Why was Islam so successful at Conquering and holding the Middle East?

Could you elaborate a little more on this? I lived in Morocco for a bit and took a North African history class. Extremely interesting place and history.

In what ways were the Kharijites dangerous? How were the Shia sects exaggerated?

Saw so many beautiful sights in Morocco and experienced a culture that most people in the West know nothing about. The big cities were more traditionally "Arabic", but the Berber culture of the interior was completely unique. Never seen anything like it.

It is attested by historical chronicles of the early period of Islam that reveal to us that in the far western sections of the Maghreb, the inhabitants were of a certain Berber sect that resembled the Dhammiyyah and certain other trends within some Shi'i circles, wherein Ali and or Fatima is seen as Allah or alternatively, above Allah in some way. Further, other Shi'a sects are supposed to have occurred among the Berbers and Arab Bedouin of Africa, namely the Is'maili Batinist (those who see hidden meanings) type of Shi'a. The Fatimid Caliphate themselves arose from this milieu of Shi'a and Kharijite sects within the rural areas of Africa.

Mind you, when we say ghulat or ghuluu in relation to the Shi'a, it refers to a type of Shi'a who is seen as radical in his/her views of Ali, Fatima, Salman al-Farisi, Hassan ibn ali or Husayn ibn Ali. Or they hold another views such as the Alevi, that Allah sort of exists in all matter within a certain atomizing process, or such as the Druze who believe in reincarnation and combine this with their esoteric believes that they inherited from the wider Batinist sects such as the Is'maili, Nizari or Hafizi. There is also Ghulat who exhibited features of Gnostic and Manichean beliefs, such as Allah as a light with arms or that all flesh is inherently evil, etc...

Now, the unspoken section of much of this is, that generally when we discuss Shi'a, there is widespread cross pollination. Namely, a Dhammite may hold that the Quran is corrupted, this may not be a feature of their belief alone, but is cross pollinated into other Shi'a varieties, such as the Rawafidh Twelvers. Or the idea of Wilaya al-Tawkwiniyyah, held by most modern Shi'a scholars is reminiscent of the Ghuluu of the past which said that Ali and the Imams are Allah. But in general, we may say there is four types of Shi'a; Zaydi: those Shi'a who are closest to Sunni, they do not consider the salaf (followers of Muhammad [SAW]) to be apostates, only that Ali should have been the Caliph, they are in turn the smallest variety of shi'a and primarily exist in the Arabian peninsula; the Batiniyyah and Niners, which are the broad group that places emphasis on the idea of the Batin nature of the Quran, that there is secret hidden meanings in each word or surah and many other views related to this; Twelver Rawafidh, so called as they believe in 12 appointed Imams and rawafidh as they rejected Zayd ibn Ali (founder of Zayydiyyah) as Zayd ibn Ali refused to call the salaf apostates, in addition they can be seen as 'rejectors' in the sense that they are the most clear in their baraa (enmity) with the immediate followers of Muhammad (SAW), that they were both known by the prophet to be hypocrites and that after the death of the prophet, all but 3 people (excluding Ali and his family) became apostates; then finally, the Ghulat, which have been described.

The Khawarij/Shurha were a type of sect that claimed that minor sins are such that they send one to hellfire. Further, their methodology began with the ideas that there is 1. No arbitration except by Allah, thus one cannot make certain human agreements on major matters. 2. Caliphs Uthman ibn Affan and Ali ibn Talib were both illegitimate and were apostates as they accepted arbitration and invalidated their office of Caliph. 3. Rebellion against the Caliph was permissible in cases of minor sin. 4. The Caliph could be elected democratically and could be from anyone of the Muslim, regardless of lineage. 5. Outright offensive lying or deception, known as the dreaded Kitman, is permissible if used to dismantle the supposed kuffar. As a result, you have a sort of the ends justify the means sort of sect that is very rapid or ghuluu in its usage of the takfir (excommunication) and highly militaristic and subversive. They as a sect would cripple much of the Islamic world for approximately 400 years as, along with millennial Shi'a rebels, the most important internal source of rebellion and fear in the Islamic world. I have discussed them at greater lengths and details before on this site.
 
