by Leslie Farmer

During the six weeks in which I was traveling through the Arab world for this study of Arab women I devoted a rather disproportionate amount of time to the subject of the harem—in Arabic, “harem”—in hopes of dispelling some of the mystery—and misinformation—has clouded the West’s view of this now nearly extinct system of polygamy,

This did not involve, as some might imagine, bypassing ferocious retainers and double-locked doors to meet groups of secluded beauties; to uncover any remnants of the classical harem system would have required travels longer and further than mine. Today, in fact, the word “harem” simply means “women” not, as it once did, “inviolable” or “forbidden,” the sense which was beloved by story tellers and which still lingers, hardly less vividly, in Western imagination.

The origin of polygamy of polygamy have been variously ascribed to a superfluity of marriageable women and to the assumption that men must acquire as many women as possible for labor and for producing children—primitive society’s basic form of capital. Whatever its origins, polygamy existed well before Islam—in some cases, by thousands of years—in such diverse areas as India, China, Babylonia, Egypt, Persia, the Arabian Peninsula and Europe. But it was during the rule of the Ottoman sultans in Istanbul that the institution reached its greatest extension in Islam. Historians report top figures of up to 1,200 women, each with a certain rank in a formal hierarchy. The head of the harem was the sultan valideh, the mother of the ruling sultan. Next in importance after the sultan valideh were the four kadines (few sultans ever took legal wives) ranked in order of arrival, the first highest. A women of any grade could be promoted to a higher one, with its accompanying benefits of more luxurious accommodations and cloths and more servants, if she won the favor of the sultan.

Besides waiting hopefully for the sultan’s summons, the women of the harem acted as servants in various capacities if in the lower ranks, and took instruction in whichever fields they showed aptitude – cooking, accounting, music or other subjects. Sometimes laying their rivalries aside, they all danced or played music for the sultan. Occasionally they were allowed out of the palace for a carefully chaperoned boat trip on the Bosporus. That the harem became a byword for intrigue of all kinds is not precisely unfair. All of the women yearned to rise in wealth and prestige within the hierarchy, and some had a taste for politics as well. One, not at all atypical, who combined both interest—and started the so-called “Reign of Women” in the middle 16th century—was a Russian girl called Roxelana. Second kadine, and a great favorite of the sultan. She managed to have her two main rivals for power—the first kadine and the grand vizier—respectively demoted and exiled and herself soon became, next to the sultan, the strongest power in the empire. The following succession of weak and often degenerate sultans provided a vacuum of power—and the women moved to fill it For a century and a half the harem ruled the empire, making and unmaking sultans, the power shuttling between the sultan valideh, the first kadine and occasionally the chief black eunuch, and intrigue, bribery, extortion and sometimes murder the order of the day.

The great harems in Turkey ended with the deposition and exile of the Sultan Abdul Hamid in 1909, but polygamy lived on. As late as the 1930’s about 10 percent of families in the older generation in Beirut and Cairo, still accepted it, with the percentage somewhat higher in the countryside. Today, although it survives in isolated areas it is increasingly rare.

Seclusion is another matter. Up to five years ago there were women in Arab countries who literally never left their houses. They also disappeared when male visitors arrived and others never sat beside their husbands when driving.

Many older women, I must point out, are well content with this arrangement. As one women said, “They don’t want to give up being pampered.” But some educated younger women are beginning to show signs of discontent. As a young married women in Bahrain put it, “I want to know men’s ideas, and not just from books. I think sometimes we have the wrong ideas about men, and they about us.”

The image of the large and rigidly secluded harem—an institution which fascinated western imagination—was formed largely in the West by highly romanticized travel books and colored writings of not-too-objective missionaries. Burton’s English translation of the Arabian Nights, which appeared in the 19th century and circulated widely in America, was taken to present an accurate picture of current conditions. Even today an advertisement for one major airline features an Oriental potentate of some sort, complete with turban, whip-wielding slave—and some three dozen white veiled women trailing behind him.

Such concepts, as they become further and further divorced from present reality, are a sore point among educated Arabs. Characteristics, perhaps, of both the amusement and the annoyance they awake, is the remark of one peninsular amir (not apocryphal) recently planning an official visit to a western community. “Please don’t let the ladies start asking me about how many wives I have,” he begged an American friend. “If I tell them one, they won’t believe me; if I tell them two or three, they’ll wonder why I don’t have all I’m allowed; and if I tell them four they’ll think it’s too many!”

by Leslie Farmer

In the last part of the eighth century, in the reign of the Caliph Harun al-Rashid in Baghdad, the marketplaces of the Abbasid empire buzzed with rumor. The rebellious sect of the Kharijis in Iraq was up in arms and its forces under Layla—poet, beauty and rebel leader—were giving battle again and again to the troops of the Caliph.

In 1970, over a thousand years later, the suqs of the Arab world again ran with talk of a Layla. This time it was a young woman with an enigmatically lovely face and a background of teaching school and of guerrilla training with one of the most extreme Palestinian commando groups. This Layla had forced one plane to land in Damascus in 1969 and now had attempted to seize another en route to London—tough political gestures which again drew world attention—if also condemnation—to her cause.

In the more than a thousand years between the two militant Laylas, rare indeed were the Arab women who took such an active part in their people’s history. Even more so than the generality of western women, from medieval times almost up to the present, Arab women have lived out their lives in the shadow of men.

From earliest recorded history human society has been patriarchal, women confined mainly to the home and the nearby fields, treated as the property of their husbands, and generally forbidden the society of men outside their families. The lands which are now part of the Arab world inherited this historical pattern, though women occasionally broke it to the extent of ruling as independent monarchs—the Queen of Sheba, Egyptian queens acting as regents, and the famous and tragic Zenobia of third-century Syria.

In the societies of the eastern Mediterranean which were to form the roots of western culture, the patriarchal tradition also persisted. The nomadic Hebrews were strongly patriarchal, in the city-state of Athens, the “freewoman” took no part in public life and was perpetually under the guardianship of her father or husband. And the attitude of writers and theologians of the early Christian church was often inspired rather literally by the tradition of Eve created from Adam and a paradise lost. In fact, the epistles of St. Paul, who shaped the new faith, and masses of early church writings fairly breathe misogyny: woman is useful solely for procreation; outside that she functions only as a temptation to sin and had best stay at home when she is not going to church.

In the Arab world, the triumph of Islam in the seventh century basically codified the position of women with its laws of spiritual and civic conduct. It banned female infanticide, limited polygamy to four wives, forbade sexual relations outside marriage and spelled out women’s rights in marriage and inheritance. But part of this codification was to place women, in unequivocal language, below men: “Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property” (in support of women). (Surah IV, v. 34). Some modern Islamic writers and thinkers believe that, taking the Koran as a whole, women are given an equal-but-different status rather than an inferior one. But most Muslim laymen and scholars, living, it should be remembered, in an already patriarchal civilization, have taken such verses the way many Christians take the story of the Creation and the Fall: literally.

Even so, up to the 10th century, veiling and seclusion were not generally practiced. During the Abbasid era, two royal princesses went off in chain-mail to fight the Byzantines, Arab women composed poetry and music and vied with men in cultural salons and competitions, Harun al-Rashid’s wife Zubaydah appeared at caliphal receptions in all her jewels and brocades, and in Muslim Spain ladies danced the zambra with their suitors. But with the exception of some women in agricultural communities, Bedouins, and a few women who ruled behind the caliphs, veils, seclusion and subordination had become general by the end of the 10th century and over the next millennium would remain so.

