Golden Age of Islam Achievements

The emergence of the Jabriya and Qadriya ideological groups

We were discussing how the rise of Muslims to global dominance was followed by their decline. We were learning about the historical secret that underlies it. We came to the conclusion throughout this inquiry that two significant academic organizations emerged among Muslims at the outset of Islam. One is Qadriya (rationalists), while the other is Jabriya (bound). According to Jabriya, a man does what God wills and God's will governs the entire cosmos. Man is confined by fate; nothing occurs through free will. According to Qadriya, man is free and has power because of this. he is answerable for his deeds on the Day of Judgement. If man is not free in his actions, then why should he be held accountable? How did these two groups come into being, what clashes do they have, and what were the arguments with them? You have seen all these events in the previous blog. Our blog ended at the point that one group got official support and flourished while the other faced the wrath. What ideology was accepted by which ruler?

The Banu Umayyad Caliphate was securely established from east to west in 684 CE by Marwan I Ibn al-Hakam, the Umayyad Caliph. The modern-day Syrian city of Damascus served as their capital. The Caliphate court had been taken by the Umayyads with force and authority, not after consulting the Muslims. Hazrat Ali (RA) and the Banu Umayyad Emir Muawiya engaged in combat at the Battle of Saffin in 657 CE. The catastrophe of Karbala then occurred in 680, when the Banu Umayyad repressed the Hashemites and established their dominance.This catastrophe occurred just four years before to Marwan bin Al-Hakam's rule. It was generally known to the Banu Umayyads that they were disliked by many Muslims. A caliphate had been created in Makkah in addition to Damascus. Abdullah Ibn Zubair was likewise recognized by most Arabs as the legitimate caliph. In 683 CE, the Umayyads besieged Makkah, mistaking it for rebellion. However, Yazid's untimely death forced the midway abandonment of this attempt. Then, in Hijaz, Abdullah bin Zubair founded his caliphate. To end it, Hajjaj bin Yusuf of Banu Umayyad marched on Makkah in 692 CE to end the caliphate of Hijaz, which the Umayyads had termed rebellion. In two attacks, the Kaaba was also set on fire, and its walls collapsed in the fight, with the blame for it going to Hajjaj bin Yusuf. The net result of this fight and bloodshed was the victory of Umayyad Hajjaj bin Yusuf. Abdullah bin Zubair was killed, and the Caliphate established in Makkah was also abolished.

Damascus was now home to the sole Banu Umayyad caliphate in the Muslim world. The attack on Makkah and the Karbala tragedy were the primary causes of everyone's realization that the Umayyads had not gained power by consultation but were now ruling solely by force. Despite having established administrative stability in the Muslim world, they lacked the moral authority to govern. When a ruler or power lacks a rationale, it invents one. The Jabriya philosophy served as the foundation and justification for the caliphate, which was imposed through force. They began to use and advertise this. How could they be responsible for the oppression their rivals inflicted upon them? Destiny has already written these things. These are things that take place by the will of God. If God is not willing to make us the rulers and conquerors, then how can we have won? As proof, the Umayyad rulers would give the same arguments as the Jabriya scholars. Some of it has been shown in the first part. Well, after 684 CE and in the 90s, the Umayyads gave the caliphate patronage to Jabriya ideas. Jabriya ideology was adopted as the official Islamic ideology. Anyone who opposed it, as the Qadriya school of thought did, would be termed as depraved and even infidel, and they were declared outcasts and punished. The Umayyad rulers also used this ideology to crush their opposing rebels. For example, when Marwan bin Al-Hakam died in 685 CE, his son Abdul Malik bin Marwan acceded to the throne of the caliphate. But an ex-governor of the Umayyads, Amir bin Saeed, was a claimant against him. He rebelled against Abdul Malik. He had a good number of loyal warriors with him. In 686 CE, Caliph Abdul Malik bin Marwan invited him to negotiate to end the conflict. Amir bin Saeed, with some loyalists, reached the gate of Abdul Malik's palace. Since Abdul Malik was also related to him, he left his loyalists outside and came into the palace for talks. After some time, a blood-soaked head dropped on a loyalist standing outside. It was the head of Amir bin Saeed. These people panicked. Then Abdul Malik's message was delivered to these loyalists that it was God's unwavering will that the head of your leader be cut off by the Caliph. Therefore, his head was blown off. This was God's will; now tell me, what do you think about it? Do you believe in fate determined by God or not? Amir bin Saeed's companions bowed their heads and pledged allegiance to Caliph Abdul Malik bin Marwan. Well, what option did they have now? This is an incident. But it was the same situation, compared to it; the Umayyads idealized Jabriyas as suitable. So this view got official patronage. This ideology continued to spread, and the Umayyad Caliphate continued to receive support from it. Against it, the logical and free-thinking ideology of the Qadriya was suppressed.

