Spread of Islam, Islamic Law, and Arabic Language

The rapid spread of Islam acted as a formidable force of change in the Old World. By the end of the reign of Umar ibn al-Khattab (d.644), the whole of the Arabian Peninsula was conquered, together with most of the Sasanian Empire, as well as the Syrian and Egyptian provinces of Byzantium. 

Following the tragic Battle of Karbala, which led to the death of Imam al-Hussein (AD 680), a new phase was ushered in with the making of the Umayyad Empire (661-­750), which eventually extended its dominion from the Ebro River in Spain to the Oxus Valley in Central Asia. Claiming universal authority over far-reaching frontiers,the Umayyad dynasty took Damascus as its capital city, and remained virtually unchallenged in its reign until the rise of the Abbasid caliphate with its capital in Baghdad (749­-1258). 

While Spain continued to be under Umayyad rule (756­1031), new regional powers confronted the Abbasid hegemony, like the Fatimids in Egypt (909­-1171), and the Saljuqs in Iran and Iraq (1038­-1194), along with waves of Crusader invaders in the Levant.

Numerous traditions in thought flourished,

like the Sunni schools of legal reasoning (hanafi, maliki, shafii, hanbali) and the “Twelver Shiite” lineage descending from the Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib (d. 661). The upsurge in intellectual activities was also marked by the founding of the mutazila and ashari methods of kalam, in addition to the maturation of philosophy, the sciences, and mysticism. Many notable centers of learning were established,

along with associated productions of manuscripts, like al-Azhar in Cairo, the Zaytuna in Tunis, the Qarawiyyin in Fez, the coteries of Córdoba in Andalusia, the schools of Najaf and Karbala in Iraq, and those of Qumm and Mashhad in Iran.   Being the language of the Koran, Arabic was carried to the new converts. 

Becoming the lingua franca of medieval Islam, the distinctiveness of Arabic was evident in all spheres of high culture, from religious to legal, official, intellectual, and literary dictions. While in the western provinces Arabic dominated the vernacular dialects, Persian remained in use eastward; witnessing a literary revival in the tenth century AD with the unfurling of an Arabo-Persian idiom, which became prevalent across Iran as well as  Transoxiana and northern India.

A theme that recurs in this formative period of Islamic thought is the relationship,often tense, between revelation and reason.

Under the Abbasid caliph al-Mamun (r.

813­833) there existed a group of theologians known as the Mutazila. 

They had absorbed the work of Greek philosophers and adopted a rationalist style of argumentation that equated God with pure reason. For the Mutazila the world created by God operated according to rational principles humans could understand by exercising reason. As free agents, humans were morally responsible for their actions, and since good and evil had intrinsic value, God’s justice was constrained by universal laws. They held to the view that the Koran was created in time, inspired by God in Muhammad, but not part of his essence. Their opponents, the hadith scholars,insisted that the Koran was “uncreated” and coeternal with God. They believed it was not for man to question God’s injunctions or explore them intellectually, and that all human action was ultimately predetermined.

The Mutazili view, buttressed by the mihna (an “inquisition” or test applied to ulama and public officials), held sway for a period. How-ever, it was reversed under his successor al-Mutawakil (r. 847­-61) as a result of populist pressures focused on the heroic figure of Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 855) who resisted imprisonment and torture to defend the “uncreated” Koran. A kind of compromise between reason and revelation was reached in the work of Abul Hasan al-Ashari (d. 935).

He used rationalistic methods to defend the “uncreated” Koran and allowed for a degree of human responsibility. However, the consequences of the Mutazili defeat were far reaching.

The caliphs ceased to be the ultimate authorities in doctrinal matters. Mainstream Sunni theologians espoused the command theory of ethics: an act is right because God commands it,God does not command it because it is right. 

Mutazilism is a term of abuse for many conservative Islamists,especially in Saudi Arabia,which follows the Hanbali tradition in law.