86. Karen ArmstrongDuring the tenth century they had become dissatisfied with
the standard of their education, and had established the first
madrasahs, colleges for the study of Islamic sciences. This
made their training more systematic, their learning more
uniform, and enhanced the status of the clergy. Nizalmul-
mulk encouraged the building of madrasahs throughout the
Seljuk Empire, adding subjects to the curriculum that would
enable the ulama to work in local government. In Baghdad, he
founded the prestigious Nizamiyyah madrasah in 1067. Now
that they had their own institutions, the ulama had a power
base, which became distinct from but equivalent to the mili-
tary courts of the amirs. The standardized madrasahs also pro-
moted the homogeneous Muslim lifestyle fostered by the
Shariah throughout the Seljuk domains. The ulama also mo-
nopolized the legal system in their Shariah courts. A de facto
split had thus occurred between political power and the civil
life of the community. None of the mini-states run by the
amirs lasted long; they had no political ideology. The amirs
were very temporary functionaries, and all the idealism of
the empire was provided by the ulama and the Sufi masters
(pirs), who had their own separate sphere. Learned ulama
would travel from one madrasah to another; the Sufi pirs were
notoriously mobile, journeying from one town and one cen-
tre to another. The religious personnel began to provide the
glue that held the disparate society together.
Thus after the demise of the effective caliphate the em-
pire became more Islamic. Instead of feeling that they be-
longed to one of the ephemeral states of the amirs, Muslims
began to see themselves as members of a more international
society, represented by the ulama, which was coextensive
with the whole Dar al-Islam. The ulama adapted the Shariah
to these new circumstances. Instead of using Muslim law to
build a counterculture, the Shariah now saw the caliph as the
symbolic guardian of the sacred law. As the amirs came and