15th century Culture and Society in the New World; Part 1:
Islam among the Yucatec Maya of the 15th century
A Brief History
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The first Maya converts to Islam were local nobility at Tulum, willing to shed the authority of the batab for the new conquerors of the territory. These first Maya converts were treated very similarly to converted Taino: being given the offer of conversion and taught the shahada through which they repeated it and became Muslim. Also like the Taino, these first conversions took place in private between influential locals with imams and Muslim dignitaries, and were accompanied by the shedding of pre-Islamic religious artifacts. These Maya lords would remove their customary blood-letting belts and sheaths as well as their jewelry and would take in its place a Muslim name to mark their new identity in the ummah. These symbols of status were later used to convince other members of the aristocracy to convert, or even to simply engage Arabs in negotiation over secular matters. Abu Bakr, who personally encouraged many of these conversions as a way to gain control over the local nobility, took great pains to educate himself on the customs of the Yucatecan nobility, and how to wield the symbols of that complex social system to his advantage.
Unlike the Mishiki, the Islamization of the Yucatan was top-down, from the nobility towards the peasantry. Even by the late 15th century most peasants as far north as Mayapan were still pagan or practicing highly syncretic versions of Islam. In contrast, by the same time every lord in the north was fully Islamized. Maya lords were attracted to Islam as a way of gaining favor with the invaders. Unconverted lords often found themselves attacked by combined forces of converted lords and Arabs, and the considerable prestige Abu Bakr acquired after defeated Mayapan in battle repeatedly was a significant factor persuading the aristocracy of the invaders power. Abu Bakrs skill in playing within the established rules of Maya dynastic warfare also ensured that they did not feel significantly alienated by the Arabs.
For example, during the fall of the city of Tecoh, north of Mayapan and the center of one of the smaller kuchkabal client kingdoms, Abu Bakr did everything a Maya lord would have done in taking a captured city. He destroyed the cities stele, burnt the dynastic shrine, captured the local lords and assumed the vacant position at the head of the regional web of authority, demanding the client lords of Tecoh to aknowledge his authority, and that the captured lords forcibly pay tribute. Instead of demanding fealty, like might be done in Iberia, he demanded only tribute at the same time pressing upon them Islam. Abu Bakr betted that if he could culturally and religiously conquer the lords, when given the chance to rebel (as was their right in Maya politics) they would not but redirect themselves to pagan lords nearby. This act of voluntary fealty would be far more convincing than the forced fealty the Maya were accustomed to seeing. This strategy encouraged rapid conversion of the aristocracy within a conquered area but did not require the conversion of the peasantry (who would not notice any real change in their political situation whatsoever). It paid off extremely well, allowing Abu Bakr to quickly conquer the Yucatan and yet face few significant rebellions once he had built up an initial base of converted allies. He recruited an army of sufi clerics to fulfill this task, who themselves developed a robust knowledge of both the Maya language and Maya culture, compacting Islamic theology into a doctrine that was easily understood by the aristocrats they would encounter. Many Sufis could even read and write some Maya glyphs, though only as a medium through which to explain Islamic concepts. By the end of the 15th century, there was a significant Islamized Maya community in the Yucatan, and all the northern nobles were Muslim, if some by name only.
The Islam of the Aristocracy
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This form of Mayanized Islam, designed to convert quickly, and then create a divide between the convert and their pagan neighbors (and often former allies) and heal one between them and the Arabs, modified Islamic tenets in many ways. Firstly, the theoretical egalitarianism of Islam was minimized, since it was inconsistent with the rigid ponderous hierarchy of Maya society. Second, the tawhid, the oneness of God, was reinterpreted to be about the centrality of God, not necessarily His separation from anthropomorphic characteristics, as the Almohads had seen it as. Third, the first Caliphs and Muhammad were explained as analogues to Maya cultural heroes, paralleling the birth of the Maya in their own cosmogony with the rise of Islam. A sufi cleric, in explaining Muhammad, would describe him as jun camzahob¸ One Teacher, who acted as the messenger between God Ch’an Chaak (some would simply teach the word Alah, in Yucatecan to represent the Arabic name) and taught the people the proper rules of society. To attempt to break the Maya conception of a divided pantheon, many would use the term Chak Na, Great House, or Ch’an Chak Na, Great Sky House to describe the idea of a unified, One (aḥad ) God that exceeded the material world. This allowed God to carry the sort of anthropomorphic traits the Maya could easily comprehend, while still avoiding giving God human or animal form. The Sky was chosen deliberately to represent God as it was formless, omnipresent, and was already a central part of Maya mythology. In some areas, God was associated primarily with the Maize God, or a conflation of the Maize God and Sky.