The Umayyad rulers would arrest, punish, and even kill the Qadriya scholars. Caliph Abdul Malik executed Qadriya scholar Mabad al-Jahni on a cross. Ghalyan al-Dimashqi, a great scholar of Qadriya, free will, and liberalism, was also killed in 743 CE under Umayyad Caliph Hisham bin Abdul Malik's rule. Scholars of the Qadriya school of thought had this dark night for six decades until a bloodthirsty revolution in the Islamic world in 750 CE.Opened the door to them. How did it come? See this is the Zab River that flows near the border of Turkey and Iraq. The Battle of Al-Zab took place in 757 CE. The battle was between the last Umayyad caliph, Marwan II, and the Hashemite leader "Abul Abbas bin Muhammad," who led the rebel groups. In the Battle of Al-Zab, Abul Abbas defeated Marwan II, the last caliph of the Umayyad Empire, with his army of over 100,000. After that, the 62-year-old Umayyad Caliph was killed. After the victory, Abu Abbas al-Safah killed all members of the Umayyad dynasty, including children, people of old age, and young ones. In the end, 90 people were children who were left alive. Abu al-Abbas, the new Caliph, once invited them to a meal, which aimed to usher in a good era. But when they sat down to eat, the 90 members of the Umayyad family were beaten with sticks to half dead. On their half-dead bodies groaning with pain, a dining sheet was laid out on which Abbasid caliph Abdullah bin Abbas al-Safah dined with his companions. By the time the food was finished, all the 90 people had died. After the meal, the Abbasid army headed to the Umayyad graveyard. The graves of all rulers, including Umayyad Caliph Amir Muawiya, were dug up. Remains of dead bodies, bones, and other signs were blown up. Coincidentally, the body of former Umayyad caliph Hisham bin Abdul Malik, who died just seven years ago, was found intact and unharmed. The Abbasids dragged his body out of the grave. First, they beat it with whips, then hung the body on a gallows. But they were still not satisfied.

