Pericles

"The brilliance of the present is the glory of the future stored up for ever in the memory of man."

-- Pericles, Final Speech to the Athenians (430 BCE) as recorded by Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 2:64 (Rex Warner translation)

A Brief History of Pretty Much Everything

I was amused at his reference to the movie 300; too bad he didn't do the same for 2001: A Space Odyssey. ;)

Muhammad Asad: The Story of a Story

The following is an excerpt from Muhammad Asad's book, The Road to Mecca. Despite the fact that this book was published back in 1954, I believe Asad's theory regarding the West's hatred for Islam (that it poses a significant challenge to Western concepts of spiritual and social life) rings very true, even today, 55 years later.

Conceptually, Islam is too close for comfort for a lot of Westerners. We believe in the same God, the same prophets (pbut) and angels and message. But, compared to most (but certainly not all) Westerners, we take religion more seriously (actually, a lot more seriously) than they do, and we may be a little more disciplined in applying religious principles to our daily lives. (One of the benefits of fasting during Ramadan, in my opinion.) And that, I think, scares Westerners the most, the thought that if they became Muslim, these Westerners would lose their party world: no more booze, no more pork, a lot less ogling of naked or nearly naked women in public, and a refocusing of their lives on prayer and spirituality. Westerners (especially whites) may not feel as threatened when darker-skinned Westerners become Muslim, but many are threatened at the thought of white Muslims (such as myself) because we don't fit into their notions of racial behavior. In the Westerners' racist view, Islam isn't and can't become acceptable for white people to join. Because once they see the tide beginning to turn against them, then all is lost from their narrow perspective.

“And this appeared very strange to most of my Western friends. They could not quite picture to themselves how a man of Western birth and upbringing could have so fully, and apparently with no mental reservations whatever, identified himself with the Muslim world; how it had been possible for him to exchange his Western cultural heritage for that of Islam; and what it was that had made him accept a religious and social ideology which – they seemed to take for granted – was vastly inferior to all European concepts.

“Now why, I asked myself, should my Western friends take this so readily for granted? Had any of them ever really bothered to gain a direct insight into Islam – or were their opinions based merely on the handful of clichés and distorted notions that had been handed down to them from previous generations? Could it perhaps be that the old Graeco-Roman mode of thought which divided the world into Greeks and Romans on one side and ‘barbarians’ on the other was still so thoroughly ingrained in the Western mind that it was unable to concede, even theoretically, positive value to anything that lay outside its own cultural orbit?

“Ever since Greek and Roman times, European thinkers and historians have been prone to contemplate the history of the world from the standpoint and in terms of European history and Western cultural experiences alone. Non-Western civilizations enter the picture only in so far as their existence, or particular movements within them, have or had a direct influence on the destinies of Western man; and thus, in Western eyes, the history of the world and its various cultures amounts in the last resort to little more than an expanded history of the West.

“Naturally, such a narrowed angle of vision is bound to produce a distorted perspective. Accustomed as he is to writings which depict the culture or discuss the problems of his own civilization in great detail and in vivid colors, with little more than side glances here and there at the rest of the world, the average European or American easily succumbs to the illusion that the cultural experiences of the West are not merely superior but out of all proportion to those of the rest of the world; and thus, that the Western way of life is the only valid norm by which other ways of life could be adjudged – implying, of course, that every intellectual concept, social institution or ethical valuation that disagrees with the Western ‘norm’ belongs eo ipso to a lower grade of existence. Following in the footsteps of the Greeks and Romans, the Occidental likes to think that all those ‘other’ civilizations are or were only so many stumbling experiments on the path of progress so unerringly pursued by the West; or, at best (as in the case of the ‘ancestor’ civilizations which preceded that of the modern West in a direct line), no more than consecutive chapters in one and the same book, of which Western civilization is, of course, the final chapter.

“When I expounded this view to an American friend of mine – a man of considerable intellectual attainments and a scholarly bent of mind – he was somewhat skeptical at first.

“‘Granted,’ he said, ‘the ancient Greeks and Romans were limited in their approach to foreign civilizations: but was not this limitation the inevitable result of difficulties of communication between them and the rest of the world? And has not this difficulty been largely overcome in modern times? After all, we Westerners do concern ourselves nowadays with what is going on outside our cultural orbit. Aren’t you forgetting the many books about Oriental art and philosophy that have been published in Europe and America during the last quarter-century…about the political ideas that preoccupy the minds of Eastern peoples? Surely one could not with justice overlook this desire on the part of Westerners to understand what other cultures might have to offer?’

“‘To some extent you may be right,’ I replied. ‘There is little doubt that the primitive Graeco-Roman outlook is no longer fully operative these days. Its harshness has been considerably blunted – if for no other reason, because the more mature among Western thinkers have grown disillusioned and skeptical about many aspects of their own civilization and now begin to look to other parts of the world for cultural inspiration. Upon some of them it is dawning that there may be not only one book and one story of human progress, but many: simply because mankind, in the historical sense, is not a homogeneous entity, but rather a variety of groups with widely divergent ideas as to the meaning and purpose of human life. Still, I do not feel that the West has really become less condescending toward foreign cultures than the Greeks and Romans were: it has only become more tolerant. Mind you, not toward Islam – only toward certain other Eastern cultures, which offer some sort of spiritual attraction to the spirit-hungry West and are, at the same time, too distant from the Western world-view to constitute any real challenge to its values.’

“‘What do you mean by that?’

“‘Well,’ I answered, ‘when a Westerner discusses, say, Hinduism or Buddhism, he is always conscious of the fundamental differences between these ideologies and his own. He may admire this or that of their ideas, but would naturally never consider the possibility of substituting them for his own. Because he a priori admits this impossibility, he is able to contemplate such really alien cultures with equanimity and often with sympathetic appreciation. But when it comes to Islam – which is by no means as alien to Western values as Hindu or Buddhist philosophy – this Western equanimity is almost invariably disturbed by an emotional bias. It is perhaps, I sometimes wonder, because the values of Islam are close enough to those of the West to constitute a potential challenge to many Western concepts of spiritual and social life?’

“And I went on to tell him of a theory which I had conceived some years ago – a theory that might perhaps help one to understand better the deep-seated prejudice against Islam so often to be found in Western literature and contemporary thought.

“‘To find a truly convincing explanation of this prejudice,’ I said, ‘one has to look far backward into history and try to comprehend the psychological background of the earliest relations between the Western and the Muslim worlds. What Occidentals think and feel about Islam today is rooted in impressions that were born during the Crusades.’

“‘The Crusades!’ exclaimed my friend. ‘You don’t mean to say that what happened nearly a thousand years ago could still have an effect on people of the twentieth century?’

“‘But it does! I know it sounds incredible; but don’t you remember the incredulity which greeted the early discoveries of the psychoanalysts when they tried to show that much of the emotional life of a mature person – and most of those seemingly unaccountable leanings, tastes and prejudices comprised in the term “idiosyncrasies” – can be traced back to the experiences of his most formative age, his early childhood? Well, are nations and civilizations anything but collective individuals? Their development also is bound up with the experiences of their early childhood. As with children, those experiences may have been pleasant or unpleasant; they may have been perfectly rational or, alternatively, due to the child’s naïve misinterpretation of an event: the moulding effect of every such experience depends primarily on its original intensity. The century immediately preceding the Crusades, that is, the end of the first millennium of the Christian era, might well be described as the early childhood of Western civilization…’

“I proceeded to remind my friend – himself an historian – that this had been the age when, for the first time since the dark centuries that followed the breakup of Imperial Rome, Europe was beginning to see its own cultural way. Independently of the almost forgotten Roman heritage, new literatures were just then coming into existence in the European vernaculars; inspired by the religious experience of Western Christianity, fine arts were slowly awakening from the lethargy caused by the warlike migrations of the Goths, Huns and Avars; out of the crude conditions of the early Middle Ages, a new cultural world was emerging. It was at that critical, extremely sensitive stage of its development that Europe received its most formidable shock – in modern parlance, a ‘trauma’ – in the shape of the Crusades.

