Before and After Muhammad The First Millennium Refocused

(Michael S) #1

90 | CHAPTER 3


but because these sent out the creative impulses which were dominant at the
beginning of the Second Millennium, and then went on, in association with
the Latin world but with a much greater time lag there, to mold what we call
Modernity.
McCormick’s and Wickham’s choices on the one hand, and mine on the
other, all in a sense represent teleological readings of the First Millennium.
How would I describe the difference between mine and theirs? To put it
crudely, my choice places the telos at the very end of the First Millennium
itself, building to an account of the maturation of Islam presented as an es-
sentialized construct for purposes of exposition, but recognizing too its
growing diversity—the Sunni- Shiite schism, the political fragmentation of
the caliphate, the role of philosophy and Sufi mysticism—as well as its con-
tinuing evolution after 1000. Those who wish to go on and use this picture in
order to achieve a deeper understanding of our present situation and its po-
tentialities are encouraged to do so. Indeed, it was from current stresses on
Europe’s sense of identity that I began this investigation, at the start of chap-
ter 1. But I do not invoke the direct genetic link implied by McCormick’s
talk of origins, or by Wickham’s choice to privilege a rather obscure region of
the First Millennium world—Latin Europe—over others more powerful and
creative, inevitably in part (whatever the disclaimers) because of its preemi-
nence at a much later date. The goal of the Eurocentric historian (“Moder-
nity”) is remote from, yet conceived of as standing in a relationship of depen-
dence toward, the First Millennium. To depict so chronologically extended a
relationship convincingly is a very difficult enterprise in itself; and it is also
the case that other, quite different traditions believe they too have a stake in
the same past. The views of history on offer today in the schools and universi-
ties of, for example, the Sunni Muslim world, or in those of Iran or for that
matter the United States, differ very largely—in emphasis if not necessarily
in broad periodization^117 —from what is purveyed in Europe. yet all find that
much of what is important to them matured during the First Millennium—
which must therefore be depicted in such a way as to explain all the roads
that lead out of it.
If that is not an unrealistic goal, then we may look forward, sooner or
later, to a new Eusebian moment when Islam this time, instead of the Church,
will finally be woven into the fabric of world history.^118 Only the viewpoint


117 Cf. Blankinship, American journal of Islamic social sciences 8 (1991) [1:21] 438–39, on Muslim
curricula.
118 Marshall Hodgson’s The venture of Islam [1:1], however flawed, was a major step in this direc-
tion (complete with numerous chronological tables aligning events in the Islamic world and other re-
gions). Cf., on a much less ambitious scale, T. Ansary, Destiny disrupted: A history of the world through Is-
lamic eyes (New york 2009). The author, an American raised in Afghanistan, exemplifies traditional
Islamic historiographical values in his neglect of history before the hijra, his emphasis on the determining

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