Christianity is very successful at spreading in Roman Empire, Germanic Tribes, and later Slavic Peoples.

Zoroastrianism successful in Iranian Plateau for many centuries.

Buddhism extremely successful in East Asia.

Missionary Religion that gain Big Success in human history is so rare that we don't have enough example anything more than very vague guess.
 
I agreed that there was continued activity. However, the general trend was toward the lessening of this status. The Samanid period regardless was short and the 10th century generally one of constant war between Islamic Turkic states and steppe hordes of varying degrees of Islamic religion. There is little point in seeing trade as flourishing in times when there is such intense conflict. During the height of the Silk Road, there was far less of this, due to the unified state of the Kushan and Han Empires.
True, the general trend in the Silk Road was of decline compared to the heyday in antiquity.

Christianity is very successful at spreading in Roman Empire, Germanic Tribes, and later Slavic Peoples.

Zoroastrianism successful in Iranian Plateau for many centuries.

Buddhism extremely successful in East Asia.

Missionary Religion that gain Big Success in human history is so rare that we don't have enough example anything more than very vague guess.
There was also Manichaeism, but that was itself wiped out by the others.
 
It’s hard to believe that the Arabs could gain so muchss success in just 150 years, and still hold it together.
Could Christianity for example, have the same success?

Well, yes - sort of. I mean Christianity has been very successful globally and is the world's largest religion.

Why were the Arabs so successful? Mainly because their rule was simply better than what came before.

1. Religious tolerance - unlike the Christian Byzantines and the Zoroastrian Persians, both of which were religious persecutors, the Arabs allowed freedom of worship in exchange for tax payment.

To put this in context, Jews had been massacred by the Byzantines in the early 600s and Monophysite Christians, who were the majority in the southern provinces of the empire, were also persecuted.

In Persia, Christians were also persecuted as the authorities viewed them as a potentially dangerous fifth column in the war with Byzantium.

Given all this religious intolerance and persecution, many people preferred Arab rule. The Arabs were magnanimous conquerors and made no attempt to force their religion. As a result they gained wide support in the regions they entered.

I could give countless examples of the way they went about things. The surrender of Jerusalem is instructive. The Patriarch of the city negotiated it's surrender with the Caliph. When he entered the city, he was invited to pray in the city's church. He wisely declined, out of respect, on the grounds that if he went there, others (later) would come after him and try to turn the church into a mosque.

There are also stories that some Arabs had built a mosque on site of a synagogue if I remember correctly. The Caliph had the mosque pulled down and the synagogue restored. His reason was that the mosque had been illegal - religious buildings should be respected.

There is also the treaty of Muhammad with the monastery of Saint Catherine, which promises protection to Christians and their place of worship.

Obviously I'm not saying the Arabs were angels, or that their conquest was all smiles and sunshine. The fact is they conquered new territories by defeating the existing ruling authority, whether Byzantine or Persian, in the usual way.

Nevertheless, for the time they were unusually tolerant and remarkably model conquerors in many ways. It is this that ensured their long term success.

2. The message of Islam.

Islam is a concept that would take a long time to explain properly and I'm not sure I could do it in a forum post of any reasonable length. But obviously the appeal of Islam the religion was central to the Arabs success. It was the motivating factor that united them and inspired their meteoric rise.

I don't think it's even possible to convey much about it, it has to be lived and experienced to be understood. But basically a value system with a strong moral character, that advocates for the poor, the sick, the downtrodden, the underdog, and recommends charity, humbleness, mercy and compassion to others has enormous appeal in a world that is and always has been manifestly unjust. The chivalrous behaviour of many who followed this ideal was an inspiration to others.

I recommend to look into Sufism especially if you are interested in this subject. Poets like Rumi and Hafez and Shams and others embody the spirit of love as the essence of god in their poetry. It's a deep subject and I can hardly do it justice here but these are a good starting point.

3. Their enemies had failed

The Byzantines and Persians had basically run their course as empires. Their system had brought decades of unrelenting war and devastation and religious persecution to the region. It's not hard to see that these two empires had utterly failed in their most basic reason to exist: to provide security.