“The Crusades were the strongest collective impression on a civilization that had just begun to be conscious of itself. Historically speaking, they represented Europe’s earliest – and entirely successful – attempt to view itself under the aspect of cultural unity. Nothing that Europe has experienced before or after could compare with the enthusiasm which the First Crusade brought into being. A wave of intoxication swept over the Continent, an elation which for the first time overstepped the barriers between states and tribes and classes. Before then, there had been Franks and Saxons and Germans, Burgundians and Sicilians, Normans and Lombards – a medley of tribes and races with scarcely anything in common but the fact that most of their feudal kingdoms and principalities were remnants of the Roman Empire and that all of them professed the Christian faith: but in the Crusades, and through them, the religious bond was elevated to a new plane, a cause common to all Europeans alike – the politico-religious concept of ‘Christendom,’ which in its turn gave birth to the cultural concept of ‘Europe.’ When, in his famous speech at Clermont, in November, 1095, Pope Urban II exhorted the Christians to make war upon the ‘wicked race’ that held the Holy Land, he enunciated – probably without knowing it himself – the charter of Western civilization.

“The traumatic experience of the Crusades gave Europe its cultural awareness and its unity; but this same experience was destined henceforth also to provide the false color in which Islam was to appear to Western eyes. Not simply because the Crusades meant war and bloodshed. So many wars have been waged between nations and subsequently forgotten, and so many animosities which in their time seemed ineradicable have later turned into friendships. The damage caused by the Crusades was not restricted to a clash of weapons: it was, first and foremost, an intellectual damage – the poisoning of the Western mind against the Muslim world through a deliberate misrepresentation of the teachings and ideals of Islam. For, if the call for a crusade was to maintain its validity, the Prophet of the Muslims had, of necessity, to be stamped as the Anti-Christ and his religion depicted in the most lurid terms as a fount of immorality and perversion. It was at the time of the Crusades that the ludicrous notion that Islam was a religion of crude sensualism and brutal violence, of an observance of ritual instead of a purification of the heart, entered the Western mind and remained there; and it was then that the name of the Prophet Muhammad – the same Muhammad who had insisted that his own followers respect the prophets of other religions – was contemptuously transformed by Europeans into ‘Mahound.’ The age when the spirit of independent inquiry could raise its head was as yet far distant in Europe; it was easy for the powers-that-were to sow the dark seeds of hatred for a religion and civilization that was so different from the religion and civilization of the West. Thus it was no accident that the fiery Chanson de Roland, which describes the legendary victory of Christendom over the Muslim ‘heathen’ in southern France, was composed not at the time of those battles but three centuries later – to wit, shortly before the First Crusade – immediately to become a kind of ‘national anthem’ of Europe; and it is no accident, either, that this warlike epic marks the beginning of a European literature, as distinct from the earlier, localized literatures: for hostility toward Islam stood over the cradle of European civilization.

“It would seem an irony of history that the age-old Western resentment against Islam, which was religious in origin, should still persist subconsciously at a time when religion has lost most of its hold on the imagination of Western man. This, however, is not really surprising. We know that a person may completely lose the religious beliefs imparted to him in his childhood while, nevertheless, some particular emotion connected with those beliefs remains, irrationally, in force throughout his later life –

“‘ – and this,’ I concluded, ‘is precisely what happened to that collective personality, Western civilization. The shadow of the Crusades hovers over the West to this day; and all its reactions toward Islam and the Muslim world bear distinct traces of that die-hard ghost…’”

pp. 2-7

International Politics Links (8 June 2009)

My series of links posts, which went on a brief hiatus last week, resumes tonight with two major changes. The first is that I've decided to go with a revolving format; for example, international politics will be every Monday, insha'allah. My tentative schedule for the remainder of the week is: Tuesdays - Business/Economics, Wednesdays - Islam/Muslim Blogs, Thursdays - Miscellaneous (e.g., science, science fiction, photos, etc.), and Fridays - Open. Of course, all of this is subject to change without notice.

The other big change is that I've decided not to do links for American politics, for two reasons: one, it's such a fast-moving and huge topic that to do it justice would mean a daily commitment, one which I'm not sure I want to make; and two, most of the political blogs I read follow the philosophy of "know thy enemy," which, in this case is the Republican party. The sheer stupidity and evil of many Republicans really disgust me. I've decided I'd rather not comment on those matters for the most part, although I may occasionally link to posts about American politics in so far as it deals with international politics and economics.

With regard to international politics, I've separated links into geographical areas (continents) for the most part. For example, in today's post, links are for Europe, the Middle East and Asia, with "Miscellaneous" being for other parts of the world or multiple countries discussed in the post. Within each geographical area, I've tried to alphabetize the countries mentioned. So, once more, for example, with respect to the Middle East the countries are Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Pakistan, and Syria.

And, of course, if my readers have legitimate suggestions for links, please add them in the comments.


Europe:
Majid: Dangerous Purities (An interesting guest op-ed essay on the 400th anniversary of the expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain. The Moriscos were Spaniards of Muslim descent, either themselves or their parents/grandparents, who had converted from Islam to Christianity. But even their conversion was not enough to satisfy the Catholics, so roughly 300,000 Moriscos, or five percent of the Spanish population, was forced to flee their own country, with most of them dying in the process.)

Biased Election Reporting (On the German results for the European Parliament election.)

Russian Warns Against Relying on Dollar


Middle East:
Obama in the Middle East

Reactions to Obama's Speech

Obama's Speech in Cairo (Juan Cole)

Obama's Speech In Cairo (Moon of Alabama)

Iraqi Prime Minister Warned Obama About Photos: 'Baghdad Will Burn'

It's Only Make-Believe: Bush Policy on Israeli Settlement Freeze Was An 'Understanding'

Obama and Resolving the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

OSC: Israeli Press on Obama's Cairo Address

Netanyahu's Problem

UN: Israeli Buffer Zone Eats Up 30 Percent of Gaza's Arable Land

Jewish Settlers Rampage in West Bank

March 14 Faction Wins in Lebanon

OSC: Pakistani Editorialists Respond to Obama

Thousands Flee Mingora in Panic; Army advances toward Kalam; 9 Soldiers Killed, 27 militants

Mysterious 'Chip' is CIA's Latest Weapon Against al-Qaida Targets Hiding in Pakistan's Tribal Belt ("Don't like your neighbor? Drop a chip in his house and the CIA will bomb him.")

Syrian Newspapers on Obama's Arab Tour (OSC)


Asia:
Made in China Means Quality

American Journalists Sentenced In North Korea To 12 Years Labor Camp

Star War Fantasy Drill (Is North Korea a military threat to America? No, and a military hardware project called the "star war fantasy drill" from the US budget, to the howls of protest by some.)

Seoul Boosts Forces Against N Korea


Miscellaneous:
Fleischer criticizes Obama’s Cairo speech as being too ‘balanced.’