In the western world, during the same millennium, women were not faring much better. During the Middle Ages, despite a temporary elevation in their status when chivalry was in fashion, the legal position of women—especially with regard to property rights—declined. In the Industrial Age, as princely courts disappeared, the status of women who had been appreciated and encouraged in those courts waned. The same fate was in store for working women as guilds, in which they wielded some power, were replaced by factories. Cultivated hostesses in French salons did continue to receive the intelligentsia, but in the same era working class English women were toiling long hours in unhealthy factories and some English countrymen claimed the right to sell their wives. As late as the Victorian Age, despite challenge from rebels like George Eliot and Florence Nightingale, an Englishwoman could not attend a university, and could be sure that in divorce even the most erring husband would automatically take the children. The same erring husband could legally beat his wife, keep her at home for weeks on end and spend all her money.

There were exceptions. Working women in England, unlike upperand middle class women, had a certain social freedom, not unlike that enjoyed by women in the colonies of North America. There the scarcity of women on frontier and farm and the necessity for cooperation and companionship in rough, often isolated conditions, tended to modify the patriarchal traditions of the Old World.

By mid-19th century the anti-slavery struggle in the United States had begun to awaken American and English women to their own legal and social disabilities. In 1837, Mt. Holyoke became the first American college to admit women. The women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, was only the first of many such meetings. In the United States and England women’s legal disabilities gradually faded and married women’s rights over their own property increased. Gradually women began in increasing numbers to enter professional life then, finally, to push for the vote. Actually, women were first given the vote in New Zealand (1893); Australia and Scandinavia followed. Russia (1917) beat both England (1918) and the United States (1920). France, Italy and West Germany didn’t give the vote to their female citizens until the 1940’s and Switzerland still doesn’t.

Worldwide today, it is still difficult for a woman to go on to higher education, to obtain equal pay for equal work, or to reach the top in any field no matter what her ability. Legal discrimination has also been slow to recede: before 1965 a French husband could dispose of all his wife’s assets as he liked unless she was gainfully employed—but she could not work without his permission. In Spain a decade ago if a man caught his wife in flagrante and killed her out of hand, the worst punishment he could expect would be a short term of exile.

On the brighter side, in 1970 the world had three women premiers (none in a western nation) and two Japanese women successfully scaled 24,857-foot Annapurna in the Himalayas; the year before America’s National Council of Churches elected its first woman president, the first woman jockey raced on a recognized race track and six women scientists were scheduled, for the first time, to work out of an American base in the Antarctic. Women in the United States and Britain furthermore, have in the Women’s Liberation movement forged a formidable weapon that promises even more change.

In the Arab world, the position of women saw little of such changes until the 20th century. But the relatively few decades since then have seen a positive explosion of women’s education throughout the entire area, the end of the “classical” harem, a substantial decline in polygamy, the gradual recession of the veil, the granting of the vote except in the Peninsula, and, in the major cities, the easing of restrictions on social mixing of the sexes and the rise of the Arab career girl.

Even these changes have touched the lives—and consciousness—of relatively few. The most important improvements in the status of women are just now beginning, and the most difficult to effect will not be in government-provided facilities or in legal provisions, but in attitudes—attitudes that are the more stubborn because they are rooted not only in Arab civilization but in civilization itself. To obtain full equality for women in the Arab world as in the western world, the change that must still be made is in the minds and hearts of men.

Conspiracy theories paradoxically confirm both our powerlessness and our importance.

by Dr. Carl Trueman

Most people like a good mystery, whether it’s a book or a movie. Indeed, if you pass your local cinema or browse the shelves at your local bookstore, you will see just how popular, how marketable mystery stories are. Yet in amongst the various whodunnits and crime novels dealing with run-of-the-mill murders and crimes, you will also find a good number of books in the fiction and non-fiction sections which deal with crimes and mysteries on a bigger scale, ones which describe vast and elaborate conspiracies. Television too provides plenty of evidence for that the public enjoy a good conspiracy. In the nineties, The X-Files were all the rage; now it is a series like 24. The details vary but the basic formula remains the same: reality is not quite what it appears to be; and there are knowing forces out there who really run things behind the scenes.

Many real-life conspiracy theories surround the deaths of famous people. For example, there are a large number of books written about the assassination of President John F Kennedy. Officially, he was shot by a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald; but Oswald was himself shot and killed before he faced trial, and this has led many to claim that he was not acting alone but was merely the fall guy for any number of secret organizations, from the Mafia to the KGB to Cuban dissidents. The same kind of literature also surrounds the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Officially, she was killed in a car crash as she was driven at high speed through an underground tunnel by a chauffeur who had drunk too much; but many claim that she was assassinated by agents of British intelligence acting for the Royal family. Similar conspiracy theories surround the death of many other famous people, from James Dean to Marilyn Monroe to Pope John Paul I. Just watch Godfather III to see a movie version of the death of that pope, with Mafia, Freemasons, and even members of the Catholic clergy being implicated. It seems that we just find it hard to believe that special people – whether leaders or celebrities – can die in mundane or banal ways.

In each of these examples, the official version makes perfect sense of the evidence surrounding each of the deaths; and yet the public seem to have an insatiable appetite for alternative theories as to why these tragedies happened. These theories are always more far-fetched than the official version, and so the question that comes to mind is `Why do people believe such crazy theories when the official version seems to be quite credible?’

There is probably no single answer to this, but here are some thoughts. First, let’s be honest: many of us enjoy a good mystery. There is a certain excitement and thrill to reading or watching a good detective story or suspense thriller; and conspiracy theories are often part and parcel of these things. There is, therefore, the thrill-and-entertainment factor which makes them attractive.

Following on from this, a second is that life, for many of us, is rather routine and humdrum. We have steady jobs, nice houses, plenty of food and good things; and, while this is good, it also makes our day to day lives somewhat boring. At some point, most of us have asked the questions: Isn’t there more to life than this? Is this all there is? And, again, mysteries and conspiracy theories help to fill that gap, offering us at a harmless level entertaining diversions or, perhaps on occasion more seriously views of life and reality that appeal precisely because they seem to make the world a more interesting place.

Third, and perhaps most significant of all, two things have happened in Western society in the last fifty or so years which have made our culture particularly susceptible to the appeal of conspiracy theories. On the one hand, we all increasingly feel powerless in the face of all that is happening around us. Politicians are elected by us; but it seems to make little difference who is in power. Multinational companies, the oil industry, the international banking system, to name but three of the most influential sectors in the modern world: all of these things have served to transform the world in which we live; and we are more and more acutely aware of how little influence even our governments, let alone we as individuals, have over the events which happen on a world-scale and yet which profoundly affect our own little lives. We are left feeling powerless in the face of such forces.

On the other hand, those in power have been exposed again and again as using their power for their own ends. Politicians exposed for fraud; company executives plundering pension funds; unions infiltrated by corruption and special interests. Time and time again, the old saying that power corrupts has been shown to be true; and this has made many of us utterly cynical about those in positions of authority. From Watergate to Enron, public trust in leading citizens has been betrayed again and again; and it makes us suspicious of the motives and behaviour of anyone who has a position of power or influence.

Put these two things together – our feelings of powerlessness, and our suspicion of those with power – and you have a culture which is very receptive to the ideas put forward in many conspiracy theories. Such theories allow us to make some sort of sense of absurdities. We think Diana was too beautiful and special to die an ordinary death in an accident caused by alcohol and stupidity; given this, elaborate theories of an assassination by MI5 on the order of the Duke of Edinburgh seems not so much far-fetched as an opportunity to make even her death special. As we all struggle with rising oil prices, it is somehow easier to believe it is all part of some conscious conspiracy by a secret group of wicked individuals than to acknowledge that it is the result of impersonal, irresistible economic forces which we can neither control nor resist. And, if we are being really honest, there is a perverse way in which we feel more important when we think that somebody is taking the time and effort to deceive us in such elaborate ways. Conspiracy theories paradoxically confirm both our powerlessness and our importance.

