SPACE: AN EASTWARD SHIFT | 115lamic learning and art which occurred in eighth- to tenth- century Bagh-
dad—with important contributions from the Jewish and Christian commu-
nities too. Among other significant centers were Saffarid Sijistān, Hamdanid
Syria, and Umayyad Spain. From Bukhārā to Cordoba, teachers and students
were ever on the move.^82 Examples of this peripatetic style of life were the
philosophers Fārābī (d. 948), who moved between Baghdad, Damascus,
Aleppo, and Eg ypt,^83 and Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037), who spent different parts of his
career at the princely courts of Bukhārā, Gurganj on the Oxus, Gurgān near
the Caspian, Rayy near Teheran, Hamadhān, and Isfahān.^84 The proximity of
the last four illustrates especially well the Islamic Commonwealth’s close-
woven web of culture. Arabic, the language of the Qurʾān but also of admin-
istration and scholarship, provided a superb instrument of commonwealth
in that it developed dialects but did not become a family of separate lan-
guages, as Latin did. The hajj ensured that the bonds of the Muslim world
never relaxed as entirely as did those between the Christianities of the Latin
and Oriental or, for that matter, Greek Churches.
This cultural strength in diversity of the Islamic Commonwealth allowed
it to absorb and convert the Turkish invaders who arrived in such force dur-
ing the eleventh century, and captured Baghdad in 1055. That the energ y of
the Turks was turned to the Islamic world’s account was one of the decisive
events in history. It ensured the East Roman Empire would eventually be
eliminated and the Umayyads’ goal achieved, of taking Constantinople and
a large slice of the Mediterranean’s northern coast. The Ottoman Empire
fully reunited the East Mediterranean basin and the greater part of the
Mountain Arena including Iraq and the Hijāz. If it never subdued Safavid
Iran, it did control the old Sasanian heartland in Mesopotamia, so that the
frontier ran along the natural geographical divider provided by the Zagros
Mountains, and not the Euphrates.^85
In other words, the evolution of empire into commonwealth was not a
one- way street. New empires might emerge in ex- imperial territory whose
cultural identity had been preserved by more flexible political arrange-
ments. For the Ottomans possession of the Holy Cities in the Hijāz, whose
value was religious but by extension political and legitimizing, became a
major motive and pretext of politico- military expansion, and together with
yemen, likewise taken in 1517, reestablished a horizon in the Mountain
82 J. L. Kraemer, Humanism in the renaissance of Islam (Leiden 1992^2 ), esp. 53, 233–34, 286; with
a dose of statistical skepticism from M. Bernards, “Talab al- ʿilm amongst the linguists of Arabic during
the ʿAbbasid period,” in J. E. Montgomery (ed.), ʿAbbasid studies (Leuven 2004) 33–46.
83 D. Gutas, “Fārābī,” EIr 9.210.
84 A. Bertolacci, “Biblioteche e centri di cultura nell’Oriente musulmano tra il X e l’XI secolo,”
SFIM 495–521.
85 On the feebleness of the Safavids’ attempts to control Iraq, see R. Matthee, “The Safavid-
Ottoman frontier,” International journal of Turkish studies 9 (2003) 157–73.