EU And Lebanon Elections

NYT Finally Runs ‘Editor’s Note’ Correction To Misleading Gitmo Detainee ‘Recidivism’ Story

Peter Schiff as Cassandra

A couple blogs I read have commented about the Youtube video (below) of financial commentator Peter Schiff's predictions from 2006 and 2007 about the current financial crisis. Crooks & Liars has given a very simplistic response: "Peter Schiff was right." Yeah, of course; so? Angry Bear thinks the real problem is that the various shows Schiff has appeared on (primarily Faux News, CNBC, and Bloomberg) deal in economic propaganda:

If we do not learn to understand "crap" reporting, if we do not learn to understand story telling for selfish purpose, if we do not learn to understand that propagandizing is not solely a political tool, but more importantly an economic tool, we will not solve our's and the worlds current economic condition.

That's true, but I'm not completely convinced that the problem is that the financial news shows and networks are really propagandizing. To me, propagandizing involves deceit, either through lying by omission, providing a loaded message or, as in the case of the Bush misadministration, just plain lying. I'm not sure that the financial news shows and networks are necessarily lying per se (even Faux News, although they do so blatantly on political news); instead, these people are "religious" fanatics. They have become true believers in the Gordon Gecko mantra "Greed is good." With the American economy jimmied through debt instruments (such as bonds), not even significant economic problems in the past (e.g., the Crash of 1987, the S&L crisis of the late 80s-early 90s, or the recessions of 1990-91 or 2001-02) have caused any doubt in their minds that the system is broken. Schiff, to me, is like the woman from Greek mythology, Cassandra.

Cassandra, the daughter of King Priam of Troy, was loved by Apollo, who gave her the gift of prophecy; however, because she would not return his love, he cursed her to correctly predict the future yet never be believed:

In more modern literature, Cassandra has often served as a model for tragedy and Romance, and has given rise to the archetypal character of someone whose prophetic insight is obscured by insanity, turning their revelations into riddles or disjointed statements that are not fully comprehended until after the fact. (Wikipedia)

Schiff correctly predicted the future several years ago, beginning to warn of the structural problems in the economy (that have not been addressed yet, despite all these billions of dollars being spent in bailouts), yet, at that time, Schiff's message was largely ignored if not publicly derided. (Has Laffer ever paid Schiff the one cent bet and written a letter of apology?) The paradigm, that "Greed is good" and the idea that the American economy can survive on debt and a service economy while hollowing out the manufacturing sector, needs to be broken. Now if that paradigm is "propaganda," then I'll agree with that too.

Ayat 30:1-6 and the Wars Between Byzantium and Persia (II)

Alif Lam Mim

The Roman Empire has been defeated-

In a land close by; but they, (even) after (this) defeat of theirs, will soon be victorious-

Within a few years. With God is the Decision, in the past and in the Future: on that Day shall the Believers rejoice-

With the help of God. He helps whom He will, and He is exalted in might, most merciful.

(It is) the promise of God. Never does God depart from His promise: but most men understand not.
-- The Romans (30): 1-6

For many of us Muslims, the first six verses of the surah called The Romans are familiar, but we probably don't know much about the wars between Byzantium and the Persians that described the Byzantine defeat in the mid- to late-610s and the prophecy regarding the Byzantine victory over the Sasanian Empire in 627. This is the second half of a post (the first half is located here), the eighth in my series about Hugh Kennedy's book, The Great Arab Conquests.

Previously, we looked at a basic overview of the conflict between Persia and Byzantine Rome, and the problems Byzantium faced after the war had ended. In this section, from pages 101-03, we look at the aftermath to the Sasanian Empire after their defeat by Heraclius.

The great war between the Byzantines and the Persians which had so damaged the Roman Empire in the first three decades of the seventh century had also been a disaster for the Sasanians. At first Persian arms had been almost entirely successful. In 615 the Persian army had reached the Bosporus opposite Constantinople, and in 619 Persian troops entered Alexandria and completed the conquest of Egypt. The tide began to turn in March 624 when the emperor Heraclius took his fleet to the Black Sea and began the invasion of Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Persians were now outflanked and were forced to withdraw their army from Anatolia to face the emperor, who was now attacking from the north. In 627 he swept through north-western Iran, before descending to the plains of northern Iraq and defeating the Persian army at Nineveh (12 December 627). It was the greatest military disaster that the Sasanian Empire had ever suffered. Chosroes retired to the capital at Ctesiphon, leaving his palace at Dastgard to be sacked by the Romans. Here he began the search for scapegoats to blame for the spectacular reversal of fortunes that had occurred. He seems to have decided on the execution of his most important military commander, Shahrbarāz, but before he could act there was a coup. Chosroes was assassinated early in 628 and his son, who had agreed to his father's murder, ascended the throne as Kavād II.

Kavād immediately set about negotiating a peace with Heraclius in which all prisoners were to be released and the pre-war frontiers restored. And all might yet have been well had the new king not died within the year, probably of the plague. He was succeeded by his infant son, Ardashīr III, but the general, Shāhrbarāz, refused to accept this and in June 629 siezed the throne. This was the first time in four centuries that a man who was not a member of the Sasanian family had tried to take the throne, and there was considerable resistance. After just two months, he, too, was murdered and, since Chosroes II had left no other sons, the throne passed to his daughter, Būrān, who, although apparently an effective ruler, died, of natural causes, after a year. There then followed a bewildering succession of short-lived rulers until finally Yazdgard III, a grandson of the great Chosroes, was elevated to the throne in 632.

The details of these intrigues are not in themselves important. The overall effect was decisive, however. The Sasanian Empire had been ravaged by an invading army and any idea of its invincibility had been destroyed. Archaeological evidence suggests that many settlements in the richest part of Iraq were abandoned as a result of the war. Furthermore the house of Sasan, the mainstay and raison d'être of the state, had been torn apart by feud and murder. It is more than likely that Yazdgard, if he had been given time, would have restored royal control and prestige. But the year of his accession was the year of the death of the Prophet Muhammad: Arab tribes were already taking advantage of the chaos to make inroads on the settled lands of Iraq, and Khālid b. Al-Walīd, the Muslim general, was on his way. In these circumstances, it is surprising not that the Persians were defeated by the Arabs but that they fought with such determination.

This last section, from pages 367-68, looks at the damage the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires inflicted upon each other and how neither were prepared for the oncoming Arab conquests.

Along with these long-term factors, there were the short-term effects of war and the dislocation it caused. There had been many conflicts between the Roman and Iranian empires since Crassus and his forces were defeated by the Parthians in 53 BC, but the war that broke out after the assassination of Emperor Maurice in 602 was the most far reaching and destructive. The effects of the Persian sweep through the lands of the Byzantine Empire affected society at many levels. It destroyed Byzantine imperial control over the lands of the Near East, it severed the links with Constantinople; governors were no longer appointed, armies were no longer dispatched and taxes were no longer paid. The Chalcedonian Orthodox Church lost its imperial patronage and became one Christian sect among many others. Many churchmen and other members of the elite fled to the comparative safety of North Africa or Italy. Archaeological work has suggested that, in Anatolia at least, the advance of the Persian armies did enormous damage to urban life and that people abandoned the spacious cities of the plains to take refuge in mountain-top fortresses. The restoration of Byzantine imperial control came only a year or two before the Arab armies marched from Medina, and in many areas there may have been no Byzantine military and political structures in place at all.

A distinguishing feature of this "last great war of antiquity" was that it devestated both of the great empires with even-handed brutality. Heraclius's invasion of the Persian Empire was as destructive as the Persian invasions of the Byzantine Empire had been; the great fire-temple at Shiz, where the Sasanian shahs had been inaugurated, was destroyed and the royal palace at Dastgard sacked. More crucially, the great king Chosroes II (591-628) was killed by his own generals. The Sasanian Empire, unlike the Byzantine, was formally a dynastic state; Heraclius's assault undermined the prestige of the dynasty and the confidence of the Persian ruling elite. Infighting among the members of the royal family caused a period of great instability. By the time that Yazdgard III (632-51) was wide accepted as shāh, the Arab armies were already attacking the Iraqi frontier.