This leads, of course, to the final question, one which relates especially to the sort of conspiracy theory put forward in The Da Vinci Code: why has the Church been a particular target for such theories over the years? There are, I think, a number of reasons. First, the Church’s beliefs and her actions have frequently been at odds with each other; only a liar or an idiot would claim that the Church has not been responsible for some terrible crimes. In this, the Church is typical of those who have been shown to use power for corrupt ends. Second, while the Church has, at times, wielded awesome power, she has also frequently appeared to be very secretive about her activities. In particular, both the Catholic Church’s arcane religious orders and its record until recent days of suppressing dissent and censoring reading material . This aura of power and secrecy, wrapped up in the outward trappings of medievalism and suppressing individual thought and conscience, make her a soft target for conspiracy theorists.

Strange to tell, the church’s own holy book, the Bible, begins with what is quite possibly the original conspiracy theorist: the serpent. In the Garden of Eden, the serpent tells Eve that God told her not to eat of the fruit of the tree in order to stop her becoming like God (look the story up in Genesis 3). In other words, God, the all-powerful one, was accused of using his power to oppress an individual. This was the original conspiracy theory; and it has been the task of the church since not to elaborate this theory but to expose it for the lie that it is.

by Grace Halsell

In Bukhara, Uzbekistan, I felt lucky to be in the home town of Ibn Sina, born in 980 and known in the West as Avicenna, a philosopher and the greatest physician of his time–indeed, the greatest name in medicine until about 1500. He wrote The Canon of Medicine, a systematic encyclopedia based on the achievements of Greek and Arab physicians: The work was translated into Latin and used as a textbook in medieval Europe.

For centuries considered the “prince of all learning,” Avicenna’s works are still studied in theological, philosophical, pharmacological and medical circles.

Walking around modern Bukhara, a city of half a million people, I reflected on the library where Avicenna studied. Now obliterated, it urns one of several private libraries in the city that were open to public use at a time when manuscripts were “published” only through the tedious labor of copyists. Writing 1000 years ago, Avicenna reports on the free use of a sultan’s royal library in Bukhara:

I found there many rooms filled with books which were arranged in cases, row upon row. One room was allotted to works on Arabic philology and poetry, another to jurisprudence and so forth, the books on each particular science having a room to themselves. I inspected the catalogue of ancient Greek authors and looked for the books which I required; I saw in this collection books of which few people have heard even the names, and which I myself have never seen either before or since.

I tried to imagine what life was like back in the days of al-Biruni, born near here, in Khiva, in 973, who searched into every branch of human knowledge: history, law, sociology, literature, ethics, philosophy, mathematics and science.

It was al-Biruni who anticipated the principles of modern geology and laid the foundation for astronomy. He composed an astronomical encyclopedia and made vital contributions to geometrical problems. Al-Biruni gave an accurate way to determine latitude and longitude, investigated the relative speeds of sound and light, and – 600 years before Galileo – discussed the possibility of the earth’s rotation around its own axis.

In Vestiges of the Past, written in the year 1000, he urges, “We must clear our minds from all causes that blind people to the truth-old customs, partisan spirit, personal rivalry or passion [and] the desire for influence, in order to be able to record historical events with objectivity and accuracy.”

Bukhara is full of impressive architectural gems, many so old that 1 felt transported back in time a thousand years. I was especially impressed by a mausoleum built by Ismail Samani, a ninth-century ruler, for his father. Both Ismail and his father are buried in this “tomb of the Samanids,” which, though small, is striking in its simplicity and beauty.

I stood in awe of the free-standing Kalyan minaret, built of honey-colored bricks that, laid in protruding and receding patterns, produce a unique texture. The minaret, rising 45 meters (150 feet) – and the tallest structure in Bukhara -stands in a small square near the massive tiled portals of a mosque and the Bukhara theological school or madrasa. In architectural perfection and beauty, I believe that nothing in our modern cities can surpass this 12th-century gem. The minaret is on UNESCO’s list of historical monuments that should be preserved as part of the world’s cultural heritage.

By the beginning of the 20th century, Bukhara had 360 mosques. Today it has only 120 mosques and madrasas, most no longer in religious use, but still preserved as monuments.

Bukhara’s sister city, Samarkand, is equally a center of learning and history. Beyond that, however, it is a gem of early city planning. Here Timur (Tamerlane) created a series of royal gardens so numerous, wrote Clavijo, a Spaniard who visited Samarkand in 1404, “that a traveler who approaches the city sees only the mountainous height of trees, and the houses embowered amongst them remain invisible.”

Timur, born near Samarkand in 1336 back to the city armies of craftsmen and artisans from the extensive lands he conquered them put to work embellishing his capital.

But it was Timur’s grandson, Ulugh made his grandfather’s capital into what had dreamed: “Samarkand the Golden, of Muslim civilization. An artist himself, Ulugh Beg enriched Samarkand with superb building such as Shah Zinde, a honeycomb of 60 mausoleums and mosques, of which 20 remains today. Domes and arches and other Islamic architectural splendors glisten with intricate Arabic calligraphy and geometric design must have dazzled the early caravan travllers just as they amaze today’s visitor.

An artist and scholar and, above all an astronomer, Ulugh Beg created an observatory in Samarkand that was one of the wonders of the world. He sought to verify and correct Ptolemy’s computations, and in so doing wrote his own Catalogue of the Stars, an encyclopedia containing the knowledge of time, the course of the stars and the position of fixed stars. His calculations, translated into Latin, were widely studied in Europe his remarkably accurate calendar brought him posthumous honor in the West when it was published in 1652 at Oxford.

Earlier year of 1974 King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, a devout Muslim, protector of the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina, and the leading proponent of Islamic unity, made a significant remark that was widely quoted in the world press. “My greatest wish before I die,” said the 70-year-old King, “is to pray in Jerusalem.”

Muslims everywhere immediately understood and sympathized with King Faisal’s wish, but to Westerners unfamiliar with the Middle East the King’s statement came as something of a surprise. Undoubtedly, many persons today know that Muslims consider Mecca and Medina, both in Saudi Arabia, as Holy Cities and that the Ka’bah, in Mecca’s Sacred Mosque, is the point toward which, five times each day, the world’s 600 million Muslims face in prayer. But Jerusalem? From both the Bible’s Old and New Testaments Westerners know Jerusalem’s deep associations with Judaism and Christianity. But what has Jerusalem to do with Islam?

The answer is: a great deal. Jerusalem is as holy a city to Muslim—and for many of the same reasons—as it is to Jews and Christians, and it also figures importantly in religious traditions particular to Islam. There are also for Muslims some 1,300 years of historical ties.

The historical ties are not completely unknown in the West. Even those with a limited exposure to Middle East history probably know that in the year 637—13 centuries ago—crusading Muslims from Arabia besieged Jerusalem, accepted the surrender of its Byzantine overlords and ruled there almost continually until the Christian Crusaders from Europe came in 1099. They probably recall too that less than a century later Saladin, the gallant Muslim leader famous for his encounters with Richard the Lion Hearted, recaptured Jerusalem from the Europeans and that the subsequent Arab dynasties and later the Ottoman Turks, who controlled the Holy City up to World War I, were Muslim.

What has escaped the casual reader, however, is that Islam’s religious ties with the Holy City are equally long and much deeper. How many Western pundits now puzzling over King Faisal’s statement realize that the large rock atop Mount Moriah in Jerusalem, where tradition says Abraham prepared to sacrifice his son, is also holy to Muslims because they believe it is the place from which Muhammad began his ascent to Heaven? Or that Arabs too believe they are descended from Abraham, prophet and father of the Jews, that they too revere him as a prophet and that he is mentioned in the Holy Koran as being a Muslim? And how many realize that John the Baptist and Jesus are also both accepted and revered by Muslims as prophets?

