Don't get me wrong, I think military activity is cool in a historical sense - medieval and pre-modern militaries up until the 1900's are really interesting. Maybe it's just the depersonalized nature of pressing a button and having a thousand people explode that turns me off of modern warfare. Call it a penchant for putting a personal touch on things, who knows.
Here's my just-graded (and thus publishable, in my opinion) essay on the negative effects of military politics within the framework of pre-modern Islamic government. The work took on an almost anarchic bent against inappropriate government practices as I began to finish it, and I think that was the view my professor hoped we'd achieve.
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The importance of religion within the Muslim sphere between the age of Mohammad and the eighteenth century is supreme: Islam acted as a definitive compass for life, providing common cultural and social practices for the great amount of people who practiced it; it also birthed new legal systems, allowing for a sense of universal law and safety while in the company of practitioners. Islam, as a belief system, existed primarily as such but barely secondarily as a unifier of disparate peoples and places – the Muslim community, or ‘umma’, was a world-spanning system under which, despite political fractures, a Muslim could travel from the far ends of the North African Maghreb to the southern depths of the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia with little relative problem. The overarching umma, united under a similar religion and thus relatively related cultural practices, would allow for the traveler to find safe haven wherever they would go within the Dar al-Islam, or ‘abode of Islam’. The missionary work of Sufis worked as a major conversional factor for Islam: the fringe regions of the world outside of the Dar al-Islam were soon home to peaceful, materially-uninvolved Muslims who sought to spread the wealth of their religion – meaning that Islam as a religious and communal sphere was constantly expanding across Eurasia. Under the umma, a Muslim could feel ‘asabiyyah’ – group feeling, or social solidarity. According to the Muslim scholar Ibn-Khaldun, asabiyyah was an essential factor to a properly-functioning umma: without it, groups would fight amongst themselves and cities would crumble.
Hamilton Gibb’s piece “The Community in Islamic History”, as published in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, extolls upon the lack of necessity for traditional government within the early Islamic world. The development of the umma as a structure within Islam is a unique experience for the religion – Christianity, for instance, did not have such a continent-spanning community that provided for its members in the way the umma does. In this way, the Islamic world needed less governance: a cohesive community would fight less amongst itself as would the disjointed world of Christian Europe. Although it experienced roughness along the way in the form of pretenders to rule and fanatics in its ranks, the umma learned to deal with these difficulties. Gibb speaks sternly on the fact that the umma is not a political entity: while a widespread government may put to use strict orthodoxy in all manners of life (including politics), the umma did the opposite by bringing together very different people under a community that fostered an all-encompassing “Islamic culture”. Gibb comments on the propensity for criticism toward the umma for not promoting, through influence of political reforms, helpful standards such as change in education; he counters his own point by pointing to the Islamic revival of Hellenistic literature, an example of the already established Islamic tradition of high intellectual and cultural importance. However, the Muslim sphere was not wholly influenced by Greek works in politics and philosophy – it was not of their heritage and, thus, not as adhered to as it was in the Christian world. Instead of promoting reforms in government and material culture, Muslims gave birth to new spirituality through the work of Sufis – orthodox thought was not heavily addressed in the face of spiritual symbolism and theological issues. This proved to be a handicap in cases involved foreign influence and earthly matters – the umma had trouble confronting new challenges such as opposing governments within the Islamic world and began to oppose disunifying challenges to their community. Eventually, centralized governments proved to be a harsh opponent toward the umma; in the modern day, the politically-inclined doubt the general existence of the umma. Gibb, on the other hand, believes that the umma is still very much alive at its core and is expanding due to its all-encompassing nature and its lack of involvement with troubling, diving societal aspects such as politics.
J.C. Hurewitz discusses the invariable nature of military involvement and social disunity in Islamic politics in his Journal of the American Oriental Society article, “Military Politics in the Muslim Dynastic States, 1400-1750”. Hurewitz sees military politics as a regular method of power transmission for dynasties and political systems within the Dar al-Islam and states that they are extremely popular due to a lack of concrete succession policies. Most Muslim dynasties were tribalist and militaristic at their roots due to the origin of their religion: the harsh upbringing of the umma resulted in superior martial ability, supporting the belief that the subjects of stable Islamic leader have little to fear due to the superior protective ability of that figure. Hurewitz states that the famed scholar Ibn-Khaldun would be widely displeased with the three existing Muslim dynasties of the 1700’s – the Ottoman Empire, the Safavid Empire and the Mughal Empire – due to their high propensity for bureaucracy and a lack of social unity, factors which would eventually lead to their downfall (yet not so in the case of the Ottomans, who would exist only due to Europeans who feared a regional power vacuum in the face of Ottoman collapse). Despite political disunity, the umma still existed: states were connected through common religion and legal background in shari’ah, allowing traveling Muslims such as Ibn-Khaldun and Ibn-Battuta to work in very different settings due to their understanding of universal Muslim law. However, political disunity did prove from time to time to be harmful – for instance, the Safavid development of their uniquely Shiite Ja’fari code in the face of Sunni neighbors did little to unify the Dar al-Islam. In fact, little outside of the basic political structure existed within the Islamic sphere that would suggest a capability for governments to exist in the European sense: lines of sovereignty were never properly drawn in the Muslim world, creating regional legal imbalances and disputes. Fratricide proved to be a major problem for every major Muslim dynasty in the Near East: the Ottomans were eventually forced to legalize only specific ways of kin murder due to its high prevalence and the Safavids were faced with possibly dozens of murders every time a succession crisis occurred. This lack of traditional rules led to a lack of balance within the politics of the Dar al-Islam, balanced only through military politics: power was enforced through constant strength of arms due to government policies not covering essential subjects such as succession and power boundaries. Eventually, military power came into play as a major decider in succession: those with the most support from the military as well as administrative support from the palace would be best in the running for the position of leader. This led to heated rivalries between family members, all of whom could must some military power due to their position as nobility; in turn, this led to disunity within the umma due to the possibility of widespread armed conflict between Muslims. This focus on government that the major Muslim dynasties allowed actually found itself undermined due to a necessary focus on military strength: the Turkic Qizilbash nomads who entered into the military service of rival Safavid princes, for instance, eventually came to dominate the political scene of the region due to the military clout they held. Similarly, nomadic Berber groups employed by the Moroccan ‘Alawi leaders such as Mawlay Isma’il would exert a large amount of influence over succession upon leaders’ deaths. The Ottomans felt the impact of the Janissaries upon their courts upon the dilution of the strict military corps by Murad III, who discontinued the Islamization of the group by allowing free Muslims, as opposed to non-Muslim slaves or conscripts; this led to an essential corruption within the military. Hurewitz concludes that the use of an army as a political tool proved to be a major obstacle in the path of Islamic unity.