The success of the conquest was also aided by the succession disputes that paralyzed the Byzantine state after the death of Heraclius in February 641. The power struggle at the Byzantine court seems to have been directly responsible for the otherwise inexplicable failure to mount an effective operation to defend Egypt. If Heraclius had been succeeded by a strong and energetic new emperor, the Byzantines might well have been able to mount a counter-attack in Syria or along the Mediterranean coasts, especially during the very disturbed period that followed the assassination of the caliph Uthmān in 656. The Muslims had a generation in which to consolidate their power and their hold over the lands won from the Byzantines.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Taq-i Kisra, the Great Arch of Ctesiphon; this is the only remaining visible structure of the Sasanian palace complex at Ctesiphon, in what is now Iraq. This photo was taken in 2007.

Ayat 30:1-6 and the Wars Between Byzantium and Persia (I)

Alif Lam Mim

The Roman Empire has been defeated-

In a land close by; but they, (even) after (this) defeat of theirs, will soon be victorious-

Within a few years. With God is the Decision, in the past and in the Future: on that Day shall the Believers rejoice-

With the help of God. He helps whom He will, and He is exalted in might, most merciful.

(It is) the promise of God. Never does God depart from His promise: but most men understand not.
-- The Romans (30): 1-6

For many of us Muslims, the first six verses of the surah called The Romans are familiar, but we probably don't know much about the wars between Byzantium and the Persians that described the Byzantine defeat in the mid- to late-610s and the prophecy regarding the Byzantine victory over the Sasanian Empire in 627. This post, the eighth in my series about Hugh Kennedy's book, The Great Arab Conquests, looks at three passages that describe what happened between these two empires.

This first passage, taken from pages 68-70, gives a basic overview of the conflict between Persia and Byzantine Rome, and briefly discusses the problems Byzantium had after the warfare had ended.

Relations between the Byzantine and Sasanian Persian empires were largely peaceful during the fifth and early sixth centuries. Both powers respected each other's borders and their zones of influence in the Syrian desert to the south and the mountains of Armenia to the north. In the mid sixth century, however, large-scale and very damaging warfare erupted between the two great powers. The Sasanian monarchs invaded Byzantine territory on a number of occasions. In 540 they sacked the great capital of the east at Antioch and in 573 they conquered the important provincial capital at Apamea. On both occasions they returned with a large amount of booty and transported large numbers of the population to new cities in the Persian Empire.

If relations had deteriorated in the sixth century, they became much worse in the seventh. In the year 602, the emperor Maurice and his entire family were assassinated by mutinous soldiers. Some years before, the emperor had given refuge to the young and energetic Sasanian monarch Chosroes II when he had been temporarily driven from his throne. Chosroes now used the death of his benefactor as an excuse for launching a devastating attack on the Byzantine Empire. His armies won a series of spectacular victories. In 611 Persian armies invaded Syria, Jerusalem fell to them in 614 and in 615 the Persians reached the shores of the Bosporus opposite Constantinople itself. In 619 they took Alexandria and all of Egypt was in their hands.

The Byzantine recovery was the achievement of the emperor Heraclius (610-41). He had been governor of Byzantine North Africa but in 610 sailed to Constantinople with his provincial army to seize the throne from the brutal usurper Phocas. His reign had been dominated by the struggle with the Persians. After many years, when Persian armies had seemed unstoppable, Heraclius had turned the tables dramatically when he launched an attack behind the enemy lines in 624. In a move of great daring and brilliant strategic vision, he had led an army from the Black Sea coast of Turkey, through western Iran and northern Iraq, sacking the famous fire temple at Shiz and the palace of Chosroes at Dastgard. With the death of his arch-rival Chosroes II in 628 and the subsequent divisions among the Persians as they struggled to find a new ruler, Heraclius was able to make a peace that re-established the old frontier between the two empires along the Khābūr river. In 629 he negotiated the withdrawal of Persian soldiers from Syria and Egypt and set about restoring Byzantine rule in the newly recovered provinces. On 21 March 630 he enjoyed his greatest moment of triumph when he returned the relics of the True Cross, taken by the Persians, to Jerusalem.

Although the Persians had been decisively defeated, the conquest of Syria and Palestine had a very damaging effect on Byzantine power in the Levant. Apart from the bloodshed caused by the warfare, it seems that many of the Greek-speaking elite emigrated to the security of North Africa or Rome. The fighting had been very destructive, especially in the towns, but perhaps more important was the loss of the tradition of imperial rule and administration. For most of the period of Muhammad's mission, Syria and Palestine were ruled by the Persians, not the Byzantines, and it was not until 630, a couple of years before the Prophet's death, that Byzantine control was re-established. Nonetheless, this control must have been very patchy, and there were probably many areas where Byzantine government hardly existed. Most younger-generation Syrians would have had no experience or memory of imperial rule, and no cause to be loyal to Constantinople. Even as Byzantine government was being slowly re-established, the religious differences that had divided Syria in the sixth century came to the fore again. The emperor Heraclius was determined to enforce religious conformity on a Christian population that in large measure rejected his doctrinal position.

Byzantine control over Syria had been established for more than half a millennium. If Islam had been born fifty years earlier, and the early Muslims had attempted to raid Syria and Palestine in the 580s not the 630s, there can be little doubt that they would have been seen off very quickly, as the provinces were firmly controlled by the government and the defenses well organized. The coincidence that the first Muslim armies appeared in the area immediately after the traumatic events of the great war between Byzantium and Iran was the essential prerequisite for the success of Muslim arms.

To be continued, insha'allah...

Photo Credit: Cardo Maximus, a street in the ruins of Apamea (Syria), sacked in 573 CE by Chosroes I, from Wikipedia/Bo-Deh

Leadership Qualities of the Arabs

As a student and lecturer of management and leadership; I found this section in Hugh Kennedy's book, The Great Arab Conquests to be rather interesting. This looks like a topic that could be further expanded on. From pp. 371-72:

The quality of leadership in the Muslim armies was clearly very high. The small elite of Hijazi city dwellers, mostly from the Quraysh and associated tribes, who provided the majority of the senior commanders, produced some extremely able men. Khālid b. al-Walīd in Syria, Amr b. al-Ās in Egypt and Sa'd b. Abī Waqqās in Iraq were all military leaders of distinction. In the next generation we can point to Uqba b. Nāfi in North Africa, Tāriq b. Ziyād and Mūsā b. Nusayr in Spain, Qutayba b. Muslim in Transoxania and Muhammad b. Ishāq al-Thaqafī [sic; Kennedy really means Muhammad b. Qāsim al-Thaqafī] in Sind as great commanders. The Arabic sources also talk a great deal about councils of war and commanders taking advice before deciding on a course of action. This is partly a literary fiction, designed to outline the possible military activity and emphasize the "democratic" nature of early Muslim society, but it may be a genuine reflection of practice, whereby decisions were made after a process of consultation and discussion.

The effectiveness of the leadership may be in part a product of the political traditions of Arabian society. Leadership was passed down from generation to generation within certain families and kins, but within those groups any aspiring leader had to prove himself, showing his followers that he was brave, intelligent and diplomatic. If he failed, they would look for someone else. He also had to take account of the views and opinions of those he hoped to lead. Being someone's son was never qualification enough. The astonishment of the Iranian queen mother that the sons of the great Qutayba b. Muslim did not inherit his position are an indication of the difference in culture between Iranian and Arab in this respect. Incompetent or dictatorial commanders were unlikely to survive for long. Ubayd Allāh b. Abī Bakra in Afghanistan and Junayd b. Abd al-Rahmān in Transoxania are among the few examples of failure in command; they lasted only a short time and were savagely excoriated by the poets, the political commentators of their time.

