It's quite frustrating that we will probably never understand the evolution of a major religion that emerged, after all, relatively recently.

I wonder whether the beliefs of modern-day Mandeans can provide us with 'missing link' evidence in order to understand the evolution of Islam.

The "missing link" analogy makes it look like a linear chain, when it looks more like the work of one single guy, drawing from a wide set of beliefs and legends (an "inverted bush"). The Koran is pretty explicit in its rejection and condemnation of its own cultural substrate ("association is worse than murder").

The "missing link" analogy makes it look like a linear chain, when it looks more like the work of one single guy, drawing from a wide set of beliefs and legends (an "inverted bush"). The Koran is pretty explicit in its rejection and condemnation of its own cultural substrate ("association is worse than murder").

the koran was likely to have been compiled later from a wide variety of oral sources. don't believe the muslim traditions on this. i am also skeptical of the presumed rejection of the cultural substrate. the kaba and the rituals of the hajj are pretty clear pagan survivals, for example.

They were mediators, but I do not think their contribution was THAT important except for wiping out many cultures over time. I think there is some lip service going on.
The predation of local population allowed the accumulation of capital which resulted... in an abundance of mosques.
Note that unlike other "imperial" forces the cultural and power centers were not in Arabia, but in completely different areas such as Spain or Mesopotamia. Chances are it would have happend anyway in these places sooner or later.
The islamic religion won over almost nobody (in relative terms) without the help of the sword.
The European mediterranean countries had to undergo another more prolonged assault after the barbarian invasions. Their economic recovery was delayed several centuries. A nightmare.
The islamic religion soon took the wrong turn and became sterile.
And we end up with today's problems.

I'm mostly ignorant of Islamic history, but I have to wonder how much the size Muslim rentier class grew during the time in question. They would have been rich, extracting that jizya from a large population of dhimmis, and if they were anything like modern-day oil rich Saudis, that would have meant tremendous population growth which would really add up over several centuries.

"the kaba and the rituals of the hajj are pretty clear pagan survivals, for example": like Easter Eggs and Xmas trees. (And a fertility goddess?)

The predation of local population allowed the accumulation of capital which resulted... in an abundance of mosques.

you know that ornate mosques don't become common until the early 8th century, right?

The islamic religion won over almost nobody (in relative terms) without the help of the sword.

it seems more muslims converted during the british raj during the the mughal period. china? southeast asia? most of africa? the majority of conversion did not occur until after 750. these are complex issues; please don't make shit up or repeat cliches. i have very little patience for it.

Their economic recovery was delayed several centuries. A nightmare.

the economic decline varies by nation. the western mediterranean system had already collapsed (north africa was deurbanizing when the arabs showed up). the eastern mediterranean system was already in decline because of the late 7th century outbreaks of plague and the breakdown of the order during the wars with persia. i do think one can make a case that the trans-mediterranean trade was staunched because of the civilizational gulf, but all of persia and central asia was opened up, so that should have compensated.

note: i will place a highlight on the comment about conversion to emphasize how stupid or excessively simplistic the above opinions are (either the commenter is ignorant, or they're eliding many issues and adding zero value to what the typical tard would even know). it is well attested that muslims imposed taxes on non-muslims and that these taxes resulted in inducements toward conversion. if you define this "conversion by the sword," then the vast majority of muslims were converted by the sword. but in iran there is definitely a 2-3 century latency before the majority was muslim. in syria and egypt it seems that arabicization was a necessary precondition for large scale conversions of the local population. the inference peter brown makes from this is that the religious switch became far easier once the linguistic element was no longer a point of differentiation. it seems likely that the arab christians who were resident in syria and mesopotamia were early converts to the muslim cause (see the record of the conquest of syria).

IOW, the structural biases to convert within the muslim empire were not ones of fiat demand with death as an alternative, but the slow and steady early erosion of the local base which sped up and maximized in rate during the first abbasid century. during the umayyad period there are records of irritation with conversion by non-arabs because these converts now demanded more rights.

this neglects the importance of international contacts in africa and southeast asia in converting the local populace. the case in kerala, in south india, seems to be another similar situation where muslims emerged through settlers who intermarried, and not from on high. in maritime southeast asia the local potentates wanted access to the indian ocean trade system, which was dominated by muslims after 1000. this resulted in a wholesale shift toward that religion. one local states converted they did wage jihad against non-muslim states. so the idea that the conversion was "peaceful" is not totally correct, because there was intra-ethnic conflict along the lines of religion. but it wasn't a conversion from the outside. a contrast seems to be the conversion of the chams of cambodia and vietnam, many of whom seem to have converted because of their identification with the malay ethnicity and integration into the maritime system.