This lack of understanding, widespread and of long duration, is due in part to the historic hostility of Western nations toward Islam, a hostility probably originally engendered by Islam’s attempts in distant centuries to conquer Europe. As one result, Western religious history rarely mentions that Muslims, Christians and Jews share many nearly identical beliefs—such as the oneness of God, the need for total submission to His will and the clash of good and evil—and that in Islam, the last of the three great monotheistic religions, many of the individuals, events and places sacred to Jews and Christians are equally sacred to Muslims.

The Prophet Muhammad, to whom God revealed His truths, grew up in Mecca, then a center of pagan idolatry although both Judaism and Christianity, being Semitic religions, were known in Arabia. Muhammad was a ready instrument when God, in the year 610, spoke to him through the Archangel Gabriel—himself familiar to many Christians—and entrusted to Muhammad His final revelations, a confirmation of the Abrahamic line of revelations, the message of Islam.

This aspect of Muslim belief is crucial to any understanding of a Muslim presence in Jerusalem. For Muhammad, from the beginning, emphasized that he was only the last in a long line of prophets through whom God has spoken to mankind, and that he was only completing and fulfilling God’s often-revealed message. Thus he taught reverence for the prophets of the Old and New Testaments and respect for Jews and Christians as fellow monotheists and “People of the Book.” In the Holy Koran, which is God’s word as He revealed it to Muhammad, Biblical figures such as Adam, Noah, David and Solomon, and prophets such as Elijah, Moses, John the Baptist and Jesus, with his mother Mary, all have their place. To put it another way, their ties to Jerusalem are also Islam’s ties.

Above all, Muhammad stressed reverence toward Abraham, father of the Jews and Arabs.

According to Muslim belief, Arabs are descendants of Abraham through his son Ishmael, as Jews are descendants of Abraham through Isaac. Indeed, Abraham, according to the Koran, was a Muslim himself. When, on God’s command, Abraham took his son to a rocky summit and prepared unflinchingly to sacrifice him to the one God, it could be considered, as the first example of complete submission to God’s will—the essence of Muslim belief—a starting point of Islam. As Sura 16, verse 120 of the Koran says, “Abraham was indeed a model, devoutly obedient to God, true in faith, and he joined not gods with God.”

Later, as God continued to reveal the message of Islam to Muhammad, the ties to Jerusalem became more direct. One night God, through the Archangel Gabriel, summoned Muhammad from Mecca to Jerusalem on a Nocturnal Journey (Isra’). According to Muslim belief, Muhammad was carried aloft on the back of a winged mare named al-Buraq to Mount Moriah and the Holy Rock. From its summit he ascended (Mi’raj) through the stages of Heaven, meeting and praying with the previous prophets including Abraham, Moses and Jesus. In the Seventh Heaven Muhammad appeared before the throne of God, Who spoke to him. The Prophet then returned to the Holy Rock and, mounting al-Buraq, was back in Mecca by dawn.

As the embarkation point for this journey to God, Jerusalem thus became even more established as a Holy City. As Sura 17, verse 1 of the Koran says, “Glory be to Him, who carried His servant by night from the Sacred Mosque (Mecca) to the Farthest Mosque (Jerusalem), the precincts of which We have blessed, that We might show him some of Our signs …” Indeed, for a short time early in their history Muslims prayed toward Jerusalem, and it is called in Arabic Ula al-Qihlatain, “First of the two Qiblas,” —”directions”—the second being Mecca. It is also called al-Quds ash-Sharif, “the Holy and Noble City,” or simply, al-Quds, “the Holy.” In addition to the Koranic blessing, there is a Hadith, or saying attributed to the Prophet, that Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem are equally deserving of pilgrimage.

For all those reasons, it was inevitable that the Muslims would want to implement their spiritual rights to Jerusalem. In 637 they did. By that time, the empires of Persia and Byzantium, successor to Rome, were deadlocked after years of exhausting struggle to control what is now the Middle East. And although Muhammad had died, the faith of his followers was such that they had routed the Byzantine forces from every major city between the Tigris and the Mediterranean except Jerusalem. Now, in 637, they approached the city, pitched their tents on the Mount of Olives and prepared to take it.

Inside the walls of Jerusalem, then called by its Roman name, Aelia Capitolina, the Byzantines, nearly defenseless, debated whether to surrender or fight—as they had 20 years before when the Persians were at the gates, resulting in ruthless and indiscriminate slaughter. Those arguing for surrender pointed out that when Damascus fell to the Muslim armies two years before, there had been no slaughter. Furthermore the terms of surrender had been extremely lenient, with Christians being allowed to continue praying in their churches upon the payment of a poll tax which guaranteed for them as well as Muslim citizens, the “Security of Islam.”

As news of this had leaked into besieged Jerusalem, the Greek Patriarch, Sophronius, sent word out that he would surrender the city without a struggle, but only to the Caliph Omar personally. Omar, then in Damascus, agreed and in one of the great scenes of Muslim history entered Jerusalem alone, except for a servant. Because his clothes were torn and dusty from the ride from Damascus, and because his manner to his servant was so courteous, the Byzantines, arrayed in pompous splendor to meet him, assumed the servant was Omar and greeted him effusively—to the quiet amusement of the Caliph. Thus did Islam come to Jerusalem.

Omar’s behavior on that occasion was symbolic of his later approach to the Christians and to Jerusalem. Once his identity was clarified, Omar asked Sophronius to show him the city’s holy places, and Sophronius led him first to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. As it was prayer time the Patriarch invited the Caliph to pray there with him. Omar declined, saying that to do so might later encourage his followers to convert the church into a mosque. Instead he prayed outside a little to the south, a place commemorated today by a 10th-century mosque called the Mosque of Omar and built in a small garden across the courtyard from the entrance of the Holy Sepulchre. (Aramco World, March-April, 1965).

As the Caliph Omar was especially eager to see the site of the Prophet’s ascendance to Heaven, the Patriarch led him to an ancient, crumbling platform on the eastern edge of the city. Seeing that it was piled with the debris of the Persian destruction and more recent accumulations of municipal refuge, Omar personally began the task of clearing the rocky summit so that the site could be reconsecrated. This area today is in the center of a 34-acre compound in the southeast corner of the Old City called al-Haram ash-Sharif, “the Noble Sanctuary.” The whole area in Omar’s time was known as al-Aqsa, “the Furthermost,” a reference to Muhammad’s ultimate journey. The Caliph ordered that a simple wooden mosque be built on the southwestern corner of the platform near the great wall where, tradition held, the Prophet had tethered his mare al-Buraq.

Traveling with the Muslim army was a man named Bilal, who had been the Prophet’s own muezzin, or prayer caller. On the first Friday after the discovery of the sacred rock, Omar went to the enclosure to worship and there Bilal himself, for the first time since Muhammad’s death six years previously, called the faithful to prayer. Al-Quds, Holy Jerusalem, was in Muslim hands.

Omar’s covenant with the Byzantines of Jerusalem followed the pattern of Damascus. With the payment of the poll tax and the acceptance of the “Security of Islam,” Christians were given self-government under their ecclesiastical leaders and Christian pilgrimages from the West were permitted. This is part of the text of Omar’s treaty:

“In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. This is the covenant which Omar Ibn al-Khattab, the servant of Allah, the Commander of the Faithful, grants to the people of Aelia, the Holy House. He grants them security of their lives, their possessions, their churches and crosses . . . they shall have freedom of religion and none shall be molested unless they rise up in a body. . . They shall pay a tax instead of military service . . . and those who leave the city shall be safeguarded until they reach their destination. . .”

As John Gray, an English historian, puts it, Omar’s decree was “less of a treaty imposed by a conqueror than a guarantee by a victorious faith confident in its inherent strength and conscious of its responsibilities.”