There were other features of the Muslim command structure which led to success. The sources lay continuous stress on the roles of caliphs and governors, particularly the caliph Umar I (633-44), in organizing and directing the conquests. It is quite impossible that Umar could have written all the letters about the minutiae of military operations that are ascribed to him, but these narratives may reflect the fact that there was a strong degree of organization and control from Medina and later from Damascus. There are very few examples of commanders disobeying orders, equally few of rebellions against the center by commanders in distant fields and provinces. This is all the more striking because it contrasts with events in the contemporary Byzantine Empire, where the military effectiveness of the state was constantly undermined by rebellions of military commanders hoping to take the imperial crown. The way in which successful generals like Khālid b. al-Walīd, Amr b. al-Ās, Mūsā b. Nusayr and Muhammad b. Ishāq [sic; again, Muhammad b. Qāsim al-Thaqafī] accepted their dismissal and quietly made their way back to the center, often to face punishment and disgrace, is very striking.

I take exception to Kennedy referring to the councils of war and commanders taking advice being "partly a literary fiction." All the sirah I've read of the Prophet (pbuh) refer time and again to his taking council not only with his Companions, but even his wives (e.g., Umm Salamah at the time of Hudaybiyyah). Moreover, Kennedy proves his own point when he later wrote, "He also had to take account of the views and opinions of those he hoped to lead." I don't think this is a literary fiction at all, but was the standard operation procedure of the Arab commanders, who used the example of the Prophet (pbuh) to great effect.

When Kennedy also wrote that the poets would "savagely excoriate" weak commanders, this is not an exaggeration. Earlier in the book (p. 288) Kennedy had provided several poems; this first was written against Junayd b. Abd al-Rahmān, who led the Arabs in the disastrous Battle of the Tashtakaracha Pass (south of the city of Samarqand, in what is now Uzbekistan):

You weep because of the battle
You should be carved up as a leader
You abandoned us like pieces of a slaughtered beast
Cut up for a round-breasted girl.
Drawn swords rose
Arms were cut off at the elbows
While you were like an infant girl in the women's tent
With no understanding what was going on.
If only you had landed in a pit on the day of the Battle
And been covered with hard, dry mud!
War and its sons play with you
Like hawks play with quails.
Your heart flew out of fear of battle
Your flying heart will not return
I hate the wide beauty of your eye
And the face in a corrupt body
Junayd, you do not come from real Arab stock
And your ancestors were ignoble
Fifty thousand were slain having gone astray
While you cried out for them like lost sheep.

Another poem was written against Ubayd Allāh b. Abī Bakra (pp. 196-97):

You were appointed as their Amir
Yet you destroyed them while the war was still raging
You stayed with them, like a father, so they said
Yet you were breaking them with your folly
You are selling a qafiz* of grain for a whole dirham
While we wondered who was to blame
You were keeping back their rations of milk and barley
And selling them unripe grapes.

* A measure of four liters, the implication being that this was very expensive.

Photo credit: Masjid Jamia Khalid ibn al-Walid, location of the tomb of Khalid ibn al-Walid, from Wikipedia/Mohammad Adil Rais

Tu Huan: Life in Kufa During the Abbasid Caliphate

I finally finished Hugh Kennedy's book, The Great Arab Conquests this morning. This is the sixth post in this series from the book, and I expect that there will be three more, insha'allah, on leadership qualities of the Arabs, conversion to Islam, and the battles between the Byzantine and Sasanid empires that tie in with Qur'anic ayat (not necessarily in that order). I also want to update my post on jizya with some additional information I came across at the end of the book.

In the meantime, this passage is about the writings of a Chinese prisoner of war who lived in Kufa, Iraq during the Abbasid caliphate. It provides a first-hand account from a man who lived there for eleven years before returning home. Only a small amount of Tu Huan's writings have survived through today; what did survive was included in an encyclopedia that was compiled by one of the author's relatives in 801. From pp. 360-62:

The Arabs, of course, never conquered China but they did capture a number of Chinese prisoners of war in the campaign that led to the battle of Talas between the Chinese and Muslim armies in 751. Among these was one Tu Huan, who was taken to Iraq and remained there as a prisoner before being allowed to return home in 762. His account of the Muslims is short but extremely interesting, showing how the Muslim world at the end of the period of the great conquests, appeared to someone from a completely different culture.

The capital is called Kūfa [Ya-chü-lo]. The Arab king is called mumen [that is, Amīr al-Mu'minīn, Commander of the Faithful]. Both men and women are handsome and tall, their clothing is bright and clean, and their manners are elegant. When a woman goes out in public, she must cover her face irrespective of her lofty or lowly social position. They perform ritual prayers five times a day. They eat meat, fast and regard the butchering of animals as meritorious. They wear silver belts around the waist from which they suspend silver daggers. They prohibit the drinking of wine and forbid music. When people squabble among themselves, they do not come to blows. There is also a ceremonial hall [the mosque] which accommodates tens of thousands of people. Every seven days the king comes out to perform religious services; he mounts a high pulpit and preaches law to the multitudes. He says, "Human life is very difficult, the path of righteousness is not easy, and adultery is wrong. To rob or steal, in the slightest way to deceive people with words, to make oneself secure by endangering others, to cheat the poor or oppress the lowly -- there is no greater sin than one of these. All who are killed in battle against the enemies of Islam will achieve paradise. Kill the enemies and you will receive happiness beyond measure."

The entire land has been transformed; the people follow the tenets of Islam like a river its channel, the law is applied only with leniency and the dead are interred only with frugality. Whether inside the walls of a great city or only inside a village gate, the people lack nothing of what the earth produces. Their country is the hub of the universe where myriad goods are abundant and inexpensive, where rich brocades, pearls and money fill the shops while camels, horses, donkeys and mules fill the streets and alleys. They cut sugar cane to build cottages resembling Chinese carriages. Whenever there is a holiday the nobility are presented with more vessels of glass and bowls of brass than can be counted. The white rice and white flour are not different from those of China. Their fruits include the peach and also thousand-year dates. Their rape turnips, as big as a peck, are round and their taste is very delicious, while their other vegetables are like those of other countries. Their grapes are as large as hen's eggs. The most highly esteemed of their fragrant oils are two, one called jasmine and the other called myrrh. Chinese artisans have made the first looms for weaving silk fabrics and are the first gold and silversmiths and painters.

The account shows a mature Muslim society, which accords with the picture we know from other sources. The picture dates from the early years of the Abbasid caliphate immediately before the foundation of Baghdad, which was begun in 762, the year Tu Huan was allowed to return home. We know from Arabic sources that the caliph Mansūr was famous for his eloquent sermons in the mosques, and it is interesting to see the emphasis our Chinese observer puts on condemning oppression and injustice on one hand and stressing jihād and the rewards of paradise on the other. We are shown a puritanical society where the veiling of women and the prohibition, at least in public, of alcohol and music are clearly evident. It is also a prosperous society, and one in which the prosperity is widely shared across the different social classes and in both town and village. It is understandable that many of the people conquered by the Arabs would have wanted to be part of this thriving community. Kūfa was, of course, a Muslim new town and a place where one would expect to find Muslim norms strongly adhered to. At the same time, it is striking that there is no mention of non-Muslims, who must still have been in a majority, even in Iraq, an area where conversion to Islam was fairly rapid.

Saudi Aramco World published an article on the Battle of Talas back in 1982 that may be of interest. Also, some pictures of the Talas area may be found here.

