit of what it would be like to be there yourself. (By contrast, the interior of the Hagia Sophia is a big open space with most of its original decoration gone. The Dome of the Rock, though, still looks pretty much as it did at the Grand Opening.) The footage is not high resolution, and the person taking the pictures moves the camera a lot, but for a few minutes, you can imagine yourself inside the shrine. No narration or titles are provided, but the camera picks up a local tourist guide, who is speaking in English. The best part is that the photographer keeps looking up at the designs on the ceilings.

As Ben Kingsley says in his narration to Islam: Empire of Faith, Islam spread very quickly throughout the Middle East, across the north coast of Africa, across the Strait of Gibraltar, and into Spain. Moorish invaders might have conquered all of Europe and permanently changed the history of Europe, but that invasion was checked in 732, and that's about where we pick up the story of Europe in the first section of the next study unit.

The several most significant facts about Islam I learned from this unit were the facts

concerning the political origins of the general distaste that exists between most Muslim nations.

First, it was interesting to see how Iran and later, Iraq, were essentially stuck in the middle of

large and powerful nations vying for supremacy. There is no doubt that the arrangement

provided them for their oil was not a fair one, and one that took advantage of a developing

nation. Second, the U.S.’s involvement in the situation was preemptive and invasive, and seemed

to do more harm than good, as with the Mossadeg coup that turned into a revolution. The later

Iranian hostage affair did not help matters. It seemed that many of the nations involved

unfortunately acted out of paranoia, rather than out of a direct need for action, and this ultimately

has led to ill will on both sides of the political and cultural fence.

One fact that surprised me about Islam is that Muslims consider themselves to worship the

same God. I would not necessarily reciprocate this belief, due to various beliefs of Islam

expressed in this unit. The five pillars of Islam, for example, are not in keeping with biblical

precepts—or at least, a Christian is not required to follow these tenets in order to achieve his

heavenly reward. Muslims explain this by stating that Mohammed is the prophet of God, and the

final prophet of God, which makes the Qu’ran the final authority, but this is a fairly direct

refutation of the authority of the Bible, which is professed to be God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16).

It makes no allowance for future doctrines. It definitely bears pondering, though, that Muslims

consider themselves to worship the same god—this should be a point of common ground, instead

of a point of division. The information about the Kaaba was also surprising, as this was not

something I had heard of before. Given my knowledge of the stories of Adam, Abraham, and

Ishmael, it was interesting to hear of this shrine in Mecca.