Jordan ISLAM AND ARAB RULE
The Monastery, or Dir, at Petra, a 2,000-year-old
Nabataean city
The Treasury, or Khaznah, at Petra
By the time of his death in A.D. 632, the Prophet Muhammad and
his followers had brought most of the tribes and towns of the
Arabian Peninsula under the banner of the new monotheistic religion
of Islam (literally, submission), which was conceived of as uniting
the individual believer, the state, and the society under the
omnipotent will of God. Islamic rulers therefore exercised both
temporal and religious authority. Adherents of Islam, called
Muslims (those who submit to the will of God), collectively formed
the House of Islam, or Dar al Islam
(see Jordan - Early Development of Islam
, ch. 2).
Arab armies carried Islam north and east from Arabia in the
wake of their rapid conquest, and also westward across North
Africa. In 633, the year after Muhammad's death, they entered the
Jordan region, and in 636, under Khalid ibn al Walid, they crushed
the Byzantine army at the Battle of Uhud at the Yarmuk River.
Jerusalem was occupied in 638, and by 640 all Syria was in Arab
Muslim hands. Conversion to Islam was nearly complete among Arabs
on the East Bank, although the small Jewish community in Palestine
and groups of Greek and Arab Christians were allowed to preserve
their religious identities. Arabic soon supplanted Greek and
Aramaic as the primary language of the region's inhabitants in both
town and countryside.
Muhammad was succeeded as spiritual and temporal leader of all
Muslims by his father-in-law, Abu Bakr, who bore the title caliph
(successor or deputy) for two years. Under Umar (A.D. 634-44), the
caliphate began efforts to organize a government in areas newly
conquered by the Muslims. The Quran, Islam's sacred scripture, was
compiled during the caliphate of Uthman (644-56), whose reign was
brought to an end by an assassin. Uthman was succeeded by
Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law Ali, the last of the four socalled orthodox caliphs, who was also assassinated in 661.
A dispute over the caliphal succession led to a permanent
schism that split Islam into two major branches--the
Sunni (see Glossary)
and the
Shia (see Glossary). The Shias supported the
hereditary claim of Ali and his direct descendants, whereas the
Sunnis favored the principle of consensual election of the fittest
from the ranks of the ashraf (or shurfa--nobles;
sing.,
sharif--see Glossary).
Muslims in the Jordan region are
predominantly Sunni.
After Ali's murder, Muawiyah--the governor of Syria and leader
of a branch of Muhammad's tribe, the Quraysh of Mecca--proclaimed
himself caliph and founded a dynasty--the Umayyad--that made its
capital in Damascus. The Umayyad caliphs governed their vast
territories in a personal and authoritarian manner. The caliph,
assisted by a few ministers, held absolute and final authority but
delegated extensive executive powers to provincial governors.
Religious judges (qadis) administered Islamic law (sharia) to which
all other considerations, including tribal loyalties, were
theoretically subordinated.
The Umayyad Dynasty was overthrown in 750 by a rival Sunni
faction, the Abbasids, who moved the capital of the caliphate to
Baghdad. The Jordan region became even more of a backwater, remote
from the center of power. Its economy declined as trade shifted
from traditional caravan routes to seaborne commerce, although the
pilgrim caravans to Mecca became an important source of income.
Depopulation of the towns and the decay of sedentary agricultural
communities, already discernible in the late Byzantine period,
accelerated in districts where pastoral Arab beduins, constantly
moving into the area from the south, pursued their nomadic way of
life. Late in the tenth century A.D. the Jordan region was wrested
from the Abbasids by the Shia Fatimid caliphs in Egypt. The
Fatimids were in turn displaced after 1071 by the Seljuk Turks, who
had gained control of the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad.
The Seljuk threat to the Byzantine Empire and a desire to seize
the holy places in Palestine from the Muslims spurred the Christian
West to organize the First Crusade, which culminated in the capture
of Jerusalem in 1099. The crusaders subsequently established the
Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, a feudal state that extended its hold
to the East Bank. The crusaders used the term Outre Jourdain
(Beyond Jordan) to describe the area across the river from
Palestine--an area that was defended by a line of formidable
castles like that at Al Karak.
In 1174 Salah ad Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub--better known in the West
as Saladin--deposed the last Fatimid caliph, whom he had served as
grand vizier, and seized power as sultan of Egypt. A Sunni scholar
and experienced soldier of Kurdish origin, Saladin soon directed
his energies against the crusader states in Palestine and Syria. At
the decisive Battle of Hattin on the west shore of Lake Tiberias
(Sea of Galilee), Saladin annihilated the crusaders' army in 1187
and soon afterward retook Jerusalem.
Saladin's successors in the Ayyubid Sultanate quarreled among
themselves, and Saladin's conquests broke up into squabbling petty
principalities. The Ayyubid Dynasty was overthrown in 1260 by the
Mamluks (a caste of slave-soldiers, mostly of Kurdish and
Circassian origin), whose warrior-sultans repelled the Mongol
incursions and by the late fourteenth century held sway from the
Nile to the Euphrates. Their power, weakened by factionalism within
their ranks, contracted during the next century in the face of a
dynamic new power in the Middle East--the Ottoman Turks.
Data as of December 1989
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