Photo credit: Masjid Kufa, courtesy of Mumineen.org

Jizya: Amounts Paid in the Treaties of Orihuela and Misr (Egypt)

One of the complaints about Islam by Islamophobes is the issue of jizya, the tax levied on non-Muslim citizens of an Islamic state. In return for the payment of the jizya, non-Muslims were permitted to practice their faith, to enjoy a measure of communal autonomy, to be entitled to Muslim protection from outside aggression, to be exempted from military service and taxes levied upon Muslim citizens. What has never been brought up in any argument I've read against the jizya is exactly how much was paid by the non-Muslims. In another of my posts about Hugh Kennedy's book, The Great Arab Conquests (yes, I am almost finished with the book ;) ), Kennedy addresses this issue in several passages. The first passage is with respect to the Treaty of Orihuela (pp. 315-16):

We are better informed about the conquest of the area around Murcia in south-east Spain. This was ruled by a Visigothic noble called Theodemir (Tudmīr). He negotiated a treaty with Abd al-Azīz, of which the text, dated April 713 [Rajab, 94 A.H.], is recorded in several Arabic sources.

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. This text was written by Abd al-Azīz b. Mūsā b. Nusayr for Tudmīr b. Ghabdush, establishing a treaty of peace and the promise and protection of God and His Prophet (may God bless him and grant him His peace). We [Abd al-Azīz] will not set any special conditions for him or for any among his men, nor harass him, nor remove him from power. His followers will not be killed or taken prisoner, nor will they be separated from their women and children. They will not be coerced in matters of religion, their churches will not be burned, nor will sacred objects be taken from the realm as long as Theodemir remains sincere and fulfils the following conditions we have set for him:

He has reached a settlement concerning seven towns: Orihuela, Valentilla, Alicante, Mula, Bigastro, Ello and Lorca.

He will not give shelter to fugitives, nor to our enemies, nor encourage any protected person to fear us, nor conceal news of our enemies.

He and each of his men shall also pay one dinar every year, together with four measures of wheat, four measures of barley, four liquid measures of concentrated fruit juice, four liquid measures of vinegar, four of honey and four of olive oil. Slaves much [sic; must] each pay half of this.

Kennedy continues:

This treaty is a classic example of the sort of local agreements that were the reality of Arab "conquest" in many areas of the caliphate. It is clear that rather than embark on a difficult and costly campaign, the Muslims preferred to make an agreement that would grant them security from hostile activities and some tribute. It is a pattern we can observe in many areas of Iran and Transoxania. It is interesting to note that much of this tribute was taken in kind (wheat, barley, vinegar, oil, but of course no wine). In exchange for this, the local people were allowed almost complete autonomy. Theodemir was clearly expected to continue to rule his seven towns and the rural areas attached to them. There is no indication that any Muslim garrison was established, nor that any mosques were built. Theodemir and many of his followers may have imagined that the Muslim conquest would be fairly short lived and that it was worth paying up to preserve their possessions until such time as the Visigothic kingdom was restored. In fact it was to be five centuries before Christian powers re-established control over this area. We do not know how long the agreement was in force: Theodemir himself died, full of years and distinction, in 744. It is likely that it was never formally abolished but rather that as Muslim immigration and the conversion of local people to Islam increased in the late eighth and ninth centuries, its provisions became increasingly irrelevant.

In another passage, with respect to the Treaty of Misr (Egypt), Kennedy writes (pp. 153-54):

It was probably at this time that the document known as the Treaty of Misr (Egypt) between the Muslims and the Byzantine authorities was drawn up, though the exact context of this document remains unclear. It is in many ways similar to the treaty Umar had made with Jerusalem and was presumably modeled on it. It begins with a general clause safeguarding the people their religion (millat), their property, their crucifixes, their lands and their waterways. They would be obliged to pay the jizya (tribute) every year when the rise of the Nile (ziyādat nahrihim) was over. If the river failed to rise properly, payment would be reduced in proportion. If anyone did not agree to it, he would not pay the tribute but he would not receive protection. Romans and Nubians who wanted to enjoy the same terms might do so and those who did not were free to leave.

...

In many of them [different written accounts about the treaty] the tax to be paid was assessed at 2 dinars per adult male except for the poor. Some also said that the Egyptians should provide the Muslims with supplies. Each landowner (dhī ard) was to provide 210 kilos of wheat, 4 liters of oil, 4 liters of honey and 4 liters of vinegar (but, of course, no wine). They were also to get clothing: each Muslim was to be given a woolen jubba, a burnūs or turban, a pair of trousers (sarāwīl) and a pair of shoes. It may be that many of these south Arabians had arrived very ill prepared for the coolness of an Egyptian winter.

In other words, the jizya paid per person in terms of currency was a very nominal amount. It would be like asking for a tax of one or two dollars per person; the poor, any slaves, presumably women and children would either pay a lower amount or be exempted altogether. The in-kind payments of food and clothing would cost more, but these were no doubt requested by the Arab armies because their soldiers needed the supplies. As Kennedy points out (p. 334), Arab soldiers were expected to provide their own equipment and pay for their own food. Once the payment was made, life went on as before. Muslim armies charged less in terms of the jizya if the town submitted peacefully instead of battling with the army (probably what the slave had told the people at Junday-Shapur, who quickly realized how much cheaper it would be for them to pay the tribute than to fight the Muslims; in fact, Kennedy tells of a number of cities that came to the same decision).

Jizya, then, was not the crushing tax burden one finds in ancient Greek and Roman histories. It was a relatively small amount paid by the non-Muslims; as more and more people became Muslim, the amount paid for jizya actually shrank over time. Of course, we Muslims have our own taxes (e.g., zakat).

Update: As promised earlier, here is one more passage from the book that suggests that the jizya was not terribly oppressive, at least at first. From page 373:

Although we cannot be clear about this, it is possible that the Arabs were, initially at least, less demanding of the resources and services of the ordinary people than their Byzantine and Sasanian predecessors, and the taxes they imposed may actually have been lower. It is not until the end of the seventh century that we get complaints about oppressive tax gathering.

Photo credit: A street in Lorca, Spain, by Howzey

The Meeting between Umar and Hurmuzān

Another story from Hugh Kennedy's book, The Great Arab Conquests (pp. 130-31). As the Arab army swept through Khūzestān (in what is now southwestern Iran), the Persian general Hurmuzān (Hormozan) fled to the city of Tustar (now Shushtar), where he and his forces were besieged by the army of Abu Musa Al-Ash'ari for at least eighteen months (some records say two years). Shustar finally fell when one or two of the city residents befriended the Arab soldiers and agreed to help them in exchange for a third of the spoils. The Arabs then tunneled under the city walls, and the city was eventually taken. However, the decision was made to send Hurmuzān to the Caliph Umar, who would decide his fate:

After his surrender at Tustar, he was brought to Medina to be presented to the caliph. Before he and his escort entered the city, they arrayed him in all his finery, his brocade and cloth-of-gold robes and a crown studded with rubies. Then they led him through the streets so that everyone could see him. When they reached Umar's house, however, they found that he was not there, so they went to look for him in the mosque but could not find him there either. Finally they passed a group of boys playing in the street, who told them that the caliph was asleep in a corner of the mosque with his cloak folded under his head for a pillow.

When they returned to the mosque they found him as the boys had said. He had just received a delegation of visitors from Kūfa and, when they had left, he had simply put his head down for a nap. Apart from him there was no one in the mosque. They sat down a little way from him. Hurmuzān enquired where his guards and attendants were but was told he had none. "Then he must be a prophet," the Persian said. "No," his escort replied, "but he does the things prophets do." Meanwhile more people gathered round and the noise woke Umar up. He sat up and saw the Persian and the escort asked him to talk to the "king of Ahvaz." Umar refused as long as he was wearing all his finery, and only when the prisoner had been stripped as far as decency allowed and reclad in a coarse robe did the interrogation begin.