Old Maya gods were demonized alongside this. Caves, seen as sources of creation in Mesoamerica but as dark, fearful places in Old World cultures, were weaponized as part of this transition. The Maya idea of a temple as a Ch’an Ch’en na , Sky Cave, was turned negative, as a passageway to the underworld, though in the Arabic sense of hell instead of Xibalba. Priests stepping forth from the maw of the earth monster that framed the entrance of these temples were framed as agents of Shaytan, moving from hell to the world to capture man. In contrast, going alongside the Islamization of the Maya conception of the sky, a mosque was described as a Ch’an b’i “Sky Road”, that could ferry believers to Gods side towards paradise (simply Ch’an, “heavens”). The Maya had a far more detailed conception of a ‘hell’ than a heaven, with many groups believing in reincarnation that, through the cycle of corn growing from the earth, so shall humanity rejuvenate. Sufi clerics took this concept and described paradise often in agricultural terms, as a great garden with maize and the crops of the Maya world. Hell was left largely similar to the Maya underworld, though the Gods of Death were conflated with Shaytan (who was labeled jun cichin, First Evil).
The Five Pillars were all given Maya equivalents. The Shahada was an exception, taught only phonetically in Arabic (or often using crude existing Maya syllables to approximate it). Salat was easy for the lords to grasp, being similar enough to the bloodletting rituals that defined royal religious ceremonies with similar acts of purification and prostration (though bloodletting itself was quickly and vehemently stamped out.) Sawn was equally simple to grasp, being comparable to existing Maya beliefs about self-discipline and self-torture as a form of religious devotion. Hajj was equated to travel to sites of spiritual power, an existing and popular activity in the Yucatan. Zakat was more difficult, as the Maya aristocracy was unaccustomed to any sort of all-encompassing social equity like Zakat represented. Many lords would equate this with the existing system of feudal lordship (giving alms through being a good ruler), though that was officially frowned upon.
Certain aspects of Maya religion were stamped out. Human sacrifice, while much rarer compared to the Mishiki, was prohibited in all circumstances, and those priests who administered the ceremonies were often harshly punished. Bloodletting and self-mutilation were equally forbidden, being replaced with purely spiritual renewal. Salat was offered as an alternative to the ritual, through prayer alone the universe would be renewed – ones faith being described in similar terms to blood in pre-contact Maya mythology. Bloodletting needles were often burned in large fires along with ritual regalia and garb after the Islamization of a town.
Maya glyphs were either suppressed, or heavily modified. Glyphic texts served several key functions: to describe dynastic history or ritual history, religious events, or to mark significant calendrical dates (and often all three). Many glyphs were loaded with pre-contact religious symbolism that made the writing system inexorably associated with pre-contact religion. Some early Sufis went through great pains to learn the language, and some even attempted to promulgate an Islamized version that relied on syllabic glyphs primarily, but the easier and quicker Arabic abjad rocketed past it in popularity once there was no religious need to write in glyphs. Glyphic texts survived in the north until the mid 16th century, but even 50 years past contact they were in steep decline.
Once a ruler was no longer beholden to pre-contact routines of ritual that demanded such elaborate, labor-intensive specific texts, they had no use for them in any significant fashion. Arabic was also much easier for non-aristocrats to learn and write, so even those who retained the old system of scribes found themselves drowning in a sea of newly literature Maya middle-class who wrote only in Arabic letters. Despite this, even when Maya did write in Arabic, they would write with many of the same political themes, but from an Islamized point of view. Key events in Islamic history would be associated with mathematically significant Maya dates, and rulers would them tie themselves to these dates, as was custom pre-contact. The Maya obsession with calendars continued, creating a labyrinthian network of Maya calendars paired with the Islamic lunar calendar, which were used for folk-medicine and divination among the peasantry. Many logographic glyphs survived only in this sense, their actual use as a full writing system superseded by Arabic. It would not be uncommon to find divinatory texts that paired archaic Maya day signs with Yucatecan annotations written in Arabic.