So the body of Hisham was taken off the nose and was set on fire. How bloody was the Abbasid revolution can be gauged by the fact that an Iranian commander of the Abbasids, Abu Muslim Khorasani, who had fought a protracted war to end the Umayyad Caliphate, usually led them in battle. According to Muslim historians, in several wars prolonged over years, he had killed a total of 600,000 opponents. This number seems incredible, but early Muslim historians and modern ones like Shah Moinuddin and Sarwat Sawlat, who wrote a Brief History of Islam, narrated the same number without raising a question. Although we think it quite inconceivable that whether in the age of sword and arrow 600,000 people could be killed when at that time hardly an army of as many as 100,000 soldiers could be formed. And even the possibility was rare that all would be killed. In most wars, there were only a few thousand soldiers on both sides. Most of them would retreat when the defeat was evident to them. However, whatever it was, Muslim historians today agree that the Abbasids shed so much blood for the revolution that their leaders and the first Abbasid caliph, Abdullah Abul Abbas, were titled al-Safah, which meant a heavy bloodshedder. Even today, he is remembered in history as al-Safah more than Abul Abbas. His followers, his believers, were so devoted to him that it became known about him that the Imam Mahdi, due to reveal near the doomsday, is Abu Abbas Abdullah bin Muhammad, as he apparently met the signs from Hashemites and the Prophet's family. So the simpletons gathered under his banners, taking him for Imam Mahdi near the doomsday. It is also true that he was a very capable military commander. He uprooted the Umayyad dynasty with his skill and courage. But two Umayyad princes escaped from his hands. They were Umayyad princes, Yahya and Abd al-Rahman, who both were brothers. They hid in the house of a Bedouin after escaping from Abu al-Abbas's army. The house was not far from the bank of the Euphrates. But the Abbasids happened to get a clue to it. At night, Abbasid troops surrounded the Bedouin's house and entered. The two brothers ran from the house without even a sword. After a few minutes, they reached the bank of the Euphrates River and jumped in. The Abbasid horsemen stood on the river banks and shouted to them, "Come back; we have not come to arrest you; the Caliph has sent you a message of peace; the war is over, the time for bloodshed has gone." Younger Yahya, for reasons unknown, heard it in the middle of the river. Abd al-Rahman shouted at him not to be deceived by it and go on swimming to drown instead of being fallen into their hands. But Yahya, may be out of tiredness or he was beguiled, returned from near the bank, and the Abbasid soldiers got him out to the bank. Abd al-Rahman swam without a stop and reached the other bank. By the time he looked back from the river bank, the Abbasid soldiers had decapitated his brother, Yahya.