Umar asked Hurmuzān what he thought about the recent turn of events, to which the Persian replied that in the old days God was not on the side of the Persians or the Arabs and the Persians were in the ascendancy, but now God was favoring the Arabs and they had won. Umar replied that the real reason was that the Persians had previously been united while the Arabs had not. Umar was inclined to execute him in revenge for the Muslims he had slain. Hurmuzān asked for some water, and when it was given to him he said he was afraid he would be killed while he was drinking. The caliph replied that he would not be killed before he had drunk the water, whereupon Hurmuzān allowed his hands to tremble and the water was spilled. When Umar again threatened to kill him, the Persian said that he had already been given immunity; after all, he had not drunk the water. Umar was furious, but the assembled company agreed that Hurmuzān was right. In the end, he was converted to Islam, allowed to live in Medina and given a substantial pension.

Kennedy continues:

The story of Hurmuzān's trick is probably a folk motif grafted on to historical events, but it serves its purpose to illustrate the contrast between Persian pride and luxury and Muslim simplicity; the honesty of the Muslims and the integration of elements of the Persian elite into the Muslim hierarchy.

In E.J. Brill's First Encyclopaedia of Islam, 1913-1936, al-Hurzumān, described as the King of Susiana,

"...succeeded as saving his life by his cunning but only on condition that he adopted Islām. He was able to be useful to the Caliph in various ways on account of his knowledge of Persian affairs. But when 'Omar was murdered in 23 = 644 by a Persian Christian, al-Hurmuzān, probably without reason, was suspected of being an accomplice and killed by 'Ubaid Allāh, son of the Caliph." (p. 338)

Photo credit: Panoramio/shushtari

The Conquest of Junday-Shapur

Another story from Hugh Kennedy's book, The Great Arab Conquests (p. 128), this time dealing with the "conquest" of Junday-Shapur (also known as Jondisapur (p. 206) or Gundishapur), an ancient city that lies in the modern Iranian province of Khūzestān, between the cities of Dezful and Shustar.

According to this story, the city resisted vigorously until one day, to the great surprise of the Muslims, the gates were flung open and the city was opened up. The Muslims asked the defenders what had come over them, to which they replied, "You have shot us an arrow with a message that safety would be granted to us. We have accepted this and set aside the tribute payments." The Muslims replied that they had done no such thing, but after extensive enquiries they found a slave, originally from Junday-shapur, who admitted that he had indeed written such a message. The Muslim commanders explained that this was the work of a slave with no authority to make such an offer, to which the inhabitants replied that they had no means of knowing that and finished by saying that they were going to keep their side of the bargain, even if the Muslims chose to act treacherously. The Muslims referred the matter to [the Caliph] Umar, who responded that the promise was in fact binding, for "God holds the keeping of promises in the highest esteem." The moral is clear: even the promise of a slave must be respected.

Photo credit: Wikipedia/Zereshk - The interior of Masjid Jameh (Congregational Mosque) in Dezful, Iran.

The Foundation Myth of Qayrawān

I read this to Milady the other night before we went to bed. It's a cute foundation myth for the city of Qayrawān (aka Kairouan, located in Tunisia), which was founded around the year 670 by the Arab general Uqba ibn Nafi (whom the masjid in the picture to the left is named after). As Milady said to me the other night, this is the sort of story one would tell children. This story appears in Hugh Kennedy's book, The Great Arab Conquests (which I mentioned the other day), pp. 210-11:

Uqba went on: "I have only chosen this place because it is well away from the sea and Roman ships cannot reach it and destroy it. It is well inland." Then he ordered his men to get building, but they complained that the scrub was full of lions and vagabonds and that they were afraid for their lives and refused to do it. So Uqba collected the members of his army who had been Companions of the Prophet [pbuh], twelve of them, and cried out, "O you lions and vermin, we are Companions of the Prophet of God [pbuh], so leave us and if we find any of you here we will kill them!" Then the people witnessed the most extraordinary sight, for the lions carried their cubs and the wolves carried their young and the snakes carried their offspring and they left, one group after another. Many Berbers were converted to Islam as a result of this.

He then established the government house and the houses for the people around it and they lived there for forty years without ever seeing a snake or a scorpion. He laid out the mosque but was uncertain about the direction of the qibla and was very worried. Then he slept, and in the night heard a voice saying, "Tomorrow, go to the mosque and you will hear a voice saying Allahu akbar." Follow the direction of the voice and that will be the qibla God has made pleasing for the Muslims in this land." In the morning he heard the voice and established the qibla and all the other mosques copied it.

Photo credit: Masjid Uqba and cemetery, courtesy of Wikipedia/Douya

Answering George on Low Birth Rates in the West

George Carty has (once again) asked an interesting question, this time in response to my Straight Talk About Islam post:

About the birth rates thing - do you think that environmentalist propaganda about "overpopulation" has anything to do with low birth rates in the West?

For a number of years, I've argued that declining birth rates more often had to do with increasing standards of living. The higher the standard of living, the lower the birth rate. I had argued that this could be seen as far back as the era of Augustus, with his introduction of laws such as the Lex Papia Poppaea, which penalized the celibate and childless, especially among Rome's patrician class.

Caesar Augustus encouraged marriage and having children. He assessed heavier taxes on unmarried men and women and, by contrast, offered rewards for marriage and child bearing. Since there were more males than females among the nobility, he permitted that anyone who wished (except for senators) to marry freedwomen could do so, and decreed the children of these marriages to be legitimate, (Suetonius). (Source)

And so I did a quick-and-dirty analysis using data from the CIA World Factbook to see just how true this proposal might be. Using GDP per capita on a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis as a proxy to measure the standard of living, I compared that statistic against total fertility rates for a total of 221 countries. A graph of the data points can be seen below:


On the X-axis we have the total fertility rates with a minimum of 1.00 (Hong Kong) and a maximum of 7.34 (Mali). On the Y-axis we have GDP per capita. If my idea is correct we should expect to find the numbers running from the top-left to the bottom-right. We do see this somewhat, although with a lot of data points in the lower left corner (low total fertility rates and low GDP per capita). If my original idea was correct, the correlation coefficient, which measures the strength and direction of two sets of related data, would be close to negative 1, which indicates a perfectly negative relationship between the two data sets (in other words, the higher one set of data is, the lower the other data set is). Here, the correlation coefficient is negative 0.4854. So there is a negative relationship, but of middling strength.

I also remembered seeing some statistics before showing that countries with low life expectancies often had high birth rates. (If you know that you're likely to die at a young age, you're not likely to wait around until your thirties or forties before having kids, like in Western cultures.) So I took the total fertility rates and compared it against the life expectancies at birth, also for 221 countries. The graph can be seen below:


Now here is a more negative relationship that's much more clearly defined. The correlation coefficient confirms this, being at negative 0.7678, which is much stronger than the correlation coefficient for GDP. In other words, the longer people live, the less likely they are to have children. This is perhaps more of a reflection of a country's ability to provide better health care to their citizens: the better a country's health care, the lower the country's population growth rate. However, there are exceptions to this rule as well. For example, some of the countries with higher life expectancies and total fertility rates tend to be Muslim countries, like Oman (73.91 years; 5.62 babies/woman) and the Gaza Strip (72.34 years; 5.51 babies/woman). Likewise, there are some countries who have both low birth rates and low life expectancies. But, overall, life expectancy seems to be a better explanation why Western cultures have lower birth rates, at least in comparison to standard of living. (There are a couple of other analyses that could be done as well; e.g., life expectancy of men vs. women, and multiple regression analysis of GDP per capita and life expectancy vs. total fertility rates, but I'll save those for the future, insha'allah.)