In the years that followed, Omar’s successors set to work on what is possibly Islam’s most beautiful shrine: the Dome of the Rock, so called because it encloses the rock from which Muhammad ascended. Built during the reign of the Caliph ‘Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, it was finished in 691, and is one of Islam’s oldest existing monuments. Despite extensive modifications and repairs throughout the centuries it is today essentially the same: a magnificent structure with a great golden dome that, until the present government began to build high-rise apartment houses on surrounding hilltops, dominated the city’s skyline.

Close by the Dome of the Rock is the also famous Aqsa Mosque. Built near the site of Omar’s wooden mosque in 715, al-Aqsa has a special place in Muslim affections, because by unspoken tradition it is more a house of prayer than a monument. Five thousand worshipers can pray inside. Remarkably, these two edifices, the main symbols of the Muslim presence in Jerusalem, have survived all the difficult centuries that followed.

The pattern of religious tolerance established in Jerusalem by Omar and maintained by the Umayyad caliphs became uncertain under their Abbasid successors, deteriorated further under the Fatimids and vanished in 1099, when the Crusaders captured the Holy City (Aramco World, May-June, 1970). Not only did the European conquerors massacre all but a handful of Jerusalem’s Muslim defenders, but also burned the small Jewish community in its synagogue and slaughtered great numbers of Arab and Orthodox Christians. The Crusaders also converted the Muslim shrines to churches. A gold cross was raised on top of the Dome of the Rock, which the Crusaders then named the Templum Domini. Another was placed on the dome of al-Aqsa Mosque, which was named the Templum Solomonis and became the headquarters of the militant religious order, the Knights Templar.

But if defeated, the Muslims were not conquered. In 1187 under the great Saladin, they decisively defeated the Crusaders at Hattin near Galilee and, on October 2, the anniversary of the Prophet’s Nocturnal Journey, rode back into Jerusalem. Then, fulfilling the vow of his predecessor Nur ad-Din, who had dedicated a magnificent cedarwood minbar, or pulpit, made in Aleppo to the capture of the city, Saladin installed the pulpit in al-Aqsa Mosque. Though isolated coastal outposts remained in Christian control up to 1291, al-Quds, the Holy, was again part of the Muslim empire.

Under Saladin, whose chivalry was a legend even among his enemies, the tolerance of Omar was restored. His merciful occupation of the city was in glaring contrast to the policies of the Crusader conquest. He spared all lives, offered the “Security of Islam” to those who sought it and, although removing the crosses and altars from the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa, left all other Christian shrines intact.

During the Ayyubid dynasty, which came next, it became traditional that at times the various sultans would clean al-Aqsa with their own hands before dispensing alms. The sultans of the Mameluke dynasty, which came to power in the 13th century, assumed the title “Servants and Guardians” of the holy places in Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem. They were notable not only for the substantial restorations and redecorations they carried out in both of Jerusalem’s two major shrines, but also for the steps they took to provide for their future. The Mamelukes purchased substantial properties in Jerusalem, especially in the Magharibah quarter just west of the Noble Sanctuary, and through the establishment of waqfs, or perpetual sacred trusts (Aramco World, Nov.-Dec, 1973), dedicated their income to finance the upkeep of the holy places and establish, maintain and operate Muslim schools, religious institutes, pilgrim hospices and kitchens for the poor. Those institutions, plus the homes and neighborhood mosques of the devout who settled close to the two great mosques, made up an intimate, if humble, part of the Muslim presence for five centuries.

Today this presence, if weakened, is still obvious, particularly in al-Haram ash-Sharif, “the Noble Sanctuary.” On or near this site, to be sure, there occurred some of the great events of Biblical history. It was here that tradition says King Solomon built the Temple. It was here, Christians believe, that the boy Jesus was found by Mary and Joseph preaching to the elders and that he later chased the money changers from the Temple. But it should be remembered that it is a central site for Muslims too, being the holy spot from which Muhammad ascended to Heaven to pray with former prophets and appear before the throne of God.

Within the Dome of the Rock, in a small cave beneath the rocky summit of Mount Moriah are Muslim shrines to Abraham and Elijah. Here, tradition says, is the site of the Last Judgment. Beneath it is the Well of Souls, where spirits await the Day of Judgment in prayer and apprehension. And scattered about the Sanctuary are other shrines which, with quiet eloquence, remind Western visitors of how many more of their own traditions are shared by Muslims: the Dome of Moses, the Dome of Solomon, the Dome of Gabriel—all built by Muslim caliphs through the centuries. In the far corner is a small dome to mark the spot where, Muslim tradition says, Mary and the infant Jesus rested before starting down to Egypt. Across the valley on the Mount of Olives, a small mosque commemorates the site of his ascension to Heaven. Around the edge of the platform are a series of graceful arches, the mawazeen, from which, according to tradition, the balance scales will be hung on the Day of Judgment. Toward the south is the silver dome of al-Aqsa, “the Furthermost,” the blessed mosque, now being patiently restored after it was severely damaged by arson in 1969, in which every devout Muslim hopes to pray.

And in the center, towering above all, is the Dome of the Rock, Islam’s holy shrine built on a rocky mountain top above which Abraham, Jesus and Muhammad worshiped together and where, before he dies, an aging King hopes some day to pray.

The Ka’ba is a cubical structure located at the center of Masjid al-Haram in Mecca. The Baqara verse, revealed to the Prophet Muhammad, established the Ka’ba as the direction (qibla) towards which Muslims must address their five daily prayers, and as the destination of annual pilgrimage, or hajj, required once in the lifetime of every Muslim.

Each year, worshippers gather in the courtyard of Masjid al-Haram and encircle the Ka’ba seven times (tawaf), during which they kiss and touch the Black Stone (al-Hajar al-Aswad), a Muslim object of veneration embedded in the eastern corner of the Ka’ba. As it stands today, the cubical structure is fifteen meters tall and measures ten and a half meters by twelve meters on the exterior. It is oriented such that its four corners align roughly with north, south, east and west.

View of the Ka’ba from south showing the black kiswa, embroidered with Quranic verses in gold thread

The structure predates Islam and is believed to have been first built by the Prophet Abraham and his son Ismail, although there are no archaeological findings to support this argument. It is known, however, that the pre-Islamic Ka’ba was rebuilt several times by the tribes ruling Mecca, who used it to house sacred objects, including the Black Stone. During the lifetime of Prophet Muhammad, the Quraysh tribe rebuilt the Ka’ba with alternating courses of stone and wood. The inner space was divided into two rooms, one of which housed the Black Stone. The interior walls were decorated with paintings of Abraham, Mary, Jesus, angels, prophets and trees; and the exterior was covered with the habrat cloth from Yemen.

During the conflict between Ibn Zubayr, ruler of Mecca, and Umayyad Caliph Mu’awiyah, the Ka’ba was set to fire. The Black Stone broke into three pieces and its parts were reassembled with silver by Ibn Zubayr. Ibn Zubayr also ordered the rebuilding of the Ka’ba in stone, in accordance with its original dimensions believed to be set by Abraham, and paved the open space around it. The shrine at this time had two doors and a wooden staircase for roof access. In 692, after taking over Mecca, Umayyad Caliph Abdul Malik bin demolished the Ka’ba and rebuilt it based on the Qurayshi version.

The Abbasid Caliphs contributed to the design of the Ka’ba by covering it with the kiswa, a black cloth brought from Tanis in Egypt. The kiswa comprised of eight curtains (a pair on each side of the cube) embroidered with gold calligraphy expressing the Muslim shahada, or oath, “There is no God but Allah and Muhammed is the Prophet of Allah.”

