This has enhanced the impression of Islam as an independent entity
distinct from precedents and perennially corrupted after its inception.^4
Conversely, this book reflects the understanding that, far from a pure Islam
corrupted through transcultural interaction, the history of lived Islam
emerged in an interplay between its origins and its lived environments,
incorporating the perceptual cultures of late antiquity, the Abrahamic
tradition, as well as a multiplicity of later cultural and religious
interactions.
A generation after the death of the Prophet, a disagreement concerning
leadership of the faithful led to a split between the followers of the
established path (sunna, giving rise to the designationsunniMuslims)
and followers of the party (shi’a) of the cousin and son-in-law of the
Prophet,‘Ali ibn Abi Talib (601–661) and his descendants. Although in
modern times often portrayed as a split akin to that between Catholics and
Protestants, the importance of the distinction was not historically
consistent.^5 Both trends existed from the early era of Islam, and neither
consolidated in a hegemonic form in thefirst century. Shi’a Islam held
periodic sway over politically significant premodern dynasties. Often, it
offered a position of protest within Sunni majority regions. Literature
reflects the complex mixing of theological and philosophical discourses.
Scholars often sustained multiple affiliations that undermine the appar-
ently clear sectarian distinctions normalized during times of conflict,
including our own. Cultures, then and now, are complicated; the label of
‘sectarian difference’ often represents political as much as doctrinal
tensions.
Constitutive systems of Islam converged slowly through the codification
of the Quran and the sayings of the Prophet (Hadith) and development of
methods to use these texts as a foundation for Islamic law (Sharia),
combining Jewish hermeneutics with ancient Greek thought inherited
through Sasanian transmission. Changing geographies of Islam reflected
controversies over succession as the Umayyad dynasty declared a caliphate
led from Damascus in the late seventh century.^6 Many new Muslims were
not peninsular Arabs, complicating the simplistic model of a single,
Arabian era of ignorance (jahiliyya). On the contrary, Greek persisted as
an administrative language until the eighth century. The complex visual
(^4) Ahmed, 2015 :80–82. (^5) Mulder, 2014.
(^6) A caliph is the political successor to the Prophet Muhammad. Among (majority) Sunni
Muslims, such leadership was abolished following the 1922 fall of the Ottoman Empire. Shi’a
Muslims recognize a different leadership, the imamate, based on inspired spiritual leadership
from the lineage of‘Ali; some Shi’a leaders have also adopted the title of caliph.
A Lived History for Islamic Origins 35