In the middle of the eighth century, Persia gave birth to a movement that is of interest in the missionary history of Islam, viz. the sect of the Ismāʻīlians. This is not the place to enter into a history of this sect or of the theological position taken up by its followers, or of the social and political factors that lent it strength, but it demands attention here on account of the marvellous missionary organisation whereby it was propagated. The founder of this organisation—which rivals that of the Jesuits for the keen insight into human nature it displays and the consummate skill with which the doctrines of the sect were accommodated to varying capacities and prejudices—was a certain ʻAbd Allāh b. Maymūn, who early in the ninth century infused new life into the Ismāʻīlians. He sent out his missionaries in all directions under various guises, very frequently as ṣūfīs but also as merchants and traders and the like; they were instructed to be all things to all men and to win over different classes of men to allegiance to the grandmaster of their sect, by speaking to each man, as it were, in his own language, and accommodating their teaching to the varying capacities and opinions of their hearers. They captivated the ignorant multitude by the performance of marvels that were taken for miracles and by mysterious utterances that excited their curiosity. To the devout they appeared as [[212]]models of virtue and religious zeal; to the mystics they revealed the hidden meaning of popular teachings and initiated them into various grades of occultism according to their capacity. Taking advantage of the eager looking-forward to a deliverer that was common to so many faiths of the time, they declared to the Musalmans the approaching advent of the Imām Mahdī, to the Jews that of the Messiah, and to the Christians that of the Comforter, but taught that the aspirations of each could alone be realised in the coming of ʻAlī as the great deliverer. With the Shīʻah, the Ismāʻīlian missionary was to put himself forward as the zealous partisan of all the Shīʻah doctrine, was to dwell upon the cruelty and injustice of the Sunnīs towards ʻAlī and his sons, and liberally abuse the Sunnī K͟halīfahs; having thus prepared the way, he was to insinuate, as the necessary completion of the Shīʻah system of faith, the more esoteric doctrines of the Ismāʻīlian sect. In dealing with the Jew, he was to speak with contempt of both Christians and Muslims and agree with his intended convert in still looking forward to a promised Messiah, but gradually lead him to believe that this promised Messiah could be none other than ʻAlī, the great Messiah of the Ismāʻīlian system. If he sought to win over the Christian, he was to dwell upon the obstinacy of the Jews and the ignorance of the Muslims, to profess reverence for the chief articles of the Christian creed, but gently hint that they were symbolic and pointed to a deeper meaning, to which the Ismāʻīlian system alone could supply the key; he was also cautiously to suggest that the Christians had somewhat misinterpreted the doctrine of the Paraclete and that it was in ʻAlī that the true Paraclete was to be found. Similarly the Ismāʻīlian missionaries who made their way into India endeavoured to make their doctrines acceptable to the Hindus, by representing ʻAlī as the promised tenth Avatār of Viṣṇu who was to come from the West, i.e. (they averred) from Alamūt. They also wrote a Mahdī Purāṇa and composed hymns in imitation of those of the Vāmācārins or left-hand Śāktas, whose mysticism already predisposed their minds to the acceptance of the esoteric doctrines of the Ismāʻīlians.[21] [[213]]
By such means as these an enormous number of persons of different faiths were united together to push forward an enterprise, the real aim of which was known to very few. The aspirations of ʻAbd Allāh b. Maymūn seem to have been entirely political, but as the means he adopted were religious and the one common bond—if any—that bound his followers together was the devout expectation of the coming of the Imām Mahdī, the missionary activity connected with the history of this sect deserves this brief mention in these pages.[22]
The history of the spread of Islam in the countries of Central Asia to the north of Persia presents little in the way of missionary activity. When Qutaybah b. Muslim went to Samarqand, he found many idols there, whose worshippers maintained that any man who dared outrage them would perish; the Muslim conqueror, undeterred by such superstitious fears, set fire to the idols; whereupon a number of persons embraced Islam.[23] There is, however, but scanty record of such conversions in the early history of the Muslim advance into Central Asia; moreover the people of this country seem often to have pretended to embrace Islam for a time and then to have thrown off the mask and renounced their allegiance to the caliph as soon as the conquering armies were withdrawn,[24] and it was not until Qutaybah had forcibly occupied Buk͟hārā for the fourth time that he succeeded in compelling the inhabitants to conform to the faith of their conquerors.