Following Mamluk rule of the Hijaz, which lasted from 1269 to 1517, Mecca came under the control of the Ottoman Sultans. In 1553, Sultan Süleyman I (1520-1566) renovated the roof of the Ka’ba and ordered the wooden ceiling painted with golden calligraphy and floral patterns. Damaged in a flood in 1611, the Ka’ba was rebuilt once again by Sultan Murad IV (1623-1640) in 1629. The new foundation was laid according to Abraham’s plan, while the upper structure was built with large granite blocks resting on a twenty-five centimeters high marble base. Three columns were built to support the roof on the inside; they were covered with golden decorations. Silver and golden lamps were suspended from the ceiling. At this time, the silver door offered by Sultan Süleyman I was placed off-center on the northeast wall, two meters above ground level. The Ka’ba was then covered with two kiswas, a red cloth covered with a black one, that were annually replaced.

On the southwest side of the Ka’ba is a semi-circular wall about one and a quarter meters tall, which represents its border (al-hatim) as built by Abraham. The Black Stone is embedded in the eastern corner, one and a half meters above the ground. During the first Saudi extension to Masjid al-Haram in 1976, the interior of the Ka’ba was decorated with gold geometric motifs and inscribed with Quranic verses.

Sources:

Al-Hariri-Rifai, Mokhless. 1990. The Heritage of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Singapore: Eurasia Press, 200-212.

Creswell, K.A.C. 1989. A Short Account of Early Muslim Architecture. Aldershot: Scholar Press, 3-4.

Damluji, Salma Samar (ed). 1998. The Architecture of the Holy Mosque Makkah. London: Hazar Publishing Limited.

The Sinbad Stories

by Samuel Pickering 

The Arabian Nights appeared in English in the 1740’s when John Newbery began publishing children’s books in London, and by the end of the century three tales from the Nights had established themselves as children’s “classics” in both Great Britain and the United States: Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp and, perhaps the most popular in the New World, Sinbad the Sailor.

Sinbad first appeared in an American children’s book in 1770, when a portion of the third voyage – in which he killed a cyclops – was tacked on to a version of Jack the Giant-killer.

Jack-the-Giant-killer was not the only adventurer with whom Sinbad associated in children’s books. Much as Sinbad’s third voyage had been tacked on to the account of Jack and the giants, an early American children’s book added The Celebrated Travels and Adventures of the Renowned Baron Munchausen to the end of an account of Sinbad’s voyages.

Since Munchausen and Sinbad always traveled to new lands, American children could easily identify themselves with them. America, then, was a new land and thus the youngsters could easily imagine themselves journeying into the unknown. To the west were broad plains, and beyond stood uncharted mountains – just the sort of place where a Roc might build her nest – while to the north there were vast fields of ice and to the south deep swamps crawling with alligators and snakes.

To American children of that era, therefore, Sinbad was believable. More important, he was reassuring; because in early America infant mortality was very high and death hovered over childhood like an ogre, Sinbad’s victories offered reassurance and hope. Buried alive in the Cavern of the Dead, for example, Sinbad simply refused to die and finding a way out of the cave metaphorically overcomes death itself. As Sinbad escapes the tomb and returns to Bagdad wealthier than before, so a determined child might hope to escape the clutches of death and look forward to a richly rewarding life.

This reassurance, of course, is true of many fairy tales. Jack-the-Giant-killer suggests that by using their intelligence, underdogs can overcome oppressive, threatening forces or people. And as Jack tricks giants, so does Br’er Rabbit outwit foxes, Puss in Boots fool ogres and Sinbad escape monsters: serpents with bodies thicker than the trunks of palm trees, cannibals who fatten his comrades like sheep and eat them, and the Old Man of the Sea wrapping his legs around Sinbad’s neck like an iron yoke.

To adults, the Sinbad stories have a deeper appeal; simultaneously they touch both our duties and our dreams, the adult and the child.

At the beginning of the tales, Sinbad the Porter, staggering under a heavy burden, rests outside a magnificent palace, and laments his laborious lot in life. Suddenly a page invites him inside where he meets the owner – and his namesake – Sinbad the Sailor, and for seven days is entertained with accounts of Sinbad the Sailor’s fabulous travels. In addition Sinbad the Sailor gives Sinbad the Porter 100 pieces of gold at the end of each visit. The two Sinbads, then, represent two aspects in everyone, one a responsible citizen, the other an adventurer. The two Sinbads meet in the morning and enjoy each other’s company throughout the day, but at night go separate ways as in life dreams and responsibilities often diverge and pull a man in different directions.

Today, Sinbad’s appeal to adults may be even stronger than it was to children. Although it is impossible to match Sinbad’s discoveries – a valley glittering with diamonds – or adventures – sailing across the sea on the back of a whale, and flying through the air tied to a Roc’s leg, many men – and women – still search for excitement. Across the globe groups of aspiring Sinbads clamber over icebergs in Antarctica, back-pack through the Himalayas, or snorkel in the Great Barrier Reef. By making seven voyages, one for each day in the week, Sinbad symbolically traveled forever. So long as man lives, Tennyson implies, he will dream:

“Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.”

Tennyson, of course, was speaking for Ulysses, but he might well be speaking for Timothy Severin, too, who, not content to “rust unburnished,” has set out to prove that though the Sinbad voyages may have been dreams, they were not myths.

“The physical axis of the Muslim world, a focal point toward which Muslims all over the world pray five times a day…”

Of all the questions asked by Westerners about Muslim beliefs, one of the hardest to answer adequately is: “What exactly is the Ka’bah ?”

In purely physical terms, the answer is easy: the Ka’bah is a stone structure about 50 feet high, roughly cubical in shape, which sits in the middle of the vast courtyard of Mecca’s Sacred Mosque, its four corners more or less aligned with the cardinal points of the compass. Alongside the northwestern wall of the Ka’bah is an open area—the Hijr—enclosed by a semicircular wall and containing the traditional sites of the tombs of Hagar, wife of Abraham, and Ishmael, their son. Inside the structure there is an empty chamber and in the southeastern corner of the exterior wall there is, embedded in the wall in a silver frame, a fragment of polished black stone called simply the Hajar al-Aswad , the Black Stone.

After the rise of Islam it became customary to cover the Ka’bah with a cloth, the color of which varied with the color of the banner of the reigning caliph. Now it is draped with a black cloth—the Kiswah—on which are embroidered verses from the Koran in gold thread. Renewed each year, the Kiswahs were formerly made in Egypt and sent to Mecca with the annual Egyptian caravan. Now they are woven in a special Saudi Arabian Government factory in Mecca itself. Over 80 craftsmen weave the more than 2,500 feet of material required on handlooms and embroider it with verses from the Koran in magnificent calligraphy. The finished cloth weighs almost 5.000 pounds.

Each year on the eve of the Pilgrimage dignitaries from the Muslim world wash the Ka’bah thoroughly and sweep the chamber. Later, on the 10th of the month of Dhu al-Hijjah , during the Pilgrimage, the Ka’bah receives its new draping.

In comparison with the architectural extravagance of Christian cathedrals and basilicas—St. Paul’s, Notre Dame, St. Peter’s—the simple construction and relatively modest dimensions of the Ka’bah might strike some observers as unimpressive. Yet its very simplicity, as Muhammad Asad (see p. 14) wrote, is its incomparable glory. “There it stood, almost a perfect cube … entirely covered with black brocade, a quiet island in the middle of the vast quadrangle of the mosque: much quieter than any other work of architecture anywhere in the world. It would almost appear that he who first built the Ka’bah—for since the time of Abraham the original structure has been rebuilt several times in the same shape—wanted to create a parable of man’s humility before God. The builder knew that no beauty of architectural rhythm and no perfection of line, however great, could ever do justice to the idea of God: and so he confined himself to the simplest three-dimensional form imaginable—a cube of stone.”