it is an interesting point here to compare islam to christianity. after the conversion of the roman emperors in the early 4th century there was a one century period of religious conflict where christianity slowly accrued to itself the privileges of the pagan cults. initially there was a period of favoritism toward converts at court, but later on there was explicit exclusion of pagans (beginning early in the 5th century) from public office. the conversion of the western aristocracy to christianity after 400 was done through force as such, but the blocking off of avenues, or least making very difficult, the ascension up the ladder of a public career which was on the primary vocation of the landed wealthy (see the quantitative data in The Making of a Christian Aristocracy). in northern europe the process was far less organic; monarchs converted and demanded that the nobles & populace follow along. in some regions, such as the baltic, there were crusades to enslave and convert the locals. in denmark, the conversion of the monarchy was prodded through blackmail; the german king threatened to invade unless the danes turned christian.

the note above is to emphasize the level of detail i want in these comments. i'm not generally happy with stupid cliched comments. some commenters respond to my irritation by saying that they could have elaborated more. THEN DO SO! otherwise, stupid comments will be deleted from now on (non value-add questions are OK, but not repetition of material learned in a book for 7 year olds, no. JUST BECAUSE YOU HAVE AN OPINION DOES NOT MEAN YOU SHOULD VOICE IT!).

"the kaba and the rituals of the hajj are pretty clear pagan survivals, for example": like Easter Eggs and Xmas trees. (And a fertility goddess?)

well, those sorts of things were added on later and subject to local customs. there is a portion of islam which is not due to the influence of the jewish and christian religious traditions. the rituals of the hajj for example pre-date islam and were once associated with the polytheistic cults of the kaba.

How much conflict was there between the idea that religious conversion should be a matter of conscience, and that religious conversion can be aided by application of economic pressure?

Was the conscience thing, as is so often the case with evangelistic religions, merely a textual flourish that the people ignored?

I'm mostly ignorant of Islamic history, but I have to wonder how much the size Muslim rentier class grew during the time in question. They would have been rich, extracting that jizya from a large population of dhimmis, and if they were anything like modern-day oil rich Saudis, that would have meant tremendous population growth which would really add up over several centuries.

think a sigmoid function between 650 and 1000. during the umayyad period perhaps a few percent were muslim. additionally, there was ethnic prejudice against non-arab muslims, so generally the rentiers were the arab military castes. much of the conflict during the first few centuries of islam were due to conflicts between various groups who wanted to be rentiers. e.g., the syrian arabs were replaced by arabs from khurasan with the rise of the abbasids, who were eventually replaced in the mid-9th century by the turkish slave armies who changed the whole system.

the main reason that muslim monarchs have often been ambivalent about attempts by the more religiously inclined to enforce or encourage conversion is of course the tax base issue you allude too. this is probably the selfish reason that hindus and buddhists were not forced to convert en masse in south asia. the arab conqueror of the sindh stated "the christians have their churches, the jews their synagogues," and the "budd have their temples." he also confirmed the rentier status of the brahmins of sindh.

in any case, once most of the population is muslim obviously you can't extract most of your income form jizya. so the early economic dynamics shift. but there were records of coptic rebellions beginning in the early 8th century, and i wonder if this was because of the tax burden started increasing as more and more copts were converting to islam and opting out of the tax system.

How much conflict was there between the idea that religious conversion should be a matter of conscience, and that religious conversion can be aided by application of economic pressure?

there were debates among early xtians about forced conversion. remember, st. augustine advised against forced conversions, though that didn't stop the byzantines or visigoths a century later from pushing mass baptisms under duress. some of the same argumentation was used with pagans as well, but it seems from what i recall that some latitude was given for their conversion. as a matter of practice the conversion of a pagan lord or king to xtianity meant a mass baptism of their subjects as well as destruction of the institutional pagan religion. but, as a matter of reality much of the european peasantry was only nominally christian for a long period after the initial conversions. this was true even on the estates of francia during the 6th century (see gregory of tours comments).

for the muslims there was a wide range of actions and interactions. forced conversions obviously happened on occasion, but it seems usually they acted like mafia. the choices were that they pay tax, they convert to islam or they are subject to attacks. though notionally everyone becomes muslim, it is obvious that during initial conquests of a non-muslim domain the new rulers are more interested in collecting tax and plunder and becoming rich than winning souls.

in any case, i don't think we should use an american protestant analog. religious identity in the ancient world was often fraught with communal valences. many of the early non-arab converts were clients and slaves of muslim arabs. they were even inducted as members of arab tribes. these were people yanked out of their previous identity who made a shift to another. but that's atypical, though over time it resulted in conversion.

