Islamic Society ••• 115down into many occupational groups. Urban merchants and artisans
formed trade guilds, often tied to specific religious sects or Sufi orders
(brotherhoods of Muslim mystics), which promoted their common inter¬
ests. The largest group was made up of farmers, generally lower in status
and usually not full owners of the lands they farmed. There were also
slaves. Some served in the army or the bureaucracy, others worked for mer¬
chants or manufacturers, and still others were household servants. Planta¬
tions using slave labor were rare. Islam did not proscribe slavery, which
existed in seventh-century Arabia, but it called on masters to treat their
slaves kindly and encouraged their liberation. Slaves could be prisoners of
war, children who had been sold by their families, or captives taken from
their homes by slave dealers. These concepts of class structure did not orig¬
inate in Islam, which stressed the equality of all believers; they went back to
ancient times and existed in most agrarian societies.
Crossing these horizontal social divisions were vertical ones based on
ancestry, race, religion, and sex. Although some hadiths showed that Mu¬
hammad and his companions wanted to play down distinctions based on
family origins, early Islam did accord higher status to descendants of the
first Muslims, or of Arabs generally, than to later converts to the religion.
As you have read in previous chapters, Persians and then Turks gradually
rose to equal status with Arabs. Other ethnic groups, such as Berbers, Indi¬
ans, and Africans, kept a distinct identity and often a lower status even af¬
ter they converted to Islam. Racial discrimination, however, was less acute
than it has been in Christian lands in modern times.
The divisions based on religion, though, were deep and fundamental.
Religion was a corporate experience—a community of believers bound to¬
gether by adherence to a common set of laws and beliefs, rather than a pri¬
vate and personal relationship between people and their maker. Religion
and politics were inextricably intertwined. Christians and Jews did not
have the same rights and duties as Muslims; they were protected communi¬
ties living within the realm of Islam, where the Shari'a prevailed. Though
exempt from military duty, they were forbidden to bear arms. They did not
have to pay zakat, but they were assessed the head tax (jizya) plus whatever
levies they needed to support their own religious institutions. They were
sometimes not allowed to testify in a Shari'a court against a Muslim or to
ring bells, blow shofars (rams' horns used in some Jewish holidays), or hold
noisy processions that might disrupt Muslim worship. At times Christians
and Jews found the limitations even more humiliating, and in a few cases
their lives and property were threatened. But for centuries they managed
to keep their identity as Jews or Christians and to follow their own laws
and beliefs. The treatment of religious minorities in Muslim countries that