The Arab conquests swept all that away and replaced it with a better system, a dynamic new society that combined all the best of the two former empires and added the magic ingredient of Islamic inspiration and chivalry. It's no wonder it was such a runaway success.
 
I suspect the main reason for the long term success of Islam was threefold.

Arab and Berber had military structures which offered greater mobility allowing to retreat into the hinterland, which was also why areas without strategic depth fell to the Christians again.

Arab states ruling over Christians had a large tax base, enable them to afford larger armies and as it disappeared as the Muslim population rose, the support for Christian reconquests also disappeared.

Europe was poorer than the Middle East until after year 1000. Giving the Muslim 400 years of breathing room to consolidate power.

I think it must not be underestimated that the biggest political rival to Islam in the Middle East (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantinople) was severely weakened by the black death prior to its destruction.
 
My pet theory is that the Arab Empire fulfilled the geopolitical of the old Persian Empires. Successful states with a power base on Mesopotamia almost always tend to reach Egypt on one side and Central Asia on the other. This is true for the Achaemenids, Alexander, the Caliphate and the Ilkhanate.

But why Islam persevered in the Middle East? For the same reason that Christianity persevered in Europe. Zealotry, organization and a profound relationship with the secular ruler.
 
For the most part the areas they conquered in the Middle East had governments that weren't too popular with the local population.
The Muslim conquerors also gave a tax cut two people who converted to Islam. They were not stupid they know lots of the converts would not be true believers but they did know that their children would be
 
I don't doubt Islam had a lot of appeal. But christianity also favored (in theory) the poor, or downtrodden. The early Arab success owed much to luck. Just before the arab effort started their two greatest enemies, the East Romans and the Sassanids, had beaten one another to a pulp.
 
In many ways, it was the third most troublesome region conquered by the early Islamic Caliphate, following Iraq and Iran.

I'm interested to know what made Iraq more troublesome than North Africa. It would seem to me that from small splinters like the ninth-century Ibadi and Shia states to more large-scope movements like the Almoravids and Almohads, North Africa generally resisted the Eastern caliphs' spiritual and political authority more successfully than Iraq in any period after the Zanj rebellion.
 
I'm interested to know what made Iraq more troublesome than North Africa. It would seem to me that from small splinters like the ninth-century Ibadi and Shia states to more large-scope movements like the Almoravids and Almohads, North Africa generally resisted the Eastern caliphs' spiritual and political authority more successfully than Iraq in any period after the Zanj rebellion.

Until the Fatimid, the African Islamic world (aside from Egypt) presented no tangible danger to the Abbasid Caliphate. However, the rebellions arising from Iran and Iraq that occurred at a fairly frequent basis, often threatened to destroy the Caliphate as a whole, not simply assert local autonomy. Ya'qub ibn Layth al-Saffar invaded Iraq to place the Abbasid Caliph al-Mu'tamid and his brother and regent, al-Muwaffaq in chains, not simply assert his local authority, which after destroying the Tahirids and the death of al-Afshin and Mazyar al-Qavanid, had mostly asserted his rule as the premier in the Iranian plateau.
 
@starman

Generally Islam is systematic about it. Since, in Islam, both political and religious spheres were intertwined Islam's policies towards the poor are both practical (it isn't merely giving to the poor, it also involves the redistribution of wealth as well as the development of public works and housing) and were implemented once the Caliphate was first established.
 
@starman

Generally Islam is systematic about it. Since, in Islam, both political and religious spheres were intertwined Islam's policies towards the poor are both practical (it isn't merely giving to the poor, it also involves the redistribution of wealth as well as the development of public works and housing) and were implemented once the Caliphate was first established.

Do not forget that the stipulation around this distribution is one that is predicated upon the ideal that Islam does not require a governmental redistribution effort to maintain itself. In theory, the system should apply at the level of a village in the mountains of a far flung region, wherein the village is able to give charity and 'redistribute'. My reason for mentioning this, is that I wish to separate this word redistribution from the modern western connotations associated with large state government entities and socialist thought processes, which I in general in my personal view of fiqh, consider either disliked in the stance of large state entities and consider haram in the case of socialism even if it is supposedly Islamic.
 