Was the conscience thing, as is so often the case with evangelistic religions, merely a textual flourish that the people ignored?

conscience is important when you are in a the minority ;-) less so when you are in the majority. this applies to xtianity as well as muslim, though the details are starker in the latter because of more explicit formulation and also a more detailed understanding of the historical process. the economic incentive of conquering muslim elites to live off rent probably was more important in preventing forced conversions than anything in the koran. once non-muslims a minority this incentive is less important because they aren't a major revenue source, and instead elites can use them as scapegoats to their heart's desire.

for those who know of it, the thesis of mohammed and charlemagne, it is probably wrong. islam probably didn't have a strong affect on a trading system which was already collapsing, and a flourishing exchange of furs and gold was occurring through the north caucasus through this whole period (this is how the vikings ended up with so many coins from the islamic world). also, there was a discontinuity between the roman empire and the barbarian kingdoms. for the details on the economics see power and plenty, where a chapter addresses the central issue's of pirenne's thesis. for pre-islamic discontinuities in the late antique work, see The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization.

I would like here to point to some documents which were written by Christians in the Umayyad century (circa 650-750, counting 'Uthman as the first Umayyad). Not so much for you, Razib, since you've probably run across these titles before; but for others interested in the topic.

One is the history of Pseudo-Sebeos, written by an Armenian in the mid-to-late seventh century. If you google Bedrosian and Sebeos, you'll get an English translation; the best is that of Thomson, but free is better if you are getting started. John of Nikiu is also googlable, but is missing bits.

"The Seventh Century in the West Syrian Chronicles" by Palmer has the definitive word from the guys closest to the scene, although their history is more fragmented. Also note that Palmer doesn't include Syrian documents other than chronicles, so for John of Damascus and Jacob of Edessa, and so on, you will have to turn elsewhere.

Palmer also leaves out the East Syrians, like Bar Penkaye and the Khuzistan Chronicler. Bar Penkaye has an excellent translation by Sebastian P Brock in JSAI 9, 1987. Khuzistan isn't translated yet, but Chase Robinson seems to be working on it. Khuzistan is the older one; seems to be from the 650s or so. Bar Penkaye is more recent, and has a lot to say about how the Second Civil War affected Iraqi Christians.

What they have to say on Islam is (mostly) brought together in Robert Hoyland's 1998 tome "Seeing Islam As Others Saw It". What he says about the rise of Islam is pretty much what is said in this post.

Totally off topic, but you should do a post on time-management one day. I would like to know how you manage to code, web-master, personal blog, make entries on this blog (and keep up with comments), read other blogs, read dense books, cook, look after a cat, and do whatever it is you actually do (grad student/PhD?)

I second bdr's suggestion...and perhaps, to add to it, how you're able to retain so much of what you read...

If I am well informed, the Islamic conquests period was characterized by the lack of reliable historic sources.

For me, a question about that period is how much the Islamic invasion was aided by the existing unitarian branches of Christianity, and how much it was the result of urban population revolutions.

Ignacio Olagüe was an Spanish scholar that held the revisionist view that we should speak about "Islamic Revolution", instead of invasion.

He also held the opinion that the Islmic invasion was strongly related with climate change in the Fertile Crescent and North Africa.

In fact, it is clear that North Africa has had
a very changing climate since Roman days, when is had a booming agriculture.

Are you aware of any good book in climate history?

PD.- I have a new post on energy economics and peak oil in my blog.

For me, a question about that period is how much the Islamic invasion was aided by the existing unitarian branches of Christianity, and how much it was the result of urban population revolutions.


the documentary evidence i have seen seems to suggest it was less being aided, as it was that they did not resist strenuously. that being said, remember that most ancient peasant populations were not nationalistically inclined, so a relative amount of quietism is to be expected. remember, the reconquista of spain was enacted in the context of a large reservoir of christians in the rural areas, but it was the military elites of northern spain who were critical. the fragmentary evidence which exists during the time implies a relative amount of passivity, but recall that many of these people had just left persian rule, so changes of elites was not new to them.

