$Unique_ID{how04824}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{World Civilizations: The Postclassical Era
Introduction}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Stearns, Peter N.;Adas, Michael;Schwartz, Stuart B.}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{islamic
abbasid
empire
muslim
peoples
political
africa
asia
civilization
new}
$Date{1992}
$Log{}
Title:       World Civilizations: The Postclassical Era
Book:        Chapter 13: Abbasid Decline And The Spread Of Islamic Civilization To Asia
Author:      Stearns, Peter N.;Adas, Michael;Schwartz, Stuart B.
Date:        1992

Introduction

     By the middle decades of the 9th century A.D., the Abbasid dynasty had
clearly begun to lose control over the vast Muslim Empire that had been won
from the Umayyads a century earlier. From North Africa in the west to the
Iranian heartlands in the east, rebellious governors and new dynasties arose
to challenge the Abbasid caliphs' claims to be the rightful overlords of all
Islamic peoples. As had been the case with the Umayyads before them, the
Abbasids' ability to hold together the highly diversified empire they claimed
in the 750s was greatly hampered by the difficulties of moving armies and
compelling local administrators to obey orders across the great distances that
separated the capital at Baghdad from the far-flung provinces they sought to
rule. Travel by land and sea was slow and often dangerous; most of the peoples
of the empire maintained regional identities rather than an attachment to the
caliphal regime at Baghdad; and the military technology of the rebel forces
was often on a par with, and at times superior to, that of Abbasid armies.

     In addition to the splintering of the empire into often hostile states,
the Abbasids had to contend with periodic revolts within the regions where
they managed to maintain their rule. Here Shi'a dissenters, belonging to an
ever proliferating variety of sects, were particularly troublesome. Major
slave revolts and more localized peasant risings also sapped the strength of
the empire. The Abbasids' capacity to meet these challenges was steadily
diminished by the decline in the quality of Abbasid leadership. In addition,
there was a sharp decrease in resources available to even the more able of the
later caliphs, owing to losses in territory and control over the revenues
collected by regional officials. When Mongol invasions finally put an end to
the caliphate in the middle of the 13th century, it was only a shadow of the
great empire that had once ruled much of the Islamic world.

     Paradoxically, even as the political power of the Abbasids declined and
the Muslim world broke into a patchwork of rival kingdoms and empires, Islamic
civilization reached new heights of creativity and entered a new age of
expansion in both the east and west. In architecture and the fine arts, in
literature and philosophy, and in mathematics and the sciences, the centuries
during which the Abbasid Empire was slowly dismembered were a era of
remarkable achievement. At the same time, political fragmentation did little
to slow the process of the growth of the Islamic world through political
conquest and more enduring peaceful conversion. From the 10th to the 14th
century, Muslim warriors, traders,nand holy men carried the faith of Muhammad
into the savanna and desert of West Africa, down the coast of East Africa, to
the Turks and numerous other nomadic peoples of central Asia, and into South
and Southeast Asia. For over five centuries, the spread of Islam played a
central role in the rise, extension, or transformation of civilization in much
of the Afro-Asian world.

     We will consider the forces that led to the prolonged disintegration of
the Abbasid caliphate and the resulting political fragmentation of the Islamic
world. The next sections of this chapter will present the great artistic and
scientific accomplishments that Muslim peoples managed in the midst, and often
in defiance, of political and social turmoil. Central to these achievements
were contacts between the many ancient centers of civilization that had been
or were being brought into the Muslim orbit. New converts, such as the Turkic
peoples of central Asia, brought a revival of military and political strengtho
that restored the authority of the caliphal regime for a time and enabled the
Muslims to fend off the assaults of the crusading Europeans. Muslim trading
contacts and conversions in areas such as Africa, India, Malaya, and the
Indonesian archipelago drew new peoples, food crops, tools, and knowledge into
the Islamic heartland areas. At the same time, the influx of conversion-minded
Muslim peoples with their own very substantial cultural baggage brought
fundamental transformations to virtually all of these regions. In the latter
sections of this chapter, we will focus on the patterns and impact of Islamic
expansion into South and Southeast Asia. In the next chapter, we will examine
the ways in which the coming of Islam affected the development of civilization
in various parts of Africa.