§ 3
The history of Saracen culture is the history of the attainment of saner ideas and a higher plane of thought. Within a century of the Hej’ra[40] there had arisen some rational skepticism in the Moslem schools, as apart from the chronic schisms and strifes of the faithful. A school of theology had been founded by Hasan-al-Basri at Bassorah; and one of his disciples, Wasil ibn Attâ, following some previous heretics—Mabad al Jhoni, Ghailan of Damascus, and Jonas al Aswari[41]—rejected the predestination doctrine of the Koran as inconsistent with the future judgment; arguing for freewill and at the same time for the humane provision of a purgatory. From this beginning dates the Motazileh or class of Motazilites (or Mu`tazilites),[42] the philosophic reformers and moderate freethinkers of Islam. Other sects of a semi-political character had arisen even during the last illness of the Prophet, and others soon after his death.[43] One party sought to impose on the faithful the “Sunna” or “traditions,” which really represented the old Arabian ideas of law, but were pretended to be unwritten sayings of Mohammed.[44] To this the party of Ali (the Prophet’s cousin) objected; whence began the long dispute between the Shiah or Shîites (the anti-traditionists), and the Sunnites; the conquered and oppressed Persians tending to stand with the former, and generally, in virtue of their own thought, to supply the heterodox element under the later Khalifates.[45] Thus Shîites were apt to be Motazilites.[46] On Ali’s side, again, there broke away a great body of Kharejites or Separatists, who claimed that the Imaum or head of the Faith should be chosen by election, while the Shîites stood for succession by divine right.[47] All this had occurred before any schools of theology existed.
The Motazilites, once started, divided gradually into a score of sects,[48] all more or less given to rationalizing within the limits of monotheism.[49] The first stock were named Kadarites, because insisting on man’s power (kadar) over his acts.[50] Against them were promptly ranged the Jabarites, who affirmed that man’s will was wholly under divine constraint (jabar).[51] Yet another sect, the Sifatites, opposed both of the others, some of them[52] standing for a literal interpretation of the Koran, which is in part predestinationist, and in parts assumes freewill; while the main body of orthodox, following the text, professed to respect as insoluble mystery the contradictions they found in it.[53] The history of Islam in this matter is strikingly analogous to that of Christianity from the rise of the Pelagian heresy.
It is to be noted that, while the heretics in time came under Greek and other foreign influences, their criticism of the Koran was at the outset their own.[54] The Shîites, becoming broadly the party of the Persians, admitted in time Persian, Jewish, Gnostic, Manichæan, and other dualistic doctrines, and generally tended to interpret the Koran allegorically.[55] A particular school of allegorists, the Bathenians, even tended to purify the idea of deity in an agnostic direction.[56] All of these would appear to have ranked genetically as Motazilites; and the manifold play of heretical thought gradually forced a certain habit of reasoning on the orthodox,[57] who as usual found their advantage in the dissidences of the dissenters. On the other hand, the Motazilites found new resources in the study and translation of Greek works, scientific and philosophical.[58] They were thus the prime factors, on the Arab side, in the culture-evolution which went on under the earlier of the Abasside Khalifs (750–1258). Greek literature reached them mainly through the Syrian Christians, in whose hands it had been put by the Nestorians, driven out of their scientific school at Edessa and exiled by Leo the Isaurian (716–741);[59] possibly also in part through the philosophers who, on being exiled from Athens by Justinian, settled for a time in Persia.[60] The total result was that already in the ninth century, within two hundred years of the beginning of Mohammed’s preaching, the Saracens in Persia had reached not only a remarkable height of material civilization, their wealth exceeding that of Byzantium, but a considerable though quasi-secret measure of scientific knowledge and rational thought,[61] including even some measure of pure atheism. All forms of rationalism alike were called zendēkism by the orthodox, the name having the epithetic force of the Christian terms “infidelity” and “atheism”.[62]
Secrecy was long imposed on the Motazilites by the orthodoxy of the Khalifs,[63] who as a rule atoned for many crimes and abundant breaches of the law of the Koran by a devout profession of faith. Freethinking, however, had its periods of political prosperity. Even under the Ommayade dynasty, the Khalif Al Walid Ibn Yazid (the eleventh of the race) was reputed to be of no religion, but seems to have been rather a ruffian than a rationalist.[64] Under the Abassides culture made much more progress. The Khalif Al Mansour, though he played a very orthodox part,[65] favoured the Motazilites (754–775), being generally a patron of the sciences; and under him were made the first translations from the Greek.[66] Despite his orthodoxy he encouraged science; and it was as insurgents and not as unbelievers that he destroyed the sect of Rewandites (a branch of the anti-Moslem Ismailites), who are said to have believed in metempsychosis.