(also, it inaccurate to call monophysite or nestorian christianity
'unitarian.' both accept the nice creed and the trinitarian formulation, they simply dispute particular aspects of the nature of jesus christ, or in the case of nestorianism the status of mary)


He also held the opinion that the Islmic invasion was strongly related with climate change in the Fertile Crescent and North Africa.


the exogenous shocks might be related. specifically, urban latin civilization in north africa (the maghreb) was in total collapse during the period of the islamic invasions. and the byzantine empire was strongly destabilized by the demographic impact of the late 6th century plagues. these ecological and economic shifts might be correlated with climate change.

Are you aware of any good book in climate history?

google brian fagan.

re: retention. i suspect retention is easier when you have a dense system of knowledge to slot facts into. i do have a high density of facts mostly because i've been reading widely on a variety of topics since elementary school (some of the facts i bring up are ones i recall from something i read [though i can't tell you the book] when i was 10 or something). also, i don't really read many blogs, or follow the comments very closely. i've stated i track about 6 blogs with any regularity, though i check technorati for links in. i don't have a TV nor do i watch films. i rarely cook anymore. and so on.

think the explanation for the Arabicization of Fertile Crescent is pretty easy: this region was already Semitic speaking, and Aramaic and Arabic are relatively close.

Arabic & Aramaic aren't *that* close. They aren't mutually intelligible. And anyway, does it even matter if two languages are related to whether one will overpower the other?

And anyway, does it even matter if two languages are related to whether one will overpower the other?

i don't know. but i bet it does. many north indians who don't speak hindi find it relatively easy to learn because it is closely related. for south indians it is more of a chore. france would be a good test case, did parisian french have a more difficult time penetrating brittany than the other regions, which had different romance dialects?

Interesting post. I'm not sure about my terminology, but I guess Razib is a 'Hagarist'. That Patricia Crone woman is a great believer in the importance of contemporary, usually Christian accounts, like John of Damascus, as to what 7th century Muslims were like trumping traditional Islamic accounts as to historical reliability.

Per Arabs, or in general, fierce nomads coming out of the desert, that isn't anything new in Mesopatamian history. The Sumerians weren't Semites at all. When recorded history sort of opens, cities like Ur and Uruk are still Sumerian, while some cities upriver, like Kish, were Semites who called themselves Akkadians. The first 'Emperor' Sargon, who got his start in Kish, was a Semite.

There was a brief interlude in Mesopatamian history when Ur was the leading city in Sumer that historians refer to as the 'Sumerian revival'. Interestingly, all the kings of Ur during this period have Semitic names though. Sumerian itself was probably a dead language during this period.

The waves of 'fierce nomadic tribesman spilling out of the desert' came in four waves. The first, the Akkadians, was prehistoric. The next were the Amorites, Hammurabai was an Amorite, then the Aramaens, then the Arabs. It's not to much of a stretch to say that Akkadian/Amorite/Aramaen/Arab are all linguistically related, though Akkadian seems a bit of a stretch.

It's kind of like the Vikings. The traditional date for the onslaught of the Vikings is 796, but if the Goths weren't Vikings, well what would they be. It seems like the 'Vikings' get started really early, the first hit the Mediteranean world about 100 BC with the Teutones and the Cimbri, with the period between the fall of Rome and 796 being a bit of a lull, probably having something to do with the weather. One wonders if climate played a role in 'barbarian' invasions of Mesopatamia too.

Interesting post. I'm not sure about my terminology, but I guess Razib is a 'Hagarist'. That Patricia Crone woman is a great believer in the importance of contemporary, usually Christian accounts, like John of Damascus, as to what 7th century Muslims were like trumping traditional Islamic accounts as to historical reliability.

she probably goes too far in my book. but i do think the perceptions of men like john of damascus are important. and as i note earlier, the monumental physical manifestations of islam, its architecture, took until around 700 to start to rise. to get PoMo i think the first decade of islam were ones where there was a lot of 'discourse' about what it meant to be a muslim in a way that we would judge to put into question whether these groups were muslim in a way we would find comprehensible. by analogy, the shia-sunni split of the 700s isn't really so clear or distinct either. the abbasids were periodically rather solicitous of the alids.

also, you're talking about the 3rd dynasty of ur
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ 3rd...d_dynasty_of_Ur

i had forgotten that most of the royal names were akkadian....