In Buk͟hārā and Samarqand the opposition to the new faith was so violent and obstinate that none but those who had embraced Islam were allowed to carry arms, and for many years the Muslims dared not appear unarmed in the mosques or other public places, while spies had to be set to keep a watch on the new converts. The conquerors made various efforts to gain proselytes, and even tried to encourage attendance at the Friday prayers in the mosques by rewards of money, and allowed the Qurʼān to be recited in Persian instead of in Arabic, in order that it might be intelligible to all.[25] [[214]]
The progress of Islam in Transoxania was certainly very slow: some of the inhabitants accepted the invitation of ʻUmar II (A.D. 717–720) to embrace Islam,[26] and large numbers were converted through the preaching of a certain Abū Ṣaydā who commenced this mission in Samarqand in the reign of Hishām (724–743),[27] but it was not until the reign of Al-Muʻtaṣim (A.D. 833–842) that Islam was generally adopted there,[28] one of the reasons probably being the more intimate relations established at this time with the then capital of the Muhammadan world, Bag͟hdād, through the enormous numbers of Turks that had flocked in thousands to join the army of the caliph.[29] Islam having thus gained a footing among the Turkish tribes seems to have made but slow progress until the middle of the tenth century, when the conversion of some of their chieftains to Islam, like that of Clovis and other barbarian kings of Northern Europe to Christianity, led their clansmen to follow their example in a body.
Pious legends have grown up to supply the lack of sober historical record of such conversions. The city of Khīva reveres as its national saint a Muslim wrestler—Pahlavān—who was in the service of a heathen king of K͟hwārizm. The king of India, hearing of the fame of this Pahlavān, sent his own court wrestler with a challenge to the king of K͟hwārizm. A day was fixed for the trial of strength and the nobles and people of Khīva were summoned to view the spectacle; the vanquished man was to have his head cut off. On the day before, the saintly Pahlavān was praying in the mosque when he overheard the prayer of an old woman: “O God, suffer not my son to be beaten by this invincible Pahlavān, for I have no other child.” Touched with compassion for the mother, Pahlavān lets the Indian wrestler win the day; the enraged king orders his head to be cut off, but at that very moment the horse on which the king is sitting, bolts, carrying his master straight towards a dangerous precipice. Pahlavān springs forward, catches the horse and rescues the king from a horrible death. In gratitude the king embraces the true faith, and the saintly [[215]]wrestler, full of joy, goes away into the desert and becomes a hermit.[30]
A strange legend is told of the conversion of Sātūq Bug͟hrā K͟hān, the founder of the Muhammadan dynasty of the Īlik-K͟hāns of Kāshgar, about the middle of the tenth century. A prince of the Sāmānid house, K͟hwājah Abu’l-Naṣr Sāmānī, a man of great piety and humility of character, finding no scope for the exercise of his talent for administration, resolved to become a merchant, with the purpose of spreading the true faith in the lands of the unbelievers. Instead of trying to acquire a fortune by his commercial enterprises, he devoted all his gains to the furtherance of his proselytising efforts. One night the Prophet appeared to him in a dream, saying: “Arise, and go into Turkistan where the prince Sātūq Bug͟hrā K͟hān only awaits your coming to be converted to Islam.” The young prince had in a similar manner been warned in a vision to expect the arrival of an instructor in the faith, and when some days later he met Abu’l-Naṣr Sāmānī he was prepared to accept his teaching and become a Musalman. This legend would appear to have been based on the historic fact that Islam made its way from the Sāmānid kingdom into the neighbouring country of Turkistan, and the example of the ruler seems to have been followed by his subjects, for in A.D. 960 as many as 200,000 tents of the Turks, i.e. probably the greater part of the Turkish population of Bug͟hrā K͟hān’s kingdom, professed the faith of Islam.