IMO it was the combination of two factors, the aforementioned revolution of social equality combined with awe inspiring military success. It was as if during the Mongol conquests Genghis claimed to be a prophet and that anyone could join the empire, be granted equality and loot in the here and now, and opulence beyond imagination in the afterlife. All he requires is pledging allegiance and accepting Genghis as a prophet. Few would doubt God was not on his side given his many miraculous victories.
How successful would the Mongols have been if he actually did that?
 
@John7755 يوحنا

Alright I have a very specific question which may be irrelevant to the topic (mods, you should delete my posts if you find them as such), do you think anarchism is compatible with Islam? And I mean all kinds of anarchism (mutualism, syndicalism, collectivism, capitalism, communism, etc.)
 
@John7755 يوحنا

Alright I have a very specific question which may be irrelevant to the topic (mods, you should delete my posts if you find them as such), do you think anarchism is compatible with Islam? And I mean all kinds of anarchism (mutualism, syndicalism, collectivism, capitalism, communism, etc.)

If the society began this way and simply adapted Islam and its codes of Sharia and made changes where needed, then yes. However, a society that already has a state and a movement arises that proposes an idea of rebelling against the state, removing private property, attacking the rich/aristocracy/land holders in class warfare of sorts, then this is rejected and to do so is seen as a great sin. As Allah has dictated property owners and those who are in positions of power, though they cannot exceed the limits, lest they become taghut and their blood then can become halal.

Thus, if Islam came upon a village or group of villages in the mountains or desert or what have you and they have only a vague concept of a state that revolved around tribal democracy and or lack of a state in any real situation, they may keep this situation. There is nothing within Islam that dictates that one should have a state or an earthly ruler. The Sharia was gifted to mankind as a blessing by which all people may live according and it does not require the constraints humane of a state as we inevitably are the subjects of Allah and if it is such befitting Him for us to have no appointed rulers, then it is allowed. Yet, any ideology that demands a revolution that does not meet the religious prescriptions, and instead invokes class conflict, redistribution, etc.. is not permissible. As the rulings are clear, rebellion is only accepted in states of disbelief of the ruler or in some other cases related to this, while the rebellion by way of oppression, is a rejected reason for rebellion. For instance, in the western nations and many Muslim nations, income tax or sales tax is practiced by the state; this according to Islam (some differ on the severity, however my opinion is the harsh level,, yet every scholar agrees that these taxes are haram or disliked and usually all agree that sales tax is great sin that sends one to hellfire) are grave sins that sends one into hellfire and is something that is detested by Allah who wishes well for the people and for them not to be targeted by taxation that punishes actions (such as productivity or wealth in an income tax or buying and selling in sales tax). However, the ruling is universal that the Muslim should pay the tax as avoiding the tax would require lying and this is a breach of contract with the host power and is also the sin of evil deception. Rather, the sin of the income tax or sales tax, go to the rulers and bureaucrats who enforce it, not toward those who pay it, likewise, if usury exists in a land, the fact it is allowed to exist is a sin that the rulers and such of the region receive, not the average Muslim or human for that matter-Muslim or not. The rebellion too, like the lying is not allowed, despite the Muslim and non Muslim being oppressed by those who take as their mantle the powers of Allah. Hence by the same ruling, a rebellion for the sake of any other say economic model or political scheme that does not fit into the Islamically sanctioned methods/reasons for rebellion, is likewise rejected and any who does so, endangers his taqwa/imaan (piety/faith) and in some cases, will be destined for hellfire.

(there is however Islamically sound ways to avoid paying taxes though. If there is methods within the tax law in your land to lessen your payments by way of say charity or other means, then this is permissible.)
 
How successful would the Mongols have been if he actually did that?

It was a different world by the 13th century. The world religions were probably too entrenched for a new religion to succeed. But considering Europeans initially believed Genghis to be Prester John, Genghis claiming to be a Christian prophet sacking Baghdad would certainly cause his ranks to swell with Christian fanatics.
 
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