In historical and spiritual terms, the answer is more difficult. For the Ka’bah—”the House of God”—is not a temple, not a church, not a shrine. Not, at least, in the usual sense. It is rather the physical axis of the Muslim world, a focal point toward which Muslims all over the world pray five times a day and around which pilgrims to Mecca must perform the Tawaf . It is a symbol, as Muhammad Asad wrote, “of God’s oneness; and the pilgrim’s bodily movement around it is a symbolic expression of human activity, implying that not only our thoughts and feelings—all that is comprised in the term ‘inner life’—but also our outward, active life, our doings and practical endeavors must have God as their center.”

In the Koran, the significance of the Ka’bah is fundamental—as Sura II, verse 25 makes clear: “Remember We made the House a place of assembly for men and a place of safety; and take ye the Place of Abraham as a place of prayer, and We convenanted with Abraham and Ishmael that they should sanctify My House for those who compass it round, or use it as a retreat, or bow, or prostrate themselves (therein in prayer).”

The Ka’bah is also referred to in the Koran as the “first house established for mankind,” meaning, according to the foremost medieval commentator on the Koran, al-Tabari, that it is the first building ever consecrated to the worship of God.

In medieval times popular legend held that the Ka’bah was created before the earth and floated for 1,000 years upon the surface of the waters covering the earth, coming to rest in Mecca only when the waters receded and the earth emerged. Thus the Ka’bah was already in place when Adam and Eve, after their expulsion from Paradise, made the first Pilgrimage as atonement for their sins. Such traditions, however, are rarely given much attention by Muslim historians anymore, and even less credence. To them what occurred before Abraham is of doubtful historicity. As Ismail Nawwab says (see p.12), “It all begins with Abraham.”

There are also varying traditions about the Black Stone, which Muslims on the Pilgrimage either kiss or touch. One legend, widely diffused, states that the Black Stone was a precious jewel taken out of Paradise by Adam and put into the corner of the Ka’bah when he made the first Pilgrimage. Another, noted by al-Azraqi, the oldest historian of Mecca, says that the stone was given to Ishmael by the Angel Gabriel.

Because of such stories. Westerners frequently misinterpret and overemphasize the significance of the stone. To quote Muhammad Asad again: “This Black Stone… has been the cause of much misunderstanding among non-Muslims, who believe it to be a fetish taken over by Muhammad as a concession to the pagan Meccans. Nothing could be further from the truth. Just as the Ka’bah is an object of reverence but not of worship, so too is the Black Stone. It is revered as the only remnant of Abraham’s original building; and because the lips of Muhammad touched it on his Farewell Pilgrimage, all pilgrims have done the same ever since.”

This misunderstanding is not new. In the year 929 the Carmathians, an heretical sect based in al-Hasa, in eastern Arabia, sacked Mecca and carried the stone off with them in hope of attracting pilgrims to al-Hasa rather than Mecca. But although they held the stone more than 20 years, the attempt failed, as orthodox Muslims attached little significance to the Black Stone itself. As the Caliph Omar said, “I know that you are a stone, incapable of doing good or harm. Had I not seen the Messenger of God kissing you, I would not have done so.”

Ibn Fadhlan and the Midnight Sun

‘On …going back to my house, I looked at my beard. It was a single lump of ice and I had to thaw it in front of the fire.’

Early in A.D. 920, the Abbasid Caliph al-Muqtadir received a letter from the king of the Slavs, who ruled in an area of Russia north of today’s Kazan. The king asked the caliph to send someone to instruct him in the True Faith, to teach him the laws of Islam, and to build him a mosque. As the Slavic lands in those days were both distant and unknown, the caliph pondered the request for more than a year. At last, however, he decided to grant it and on June 21, the next year, the caliph’s ambassador Nadhir al-Harami and his retinue set out from Baghdad. Not much is known about the results of the mission; the ambassador’s official report has not survived. But the expedition did produce one fascinating document: a detailed chronicle of the 2,500-mile trip written by the ambassador’s secretary, Ibn Fadhlan. This account is one of the first since Roman times to provide a description of the harsh and arid steppes of Russia. It includes, as Ibn Fadhlan himself said, “all that I witnessed in the countries of the Turks, the Khazars, the Rus, the Slavs, the Bashkirs and others, regarding their religious beliefs, their kings, and the general state of their affairs.” He also described the personal experiences of the trip, particularly the extremes of weather – astonishing to a man from the hot lowlands of Baghdad.

After leaving Bukhara, now in the Soviet Union, Ibn Fadhlan was hardly able to believe the cold as they headed north – some 400 miles – and spent three months in “al-Jurjaniya” near modern Kungrad just south of the Aral Sea.

“I was told that two men had set out with a dozen camels intending to load them with wood in the forest, but they forgot to take flint and steel with them. They had to spend the night without fire and by morning they and their camels were dead from the violence of the cold. I saw how much the intense cold makes itself felt in this country…the streets and markets are empty and one can walk almost anywhere without meeting a soul. On leaving the hammam and going back to my house, I looked at my beard. It was a single lump of ice and I had to thaw it in front of the fire. I slept…wrapped in clothes and furs, but in spite of that my cheek stuck to my pillow In this country I saw…the earth split and great crevices form through the intensity of the cold, and I saw a huge tree split into two halves for the same reason.”

At last, in February the Amu-Darya River began to thaw and Ibn Fadhlan’s party made preparations to set out northeastwards. They bought shaggy Bactrian camels and huge quantities of food and, despite the warnings of the locals, who said they would never return, set out again. They soon found, Ibn Fadhlan admits, that the locals had not exaggerated. When they reached the area north of the Caspian Sea they found that the cold of the journey made the previous months seem “like the days of summer.” They also found that they had to dress more warmly: “Each of us had on a tunic and over that a kaftan and over that a sheepskin robe and over that a felt cloak and over that a burnoose – after which only our two eyes showed. We also wore a pair of ordinary trousers and a pair of fur lined ones, slippers, light boots, and over those boots more boots, so that each of us on mounting his camel found he could hardly move because of all the clothes.”

So they traveled until they came into the land of the Oghuz Turks, between the Caspian Sea and the Ural Mountains. The Oghuz, Ibn Fadhlan said, “were nomads, possessors of tents of hair, who move from place to place. Their tents are to be seen now here, now there, as is the way of nomads, depending on their wanderings. They live in the greatest poverty…”

On the other hand, Ibn Fadhlan noticed, the Oghuz owned vast herds of animals. “I saw people who owned 10,000 horses and 100,000 sheep,” he wrote. Ibn Fadhlan was also distressed to learn that the Oghuz knew little of Islam and attempted to Bead them the Koran and explain the rudiments of the faith to them. Later, when he reached the tents of Etrek, the Oghuz general, Ibn Fadhlan presented letters urging Etrek to convert to Islam; the letters were from Nadhir al-Harami, who was traveling by another route.

Etrek’s response was not very satisfactory. He said to the interpreter: “I don’t want to say anything until your return journey when I will write to the caliph and tell him what I have decided to do.” It isn’t known what he eventually decided, but the final outcome was satisfactory. About 100 years later the Oghuz embraced Islam and became one of the most staunchly Muslim of the Turkish tribes.

Moving northwest into the area between the Ural and the Volga rivers, Ibn Fadhlan came into the territory of the Pechenegs, another Turkish tribe, and eventually, on May 12, 922, after nearly 11 months of travel, reached the tents of the king of the Slavs and presented the caliphs letter. He also distributed gifts, including “scents, cloth and pearls intended for his wife..”

During the following days, the Baghdad mission discussed religion – and money. The king wanted the caliph to give him money for a fortress as well as for a mosque. Ibn Fadhlan pointed out that the country was rich. The king countered that money which was given him by the caliph would be blessed and the castle built with it would be sure of victory. They agreed to disagree.