[67] Partly on political but partly also on religious grounds his successor Al Mahdi made war on the Ismailites, whom he regarded as atheists, and who appear to have been connected with the Motazilite “Brethren of Purity,”[68] destroying their books and causing others to be written against them.[69] They were anti-Koranites; hardly atheists; but a kind of informal rationalism approaching to atheism, and involving unbelief in the Koran and the Prophet, seems to have spread considerably, despite the slaughter of many unbelievers by Al Mahdi. Its source seems to have been Persian aversion to the alien creed.[70] The great philosophic influence, again, was that of Aristotle; and though his abstract God-idea was nominally adhered to, the scientific movement promoted above all things the conception of a reign of law.[71] Al Hadi, the successor of Al Mahdi, persecuted much and killed many heretics; and Haroun Al Raschid (Aaron the Orthodox) menaced with death those who held the moderately rational tenet that “the Koran was created,”[72] as against the orthodox dogma (on all fours with the Brahmanic doctrine concerning the Veda) that it was eternal in the heavens and uncreated. One of the rationalists, Al Mozdar, accused the orthodox party of infidelity, as asserting two eternal things; and there was current among the Motazilites of his day the saying that, “had God left men to their natural liberty, the Arabians could have composed something not only equal but superior to the Koran in eloquence, method, and purity of language.”[73]
Haroun’s crimes, however, consisted little in acts of persecution. The Persian Barmekides (the family of his first Vizier, surnamed Barmek) were regarded as protectors of Motazilites;[74] and one of the sons, Jaafer, was even suspected of atheism, all three indeed being charged with it.[75] Their destruction, on other grounds, does not seem to have altered the conditions for the thinkers; but Haroun’s incompetent son Emin was a devotee and persecutor. His abler brother and conqueror Al Mamoun (813–833), on the other hand, directly favoured the Motazilites, partly on political grounds, to strengthen himself with the Persian party, but also on the ground of conviction.[76] He even imprisoned some of the orthodox theologians who maintained that the Koran was not a created thing, though, like certain persecutors of other faiths, he had expressly declared himself in favour of persuasion as against coercion.[77] In one case, following usage, he inflicted a cruel torture. “His fatal error,” says a recent scholar, “was that he invoked the authority of the State in matters of the intellectual and religious life.”[78] Compared with others, certainly, he did not carry his coercion far, though, on being once publicly addressed as “Ameer of the Unbelievers,” he caused the fanatic who said it to be put to death.[79] In private he was wont to conduct meetings for discussion, attended by believers and unbelievers of every shade, at which the only restriction was that the appeal must be to reason, and never to the Koran.[80] Concerning his personal bias, it is related that he had received from Kabul a book in old Persian, The Eternal Reason, which taught that reason is the only basis for religion, and that revelation cannot serve as a standing ground.[81] The story is interesting, but enigmatic, the origin of the book being untraceable. Whatever were his views, his coercive policy against the orthodox extremists had the usual effect of stimulating reaction on that side, and preparing the ultimate triumph of orthodoxy.[82] The fact remains, however, that Mamoun was of all the Khalifs the greatest promoter of science[83] and culture; the chief encourager of the study and translation of Greek literature;[84] and, despite his coercion of the theologians on the dogma of the eternity of the Koran, tolerant enough to put a Christian at the head of a college at Damascus, declaring that he chose him not for his religion but for his science. In the same spirit he permitted the free circulation of the apologetic treatise of the Armenian Christian Al Kindy, in which Islam and the Koran are freely criticized. As a ruler, too, he ranks among the best of his race for clemency, justice, and decency of life, although orthodox imputations were cast on his subordinates. His successors Motasim and Wathek were of the same cast of opinion, the latter being, however, fanatical on behalf of his rationalistic view of the Koran as a created thing.[85]
A violent orthodox reaction set in under the worthless and Turk-ruled Khalif Motawakkel[86] (847–861), by whose time the Khalifate was in a state of political decadence, partly from the economic exhaustion following on its tyrannous and extortionate rule; partly from the divisive tendencies of its heterogeneous sections; partly from the corrupting tendency of all despotic power.[87] Despite the official restoration of orthodoxy, the private cultivation of science and philosophy proceeded for a time; the study and translation of Greek books continued;[88] and rationalism of a kind seems to have subsisted more or less secretly to the end. In the tenth century it is said to have reached even the unlearned; and though the Motazilites gradually drifted into a scholastic orthodoxy, downright unbelief came up alongside,[89] albeit secretly. Faith in Mohammed’s mission and law began again to shake; and the learned disregarded its prescriptions. Mystics professed to find the way to God without the Koran. Many decided that religion was useful for regulating the people, but was not for the wise. On the other side, however, the orthodox condemned all science as leading to unbelief,[90] and developed an elaborate and quasi-systematic theology. It was while the scientific encyclopedists of Bassorah were amassing the knowledge which, through the Moors, renewed thought in the West, that Al Ashari built up the Kalâm or scholastic theology which thenceforth reigned in the Mohammedan East;[91] and the philosopher Al Gazzali (or Gazel), on his part, employed the ancient and modern device of turning a profession of philosophical scepticism to the account of orthodoxy.[92]