[31] Legend credits him with miraculous powers in his wars against the heathen, when a devouring flame would issue from his mouth and the sword that he brandished would become forty feet long. By the time he had reached the age of ninety-six, the terror of his sword is said to have converted the unbelievers from the banks of the Oxus in the south to Qurāquram in the north, and just before his death he is said to have led his victorious army into China, and spread Islam as far as Turfan.[32] This picturesque account of [[216]]a dynastic struggle with the Buddhist kingdom of Khotan credits the hero with a measure of success which was not really achieved until the fourteenth century. How limited the success of Sātūq Bug͟hrā K͟hān really was, may be judged from the fact that when his successors among the Īlik-K͟hāns sought in 1026 to contract matrimonial alliances with princesses of the house of Maḥmūd of Ghazna, Maḥmūd replied that he was a Musalman, while they were unbelievers, and that it was not the custom to give the sisters and daughters of Musalmans in marriage to unbelievers, but that, if they would embrace Islam, the matter would be considered.[33] A few years later, in 1041–1042, a number of Turks who were still heathen and living in Tibetan territory sought permission from Arslān K͟hān b. Qadr K͟hān to settle in his dominions, having heard of the justice and mildness of his rule; when they arrived in the neighbourhood of Bālāsāg͟hūn[34] he sent a message to them urging them to accept Islam; but they refused, and as he found them to be peaceable and obedient subjects, he left them alone. There is no record of their conversion, which probably ensued in course of time; but they can hardly be identified with the group of ten thousand tents of infidel Turks who embraced Islam in the following year, as these latter are expressly stated to have harried and plundered the Musalmans before their conversion.[35] The invasion of the Qarā K͟hitāy into Turkistan[36] dealt a severe blow to the power of Islam, and as late as the thirteenth century the reports of European travellers show that there were still important groups of Buddhists, Manichæans and Christians in these parts.[37]
Of supreme importance to Islam was the conversion of the Saljūq Turks, but no record of their conversion remains beyond the statement that in A.D. 956 Saljūq migrated from Turkistan with his clan to the province of Buk͟hārā, where he and his people enthusiastically embraced Islam.[38] This [[217]]was the origin of the famous Saljūq Turks, whose wars and conquests revived the fading glory of the Muhammadan arms and united into one empire the Muslim kingdoms of Western Asia.
When at the close of the twelfth century, the Saljūq empire had lost all power except in Asia Minor, and when Muḥammad G͟hūrī was extending his empire from K͟hurāsān eastward across the north of India, there was a great revival of the Muslim faith among the Afg͟hāns and their country was overrun by Arab preachers and converts from India, who set about the task of proselytising with remarkable energy and boldness.[39] The traditions of the Afg͟hāns represent Islam as having been peaceably introduced among them. They say that in the first century of the Hijrah they occupied the G͟hūr country to the east of Herāt, and that K͟hālid b. Walīd came to them there with the tidings of Islam and invited them to join the standard of the Prophet; he returned to Muḥammad accompanied by a deputation of six or seven representative men of the Afghan people, with their followers, and these, when they went back to their own country, set to work to convert their fellow-tribesmen.[40] This tradition is, however, devoid of any historical foundation, and the earliest authentic record of conversion to Islam from among the Afghans seems to be that of a king of Kābul in the reign of al-Maʼmūn.[41] His successors, however, seem to have relapsed to Buddhism, for when Yaʻqūb b. Layt͟h, the founder of the Ṣaffārid dynasty, extended his conquests as far as Kābul in 871, he found the ruler of the land to be an “idolater,” and Kābul now became really Muhammadan for the first time, the Afghans probably being quite willing to take service in the army of so redoubtable a conqueror as Yaʻqūb b. Layt͟h,[42] but it was not until after the conquests of Sabaktigīn and Maḥmūd of Ghazna that Islam became established throughout Afghanistan.
Of the further history of Islam in Persia and Central Asia some details will be found in the following chapter. [[218]]