During this period, Ibn Fadhlan also observed and explored the surroundings, and obviously believed in finding explanations for phenomena new to him. He was very much impressed by the Northern Lights, for example, and asked the king about them. “He maintained that his ancestors used to say: ‘They are the believing jinns and the infidel jinns; every night they fight and have done so since the Creation..’”

In this land of the midnight sun, Ibn Fadhlan was struck by the short Arctic nights – and the impact this had on the Muslim need to pray five times a day. “One day I went to my tent in order to talk with the king’s tailor, who was originally from Baghdad. We talked for less time than it takes to read a seventh of the Koran, while we waited for the call to evening prayer. Suddenly we heard the call and went out of the tent; day was breaking. I said to the muezzin: ‘What prayer did you call?’ ‘The dawn prayer’, he said. ‘And the evening prayer?’ ‘We say it with the sunset one.’ ‘And during the night?’ ‘The night is as you see. It has been even shorter than tonight, for it has already begun to lengthen.’”

Ibn Fadhlan goes on to give a great deal more interesting information on the country its flora and fauna, its social customs, the food and drink and dress of the various tribes and so on. His descriptions are extremely lively and his accuracy wherever it can be checked, amazing. Unlike later medieval travelers, whose accounts tend to run riot with implausible detail, Ibn Fadhlan mentions only one marvel: the bones of a “giant” – possibly the remains of a mammoth. But the most interesting sections of his chronicle deal with another people who traded with the Slavs: “the Rus” – probably one of the Scandinavian tribes and in any case a tribe later involved in the founding of the city-states of Novgorod and Kiev, the heartland of Old Russia. The most famous of these tribes were the Vikings, who at that time were terrorizing the coasts of England and Ireland and even raiding as far as North Africa and the Mediterranean.

By the time of Ibn Fadhlans journey the Vikings were also trading fur, amber and other goods over a huge area of Europe. It is reasonably sure too that they were already sailing the Atlantic to the New World by 922; just last year, an amateur archeologist, a British historian and a British numismatist identified a coin found in Maine in 1961 as an 11th-century Viking penny. By then too the Vikings had established themselves in Normandy – from where, as the Normans, they would invade England again in 1066 and, not much later, conquer Sicily and parts of Spain and Italy. Ibn Fadhlans description of the Rus, however, is one of the few that treats them as traders rather than bloodthirsty raiders and was written just before the time of their greatest expansion.

“I saw the Rus who had come to trade. I have never seen men with bodies as beautiful as theirs – they were like palm trees. They are fair and their skin white and red. They wear neither tunics nor kaftans, but the men have a garment which covers one side of their bodies and leaves one hand free. Each of them has an axe, a broadsword and a knife, and they are never without these things… Their swords have very broad blades, grooved, like the Frankish broadswords. From the tips of their fingers to their necks they are tattooed in green with trees, figures, and so on. “All of the women wear on their bosom a kind of box [perhaps the enormous embossed brooches which secured their dresses and cloaks] of iron, silver, copper, gold, or wood, depending upon the wealth of their husband and their social position. In each box is a circle to which a knife is attached, which hangs at their breast.”

Like other writers after him, Ibn Fadhlan was fascinated by Viking funerals and describes at length a dead chieftain who was laid in his longship, his sword at his side and all his worldly goods beside him; how his dogs, cattle, horses, and slave girls were sacrificed to keep him company; and finally how the boat and its contents were set on fire. When only ashes were left, they built a barrow “like a round hill, and in the center they set up a great tablet of wood with the name of the man and that of the king of the Rus; and then they went away.”

Ibn Fadhlans observant account agrees very well with other evidence about the Northmen but is much more vivid and detailed. As with the rest of his chronicle, his story recreates the barbarous splendor of life 1,000 years ago as seen through the eyes of a sophisticated diplomat from Baghdad – a man whose reactions were in many ways just like our own.

Why Jerusalem Was Central to Muhammad

by Karen Armstrong 

Jerusalem was central to the spiritual identity of Muslims from the very beginning of their faith. When the Prophet Muhammad first began to preach in Mecca in about 612, according to the earliest biographies, which are our primary source of information about him, he had his converts prostrate themselves in prayer in the direction of Jerusalem. They were symbolically reaching out toward the Jewish and Christian God, whom they were committed to worshipping, and turning their back on the paganism of Arabia. Muhammad never believed that he was founding a new religion that canceled out the previous faiths. He was convinced that he was simply bringing the old religion of the One God to the Arabs, who had never been sent a prophet before.

Consequently, the Koran, the inspired scripture that Muhammad brought to the Arabs, venerates the great prophets of the Judeo-Christian tradition. It speaks of Solomon’s “great place of prayer” in Jerusalem, which the first Muslims called City of the Temple. Only after the Jews of Medina rejected Muhammad did he switch orientation and instruct his adherents to pray facing Mecca, whose ancient shrine, the Kabah, was thought by locals to have been built by Abraham and his son Ishmael, the father of the Arabs.

The centrality of Jerusalem in Muslim spirituality is apparent in the story of Muhammad’s mystical Night Journey to Jerusalem. Muslim texts make it clear that this was not a physical experience but a visionary one (not dissimilar to the heavenly visions of the Jewish Throne Mystics at this time). One night Muhammad was conveyed miraculously from the Kabah to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. There he was welcomed by all the great prophets of the past before ascending through the seven heavens. On his way up he sought the advice of Moses, Aaron, Enoch, Jesus, John the Baptist and Abraham before entering the presence of God. The story shows the yearning of the Muslims to come from far-off Arabia right into the heart of the monotheistic family, symbolized by Jerusalem.

Respect for other faiths was manifest in Islamic Jerusalem. When Caliph Umar, one of Muhammad’s successors, conquered the Jerusalem of the Christian Byzantines in 638, he insisted that the three faiths of Abraham coexist. He refused to pray in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher when he was escorted around the city by the Greek Orthodox Patriarch. Had he done so, he explained, the Muslims would have wanted to build a mosque there to commemorate the first Islamic prayer in Jerusalem.

The Jews found their new Muslim rulers far more congenial than the Byzantines. The Christians had never allowed the Jews to reside permanently in the city, whereas Umar invited 70 Jewish families back. The Byzantines had left the Jewish Temple in ruins and had even begun to use the Temple Mount as a garbage dump.

Umar, according to a variety of accounts, was horrified to see this desecration. He helped clear it with his own hands, reconsecrated the platform and built a simple wooden mosque on the southern end, site of al-Aqsa Mosque today.

Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock, built by Caliph Abd al-Malik in 691, was the first great building to be constructed in the Islamic world. It symbolizes the ascent that all Muslims must make to God, whose perfection and eternity are represented by the circle of the great golden dome. Other Islamic shrines on the Temple Mount, which Muslims call al-Haram al-Sharif, the Most Noble Sanctuary, were devoted to David, Solomon and Jesus.

After the bloodbath of the Crusades, when Saladin reconquered Jerusalem for Islam in 1187, the Jews (barred from the city by the Crusaders) were invited to return, and even the Western Christians, who had supported the crusading atrocities, were allowed back. In the 16th century, Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent permitted the Jews to make the Western Wall their official holy place and had his court architect Sinan build an oratory for them there.

So why the rejectionism that some Muslims in Jerusalem display today? In history, a holy city has always become more precious to a people after they have lost it. In the struggle for survival, the more compassionate traditions tend to get lost. As Muslims the world over feel that Jerusalem is slipping from their grasp, some espouse an intolerance that is far from the Koranic spirit. In an age in which religious atrocity occurs in nearly all faiths, it would be tragic if the Muslim tradition of inclusion and respect were lost to the world.