And, obviously, to answer George's original question, no, I don't think overpopulation has much to do with Western birth rates, although that could be an analysis for another day.

The History of the Humble Olive

There's an interesting diary on "the history of the humble olive" over at Daily Kos, of all places, that was rather interesting. Be sure to check it out. Personally, I love olives and olive oil, and I can easily go through a bottle of olives while eating cottage cheese (another favorite food), using the olives as a garnish. Tasty! Here's a brief quotation from the diary:

The Olive was a native to Asia Minor and spread from Iran, Syria and Palestine to the rest of the Mediterranean basin around 6,000 years ago. It is among the oldest known cultivated trees in the world (being grown before the written language was invented). It was being grown on Crete by 3,000 BC and may have been the source of the wealth of the Minoan kingdom. The Phoenicians spread the olive to the Mediterranean shores of Africa and Southern Europe. Olives have been found in Egyptian tombs from 2000 years BC. The olive culture was spread to the early Greeks then Romans. As the Romans extended their domain they brought the olive with them (but not the olive branch! They were fond of conquering). A little known fact is this: 1400 years ago the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad, advised his followers to apply olive oil to their bodies, and himself used oil on his head.

The Falcon Will Rise Again

One of the people on the Alan Parsons e-mail list has asked which one of our posts to the list we are most proud of. There are a couple posts I've written that I've liked, but I've always enjoyed this one, where I "quibbled" over whether the song "The Eagle Will Rise Again" (on the Pyramid album) should have used the imagery of a falcon instead. This was originally written on Sunday, March 21, 1999:

This letter may seem to be quibbling over a minor point on "The Eagle Will Rise Again," but I'll quibble anyway. :)

First, some introduction. This past Thursday, I visited the "Splendors of Ancient Egypt" exhibit at the Phoenix Art Museum. This exhibit is on the last leg of a five city tour, consisting of over 200 artifacts from the Egyptian collection of the Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum in Hildesheim, Germany. The response to the exhibit has been truly amazing. This is not an exhibit where you can just walk in and look around. You have to purchase your ticket in advance for a specific date and time to tour. When I arrived on Thursday night, there were signs all over the doors saying the exhibit had sold out of tickets for the rest of the exhibition (which is supposed to close at the end of the month). Touring the show was a fantastic experience for me, and I'm very glad and fortunate to have seen the artifacts. After the tour, I purchased the show's catalog, which I just finished reading yesterday.

In the catalog, there are some references to the relationships between the various kings/pharaohs, gods and the animals which are sacred to the gods. One of the central myths to the ancient Egyptian religion involves Osiris, Horus, Isis and Seth. "After the creation, Osiris was given dominion, or kingship, over the land. He ruled with justice and maintained order, but his brother Seth was jealous and murdered him. Osiris's wife, Isis, used magical means to bring him back to life. He then became the principal god of the afterlife. A dispute over rulership ensued between Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis, and his uncle Seth, with Horus emerging as victor and asserting his right to follow his father on the throne of Egypt."

A little later, it says, "The myth of Osiris, who was able to gain eternal life by the grace of the sun god Re, was central to the practices of preparation for burial and the belief in the possibility of life after death in another world. It was also of vital importance in the orderly transition of power from the deceased king to his son. The new king was likened to the young, living Horus with the dead father considered to have entered the next life as Osiris."

Earlier in the book, I came across the following passage about falcons: "The falcon, for example, was associated with the celestial god Horus and the bird, as a representation of the present ruler or "living Horus," was an important symbol of Egyptian kingship." There were other birds mentioned in the text (the ibis, which was associated with the god Thoth, and the vulture, which represented the goddess Nekhbet), but there was not a single mention about eagles. Now, granted, this book is not an exhaustive text on the topic, but it did get me to thinking that perhaps a more correct lyric would have been "The falcon will rise again" instead of "The eagle will rise again."

Like I said, a quibble over a minor point. :)

Funeral Masks

"Pastor Dan" at Street Prophets had an interesting diary the other day about a recent funeral he attended. He saw a woman take a picture of the deceased and asked the question, "Why do people take pictures of the dead?" While I'm certainly no expert on the subject, I decided to add a couple of comments to that diary, which have been expanded upon below. This is what Dan originally had to say:

An Aged Relative took a snapshot of the deceased to add to her collection. She said she had one of her mother, father, and sister.

This is one of those customs I don't judge but can't pretend to understand. I suppose it's no odder than laying out the decedent in the front parlor, a custom still followed in some sub-cultures.

But yeah, what gives?

Several people who had made earlier comments on Pastor Dan's diary noted the popularity of photographs taken of the dead during the Victorian age, but the practice actually goes back thousands of years. I'm not sure if anyone knows exactly when the practice of making a death mask or funeral mask first started, but this practice has occurred in many different cultures. Both the ancient Egyptians and Greeks made funeral masks for their dead, especially for royalty. Some of these masks are very famous and familiar to us; others not so much. Of course, nearly everyone will recognize the funeral mask of King Tutankhamen, made of gold and a number of semi-precious stones, including lapis lazuli, carnelian, quartz, turquoise and obsidian, plus colored glass. However, the Egyptians also made mummy masks for non-royal subjects, both men and women, up through the Roman era. These masks were much less expensive than royal masks, of course, often being made of "cartonnage," which was a process similar to papier-mâché in which layers of linen were plastered together, molded and then painted. In later periods, papyrus scrolls were used in place of the linen. (Source)

Heinrich Schliemann, the amateur archaeologist who discovered the ruins of Troy, is also famous for having dug up the shaft graves of Mycenae. Among the art objects found in the shaft graves of Mycenae's Grave Circle A included what is now known as the Mask of Agamemnon, made of gold, although the mask (along with four others found at Mycenae) are now dated to the Late Helladic I period (c. 1500-1550 BCE), perhaps 200-250 years or so before the life of the actual Agamemnon (if he was, in fact, an historical figure, which I believe he was).

Gold, of course, was a popular choice of material for royal death masks around the world, but other materials were used as well. Wood was a popular material in many cultures, such as the Ibo (right) and the Egyptians, being abundant and easy to carve. Jade was popular among the Mayans and the Chinese, the latter also making funeral masks in bronze.

Into the Roman era, we find a significant difference between the earlier peoples versus those of the later antiquity: the funeral masks are kept among the living instead of being buried with the dead. The ancient Romans made funeral masks of their ancestors, normally of wax, but hung them in the front lobby to their home so that visitors could see the visages of prominent ancestors (especially those who had held public office, such as the consulship). In Tom Holland's book, Rubicon, he wrote:

"Beyond a portico designed to echo the features of a temple, the walls of the atrium were hung with forbidding images, the wax death-masks of magistrattes, bearing witness to the honours won by the family in the past. Painted lines connected the portraits, reaching backwards into time..." (p. 116)

In the West, the practice of creating funeral masks has lasted into the twentieth century, even at a time when photography has made the masks irrelevant. Ludwig van Beethoven's plaster funeral mask has survived to this day (top photo, above), as has that of the Bohemian-Austrian composer Gustav Mahler. What's interesting is a comment made by a friend of Beethoven, Stephan von Breuning:

"Such casts of great men are often permitted," wrote Bruening beforehand, "and if we forbade it, our refusal might afterwards be regarded as an encroachment upon the rights of the public."
(Source)

The alleged death mask of Bruce Lee.