Rome’s Successors: Byzantium, Islam, and the Germanic West 127might call himself “the shadow of God on Earth,” the
dream of a politically united Islam proved as elusive as
that of reviving the Roman Empire in the west.
The world of Islam was immense. Its geographic
extent and its many different ethnic and religious
groups ensured that it would be no more monolithic,
politically or socially, than Catholic Europe. What
unity it possessed derived from the fact that, though
Jews and Christians continued to make valuable contri-
butions to its culture, a majority of its peoples accepted
the teachings of the Koran.
Generalizing about social structure in the Muslim
world is difficult because of this diversity. In theory, Is-
lam is wholly indifferent to race or class. However, the
first Arab conquerors inevitably became a kind of urban
aristocracy that superimposed itself on the older soci-
eties of the countryside without changing their eco-
nomic structures. Systems of land tenure varied widely.
Slavery was common in all parts of the Muslim world
but was rarely the basis of anything except narrowly
defined regional economies. It provided domestic ser-
vants and, in a development almost unique to Islam,
soldiers. In the days of the great conquests, every male
had the duty to defend the faith in battle. The Abbasid
caliphs soon introduced the practice of purchasing
slaves on the central Asian frontier, converting them to
Islam, and training them in the martial arts. These Mam-
lukswere mainly of Turkic origin and became the back-
bone of Islamic armies until well into the nineteenth
century. When they enjoyed a local monopoly of mili-
tary force, they sometimes usurped political power and
established regional governments of their own.
Muslim clerics never became a privileged class like
their Christian counterparts in the west. The scholars
of the ulamawere revered on the basis of their piety and
wisdom, and some engaged in preaching, but no Mus-
lim equivalent existed of the Christian sacraments, and
any male Muslim can participate equally in prayers.
The mosque, or Muslim place of worship, admits no hi-
erarchies, and monasticism was unknown. Conse-
quently, institutionalized religion based on the
Christian model did not develop, though pious Mus-
lims often established waqfsor religious endowments for
charitable and other purposes.
Another unusual feature of Islamic society, at least
by Western standards, was its treatment of women. The
Koran permits Muslims to have as many as four wives,
provided they are treated justly. In the Muslim past,
practical considerations restricted polygamy largely to
the rich; in modern times it has vanished almost en-
tirely. Though shocking to Western sensibilities, this
limited form of polygyny was a major improvement
over the customs of pagan Arabia, which seems to have
permitted unlimited numbers of wives and unlimited
freedom in divorcing them. Under Islamic law, divorce
remained far easier than in contemporary Christian
codes. The Prophet’s clear distaste for what he called
“repudiation” has influenced subsequent legislation and
made divorce more difficult in modern times. Another
improvement was the Koranic injunction that permit-
ted daughters to inherit property, albeit at half of the
amount allotted to their brothers.
As in all such matters, the intent of the Koran was
to protect women and encourage domestic morality,
but the ultimate responsibility for their welfare was
placed firmly in the hands of men (see document 7.2).
Moreover, a number of customs that are regarded as
typically Muslim have no Koranic basis.
For example, the common practice of having
women wear a veil in public was not based directly
on the Koran, which says only that “women should
not make an exhibition of their beauty.” The custom
seems to have arisen in the eighth century when
Muslim conquerors found themselves among people
whose behaviour seemed dangerously immoral. They
covered the faces of their wives to protect their
virtue in what was perceived as an alien and danger-
ous environment.Islamic Culture, Science, and the Arts
Intellectually, the first few centuries after the Muslim
conquests were a kind of golden age. Drawing from
Greek, Persian, and Indian sources, Muslim thinkers
made broad advances in mathematics, astronomy, and
medicine that would eventually be adopted by the west
(see document 7.3). The use of Arabic numerals and the
Arabic names of the stars are examples of this influence.
Western medicine, too, was based largely on the trans-
lation of Arabic texts until the “anatomical” revolution
of the sixteenth century.
Philosophy reached its highest development later,
between the ninth and the twelfth centuries. Muslim
thinkers had better access to Greek sources than their
western counterparts, and the works of such men as al-
Kindi or Ibn Sina (Avicenna) were rooted firmly in the
Aristotelian tradition. When they were translated into
Latin in the twelfth century, their impact forced a major
transformation in western thought (see chapter 9).
The arts also flourished. The Arab elite cultivated
an image of sophisticated refinement that is reflected
in their poetry and in the elegant calligraphy that
dominated the visual arts. The Koran forbids the