In the struggle between science and religion, in a politically decadent State, the latter inevitably secured the administrative power.[93] Under the Khalifs Motamid (d. 892) and Motadhed (d. 902) all science and philosophy were proscribed, and booksellers were put upon their oath not to sell any but orthodox books.[94] Thus, though philosophy and science had secretly survived, when the political end came the popular faith was in much the same state as it had been under Haroun Al Raschid. Under Islam as under all the faiths of the world, in the east as in the west, the mass of the people remained ignorant as well as poor; and the learning and skill of the scholars served only to pass on the saved treasure of Greek thought and science to the new civilization of Europe. The fact that the age of military and political decadence was that of the widest diffusion of rationalism is naturally fastened on as giving the explanation of the decline; but the inference is pure fallacy. The Bagdad Khalifate declined as the Christianized Roman Empire declined, from political and external causes; and the Turks who overthrew it proceeded to overthrow Christian Byzantium, where rationalism never reared its head.
The conventional view is thus set forth in a popular work (The Saracens, by Arthur Gilman, 1887, p. 385): “Unconsciously Mamun began a process by which that implicit faith which had been at once the foundation and the inspiration of Islam, which had nerved its warriors in their terrible warfare, and had brought the nation out of its former obscurity to the foremost position among the peoples of the world, was to be taken from them.” We have seen that this view is entirely erroneous as regards the rise of the Saracen power; and it is no less so as regards the decline. At the outset there had been no “implicit faith” among the conquerors. The Eastern Saracens, further, had been decisively defeated by the Byzantines in the very first flush of their fanaticism and success; and the Western had been routed by Charles Martel long before they had any philosophy. There was no overthrow of faith among the warriors of the Khalifate. The enlistment of Turkish mercenaries by Mamoun and Motasim, by way of being independent of the Persian and Arab factions in the army and the State, introduced an element which, at first purely barbaric, became as orthodox as the men of Haroun’s day had been. Yet the decadence, instead of being checked, was furthered.
Nor were the strifes set up by the rationalistic view of the Koran nearly so destructive as the mere faction-fights and sectarian insurrections which began with Motawakkel. The falling-away of cities and provinces under the feeble Moktader (908–932) had nothing whatever to do with opinions, but was strictly analogous to the dissolution of the kingdom of Charlemagne under his successors, through the rise of new provincial energies; and the tyranny of the Turkish mercenaries was on all fours with that of the Pretorians of the Roman Empire, and with that of the Janissaries in later Turkey. The writer under notice has actually recorded (p. 408) that the warlike sect of Ismailitic Karmathians, who did more than any other enemy to dismember the Khalifate, were unbelievers in the Koran, deniers of revelation, and disregarders of prayer. The later Khalifs, puppets in the hands of the Turks, were one and all devout believers.
On the other hand, fresh Moslem and non-Moslem dynasties arose alternately as the conditions and opportunities determined. Jenghiz Khan, who overran Asia, was no Moslem; neither was Tamerlane; but new Moslem conquerors did overrun India, as pagan Alexander had done in his day. Theological ideas counted for as little in one case as in the other. Sultan Mahmoud of Ghazni (997–1030), who reared a new empire on the basis of the province of Khorassan and the kingdom of Bokhara, and who twelve times successfully invaded India, happened to be of Turkish stock; but he is also recorded to have been in his youth a doubter of a future state, as well as of his personal legitimacy. His later parade of piety (as to which see Baron De Slane’s tr. of Ibn Khallikan’s Biog. Dict. iii, 334) is thus a trifle suspect (British India, in Edin. Cab. Lib. 3rd ed. i, 189, following Ferishta); and his avarice seems to have animated him to the full as much as his faith, which was certainly not more devout than that of the Brahmans of Somnauth, whose hold he captured. (Cp. Prof. E. G. Browne, A Literary History of Persia, ii (1906), 119.) During his reign, besides, unbelief was rife in his despite (Weil, Geschichte der Chalifen, iii, 72), though he burned the books of the Motazilites, besides crucifying many Ismaïlian heretics (Browne, p. 160). The conventional theorem as to the political importance of faith, in short, will not bear investigation. Even Freeman here sets it aside (Hist. and Conq. of the Saracens, p. 124).