Yahya's body was not even buried but left on the bank, and the soldiers returned. It was a horrible scene for Abd al-Rahman. He fled and came to Cairo through the Jordan and the Sinai desert and hid. Then, coasting along the African shores, he reached Morocco, and from there he crossed the sea to Andalusia. A powerful Muslim government was already established in Andalusia. However, many factions of the government were at odds with each other. Battles and palace intrigues were going on among them. Abdul Rahman triumphed over these intrigues and battles and united Andalusia under his leadership. Here he founded the Umayyad Empire of Andalusia. History remembers him as Abd al-Rahman I and Abdul Rahman al-Dakhil. Even today, there is a tall statue of him on the coast of Spain. By the way, Abd al-Rahman, after wandering in the deserts for five years and roaming about in Andalusia, planted an Arabian date tree in Spain. They would look at this tree and recall the city of Damascus and the Arab regions. He saw the date trees in the deserts and recited some poetic lines, which Allama Iqbal translated into Urdu poetry. These poems are recorded in his book "Baale Jibreel" as "You are the light of my eyes; you are a pleasure of my heart; I am away from my valley; this desert is Tao for me; the west wind nurtured you; you are the houri of the Arabian desert; I am helpless in a foreign land. If you are helpless in a foreign country, it means you are anxious." Have a look at the map again. By 756 CE, the world had two principal Muslim governments, one in the East by the Abbasid caliphate with a new capital of Baghdad. The other was the Umayyad kingdom of Andalusia, whose capital was Cordoba. These centers, and especially Baghdad and Cordoba, were to be a global example. These cities opened the doors of knowledge and brightened the chapters that the world regained its lost centuries-old knowledge. How it came? As soon as the Abbasids defeated the Umayyads, they rejected the Jabriya school of thought being patronaged by the Umayyads and adopted the Qadriya school of thought. The Qadriya ideology had one convenience: it valued more human freedom and the use of wisdom. They believed no injunction of God could be against reason. Therefore, Islamic literature is not the words of divine revelation, and their meaning, purpose, and wisdom are more important. Remember, until the Abbasid era, Qadriya ideology had been totally disciplined. It had become an organized school of thought called the Mu'tazilah. It was an advanced form of Qadriya, which was composed by Wasil bin Ata, a disciple of great scholar Hasan Basri. He would study from Hasan Basri in the Jamia Masjid.However, he left and established his own alma mater as he had differences with his teacher on many academic matters. Although Hasan Basri also believed in the ideology of Qadriya and was not with the Jabriya school of thought, Wasil bin Ata's act of separation in Arabic is called "itazila," which means "to leave, to separate." That is why these separatists were called Mu'tazila. This is where the name of this academic group came from. The Mu'tazilah set up their own school of thought on logic, philosophy, and reason. Without going into complexity, simply understand that they interpreted Islamic injunctions, verses, and laws based on rationality, intellect, and logic. More than going to the literal meaning of the words of revelation and hadith, they pondered over what is God's logic. Logic and wisdom would be behind a particular command. Then they used to follow this wisdom and logic. The Mu'tazila were true and staunch Muslims. The oneness of God was their first belief. But one of their five basic principles was that God is just. He can never go against justice. None of His words or commands will be unjust. That is, if anywhere in Islamic injunctions, revelations, or hadiths it seems that if so and so word is not according to the standard of justice, then it means that either we are unable to understand God's wisdom, what we received is not correctly worded, and we failed to understand what God actually said. They would say we have to interpret it in some other way that is closer to justice. For this interpretation, they devised a method with the help of Greek philosophy, which they called Ilm al-Kalam (the science of discourse). The scholars of Ilm al-Kalam were called Mutakalmin (having faith in Allah). This term was later used for their rivals, but it began with the Mu'tazila. So this school of thought, the Mu'tazilah, which came out of Qadriya, got the support of the Abbasids, who had now become powerful caliphs. Because this ideology was a matter of their interest, which strengthened their grip on the government. That is, everything and revelation can be interpreted in the light of reason and logic. This fact facilitated a ruler to give a twist of his choice to any Islamic injunction anytime and anywhere. This also benefited in promoting free thinking in society under official patronage, which opened doors of development in science and philosophy to Muslims. So the Abbasid rulers supported the Mu'tazila for their benefit, but it gave benefit to society in another way. The way the Umayyad Caliphate supported the Jabriya ideology for their own benefit, but society was at a loss in a way. Now look ahead. The way the Qadriya ideology had evolved into an organized Mu'tazila school of thought, the Jabriya ideas had also evolved into a discipline, which the historians call the Ahl al-Hadith school of thought at present. The Ahl al-Hadith school of thought had the patronage of a great scholar, Imam Ahmad bin Hanbal. He came of age during the Abbasid period and led a strong academic movement against the Mu'tazila. He did not accept reason and logic as the final words and was against it. He gave finality to the words of revelation and certified commands of God. That is, he went by the literal sense of words, phrases, and vocabulary. If it were ascertained that a matter is truly the command of God, then it will be interpreted from the words and events of God's commands. Intellect would be secondary in interpreting.

That intellect would not precede. The intellect would be used only to ascertain a divine injunction meeting the sequence of narrators and certifications. Then intellect would be used for meaning and vocabulary, but intellect, logic, and philosophy would not be the guide and would be subject to revelation. One liner is that the words of revelation, not intellect, are the source of knowledge. Here is the origin of the school of thought of the Ahl al-Hadith and Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal. This is the essence of the then very complex debates we described plainly. These debates were held titled Question of Creation of Qur'an, Question of Destiny, Usul-e-Hadith, and Tafseer, etc., which were based on these two schools of thought. The Mu'tazila believed in reason and logic to be the source of knowledge. The second Jabriya, adopted by the Ahl al-Hadith, regarded the literal sense of revelation and the hadiths to be the guide, the source, and fountainhead of knowledge. So the Ahl al-Hadith, led by Imam Ahmad bin Hanbal, who agreed on Hanbali jurisprudence, engaged in such works that sought the basic source.