Advancing government proved to be a very complicated obstacle for Islam and its umma. In medieval and Renaissance-age Europe, governments and ruling systems would be challenged, overthrown and modified to fit the societies over which they resided; the Dar al-Islam was no different, as it would take little time until politics would come head-to-head with the umma. Non-tribal or religious politics and government within the Islamic world are a juxtapositional, if not detrimental, presence: inherently, politics act as a partitioner within groups of people, dividing people into different factions that almost assuredly come to blows over almost any societal detail. Gibb’s comments on material governments presenting a challenge and splitting up the non-orthodox, spiritually-inclined umma support this. Politics breed rivalries within the umma that remove the legitimacy and existence of asabiyyah – politically-fueled fractures within a community prevent social solidarity, invalidating the umma’s purpose. Modernly-defined government within the Islamic sphere leads ultimately to selfish, self-promoting behavior that creates power blocs within the umma, shattering it for good and leading to a lack of protective unity.
As stated by Ibn-Khaldun, this lack of unity inevitably leads to annihilation: other factions possessing a functioning asabiyyah, such as Turkic nomads or other less-centralized yet concentrated Muslim contingencies can easily tear apart the shreds of society that separative government leaves in its wake. The tendency of Muslim dynasties to resort to allowing militaristic influence to take over their own government shows, quite blatantly, the accuracy of Ibn-Khaldun’s opinion: the umma will eventually collapse in the face of centralized government due to a loss of asabiyyah. Asabiyyah is essential to nomadic life, and to an extent military life, because it stresses a unity that allows the individual to simply survive under the protection of their family. Properly-governed people lack this sort of familial unity because they are protected by the ruling dynasty and no longer need to relate to one another like the nomads.
Religion too, is important under asabiyyah, because it acts as a uniting factor that brings followers together for very basic reasons: worship and support. In Gibbs’ article, it can be seen that those Muslims who focus on government and material matters lose their focus on religion and spirituality; while they make eventually make progress against the non-orthodox umma, it is all for naught once factionalization becomes overwhelming. Politics causes people to factionalize quickly; they have no use for unity or respect for faith as they fight amongst themselves, or in the name of their political leaders . The splintering of the Muslim world between Sunni and Shia as a result of a succession crisis would be a damning example of this.
Without asabiyyah, Islamic folk who focus on government instead of social unity find themselves enraptured with earthly luxuries and political intrigue; the purpose of the umma however, is to function as a support system for its people, uniting them under religion as opposed to focusing on earthly matters . Among the non-political umma there is little corruption for this very reason. Political issues not only divide the umma between opposing state and political parties but also cause fractures in society in terms of wealth and ability. When the political system is eventually corrupted and militaristic factions compete for power, the entire populace suffers – chunks of the umma are erased in the name of succession and political boundaries. The government experienced by Muslims from the fifteenth century to the eighteenth century fails to follow traditional Islamic standards: it cleaves apart the umma, leaving savagery in its wake.
Ibn-Khaldun; trans. F. Rosenthal. Ed. N.J. Dawood. Al-Muqadimmah [The Introduction], 124.
Ibn-Khaldun, 134.
Bibliography
1. Gibb, Hamilton A.R. April 1963. The Community in Islamic History. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. Volume 25, Issue 2.
2. Hurewitz, J.C. March 1968. Military Politics in the Muslim Dynastic States, 1400-1750. Journal of the American Oriental Society. Volume 88, Issue 1.
3. Ibn-Khaldun. Trans. Franz Rosenthal. Ed. Nessim Joseph Dawood. Al-Muqadimmah [The Introduction]. Princeton University, 1981. 124-54.
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A pre-modern Islamic political piece I recently read, 'Ministers and Bribery' by Sari Mehmed Pasha (an Ottoman vizier who introduced anti-corruption thought into the government's virtues before being cut down by a man who was either a crazed dervish or a hired blade of the sultan), seems to be the response to my view. Through proper jurisdiction, an Islamic government is incorruptible; needless to say, however, was the corruptibility of the Ottoman government throughout its tenure. Despite his potentially conspired end, I find him to be an entirely reasonable source whose political ideals should be studied closer by modern politicians both in the Middle East and elsewhere. I'll put up an assignment pertaining to Sari's work pretty soon.
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