The Islam of the Peasantry
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Aristocratic Maya Islam was radically different from the popular Islam that came to the countryside more gradually. This Islam was vastly more syncretized and more Mayanized, in many ways radical heresy in the eyes of strict theologians but far more compatible with Maya cultural beliefs. Crucially, this syncretic Islam allowed for both greater anthropomorphism of God, and doctrinally acceptable companion Gods. For Instance, alongside Alah or Alaj, there was also Itzammaj, Hun Ixim (the prime aspect of the Maize God), Ixchel, and others. These gods were described as separate names of Alah, just as each of them in pre-contact religion had a wide variety of separate titles to describe them. These kunabob would over time, be reduced to the category of spirits, local dieties that suited the local environment of the Yucatan. A Maya peasant for instance, might leave a sheaf of maize and few black stones in the corner of his new field as an offering to Hun Ah Mun Alaj, One Tender-Shoot God, before planting the field, or a midwife would give an offering of beans and squash to Ix Batimaah [Lady Fatimah] before delivering a child. Rural Maya preserved many customs that fell out of favor in urban areas, with many even offering sacrifices to these kunabob, though human sacrifice was quickly relegated to the domain of sorcery. Maya villages would have a central mosque overseen by an Ah Iman, also called an Ah B’i who managed the mosque grounds, kept the town records and administered the khutbah. He also oversaw the ritual calendar of the town and was expected to act as an herbalist as well. Maya folk magic, called K’intz’ib’, lit. “Sun Writing” blended Islam into existing beliefs about bodily and spiritual health (ones ch'ulel or soul), and the Iman was expected to be well-versed in the practices of the area he was serving. These countryside Imanob were seen as little more than rustic shamans by those Arabs and upper-class Maya in the cities. This stereotype hides the complexity of the new religious systems derived in the post-contact period. K’intz’ib’ was a vital component of rural life, and promoted social cohesion.
To speak briefly on the topic, it being vital to understanding how rural Maya adapted Islam to their beliefs, K’intz’ib’ was broadly, a collection of folk-spirits and folk-remedies to bodily and spiritual harms.
The goal of K’intz’ib’ was to promote spiritual goodness (
chul’el) through acts of faith (
iman), self discipline (
chokij), and the observance of ritual cycles (
xahaab). The Maya practitioner of it recognized a similar universe to that of his ancestors, with a great world ceiba tree that spanned the underworld through to paradise. This tree was divided into five cardinal realms (north, south, west, east and center), associated with a color, ritual numbers, spirits and revered Islamic saints. For example, North,
xaman was white, it was the direction of the moon, Ixchel and Ix Batimaah (conflated into the same diety), the sky above and paradise, the seat of Alaj, and the domain of the angel Kabiral [Gabriel]. North could also be read as the sky-turtle shell through which
Ixim Alaj emerges to give food to man, the milky way, and the number 7. A Imanob might prepare a remedy with a turtle and corn to give to a sufferer with a migraine and recite the surahs that deal with Muhammad’s revelations from Gabriel.
There was also evil in K’intz’ib’. Iblis was associated with One Death as mentioned before, being called Jun Cichin. Other names include Chaytan, Ik’ Cichin, Sak Yibaj, and Ox Jol. He was seen as a triad of demons, each that went through the land to catch souls for the underworld. He was associated with the south, the color yellow, the bowls of the earth, and the earths heat. The dualism of Iblis’s nature in Islam is reflected here, as without the heat of the earth the crops could not grow, nor could life flourish. In K’intz’ib’, it is believed that Iblis is only useful when relegated to the underworld. When he is on the mortal plain is when he must be fought against. Iblis had a host of minor demons, called the Shayateen. In K’intz’ib’, these are called Babacob, a demonization of a former term for creator earth dieties in pre-contact mythology. There was one for each cardinal direction, though in many cases the line between Iblis himself and an associate demon is hard to define. Particularly religious Maya often buried a bundle of quranic quotations under the southern corner of their house to ward off Iblis and his demons and would leave a similar offering under the northern corner to court Alaj’s goodwill.
Followers of Iblis were called Kiharob, sing. Kihar, a portmanteau of the Arabic sihr, “magic” and the Yucatec ah kinob, “priest”. They were believed to hex villagers with charms and practice human sacrifice, dumping bodies into cenotes to worship the Babacob and gain their powers. Suspicion of being a Kiharob was often cause for imprisonment and torture in rural Maya areas. A host of other demons existed, drawn from both Arabic and Maya mythology. Minor demons include Sak Ik Jin, the Resplendent Wind Demon, who blew diseases with his breath, Ajaw Xujim, Lord Bloodletter, who pierced peoples bellies as they slept, or Ox K’an, Three Yellow, who caused miscarriages.