They started collecting hadiths and their evidence. First of all, they collected about 40,000 hadiths in Musnad Imam Ahmad. They would term them authentic hadiths. When Muslims differ on a question, they should resort to this collection of mine. The first book of hadiths, Muwatta Imam Malik, was also written near this period. The books of hadith as Sahih Bukhari, Muslim, Tirmidhi, and others followed it. Behind all this, the thinking of the same school of thought of Muslims was active. That was to interpret revelation; revelation and authentic hadith are needed. Reason, logic, and philosophy will not be used for it. They were engaged in collecting true words of true Islam and actual injunctions as they were and preserved. This was the thought behind Hanbali jurisprudence. Imam Ibn Taymiyyah, Muhammad Bin Abdul Wahab, Syed Qutb, Allama Iqbal, and Syed Maududi are followers of this school of thought. Compared to them, the other group was the Mu'tazila, which interpreted the divine injunctions based on reason, philosophy, and logic. The Abbasid caliphs began to support this group. Not only the support but also the facilities for them.The prisons for the opponents were opened by the Abbasids. Caliph Ma'mun al-Rashid made a law called Mihna. The faith of a judge and official was tested on the Quran as the creation of Mu'tazila. Those who had views like Mu'tazila were given judges and other positions. The rest were given time to correct their belief, or they were corrected. Scholars were also sometimes convinced by arguments and mostly by force that the ideas of the Mu'tazila were actually the real Islam. Those scholars who stood against the Mu'tazila were imprisoned. Imam Ahmad bin Hanbal and very few scholars like him defied the coercion of the Abbasids and faced flogging in prison. Now it is also an irony of history that a libertarian caliph was forcing his chosen opinion on others. On the one hand, all this was happening; on the other hand, Mu'tazila thought was giving birth to new institutions. Since he talked about logic and philosophy and the freedom of reason, he would fetch knowledge and books from the world for reading and translation. It was started soon after the death of the first Abbasid caliph, Abu al-Abbas al-Safah. When al-Safah's brother al-Mansur became the caliph, he began to set up a new city of Baghdad across the Tigris River. The Abbasids took away the government from the Umayyads, and after that, besides non-Arab Muslims, Iranian fire worshipers and other non-Muslims also provided him help. Abbasids did not differ between non-Muslims and Muslims at the beginning, unlike the Umayyads, who did this in the official business.

The Abbasid caliph chose the Zoroastrian firebrand Nobukht Ahwazi, a distinguished Persian engineer, to build this new city of Baghdad. The last vlog showed how the capital of the Great Persian Empire, Ctesiphon, was a wonderfully bustling city. Caliph al-Mansur tasked Nubakht Ahwazi to design an even more magnificent city. By the way, Nubakht and his entire family later became Muslims. Nubakht mapped out a geometrical city in a perfect circle and began construction. The four gates of Baghdad opened to Basra, Kufa, Khorasan, and Damascus, and the same were their names. In front of the four gates, roads were made wide enough for horses to run, which would all lead straight to a large garden. The garden had thick trees like a forest, in the center of which was the Khalifa's palace and a principal mosque. The city consisted of large blocks of houses; each block opened onto a paved open street.

The Rise of Baghdad: The Abbasid Capital and Its Fortifications

The city of Baghdad was built in the style of a strong fortress. Its walls were very thick and 30 meters, or 98 feet, high. Before the first wall of the city, there was a large open area. Ahead of it was another tall wall. And ahead of it again were earthen embankments, after which was a canal originating from the water of the Tigris River, in which water was constantly flowing. This canal circled the round city. There were four bridges on this canal, which opened to the gates of the fort: Basra, Kufa, Khorasan, and Damascus. The city had arrangements to store food and water for several months. This city, which was the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, was made so strong that there was no such fortified city in its time. Conquering it seemed like a madman's dream. After Caliph al-Mansur died, his grandson Harun al-Rashid became caliph in 786 CE. Then Baghdad had become the largest city in the known world. It had a population of one million people. The Abbasid Caliphate spread from the eastern edge of Africa to the shores of the Indus in South Asia. It was such a large empire that 20 percent of the world's people lived in it, and eight percent of the world's land was ruled by it. Caliph Haroon al-Rashid replaced his elder brother, Abu Muhammad Musa Al-Hadi, to the caliphate at the age of 20. He was young, but he had a very brilliant teacher. This was Yahya Barmakid of the Barmakid family.