Islamic Civilization

Imitation in War and Peace

  At war, first, the Islamic impact took a variety of forms. Defence and castle fortifications have been dealt with already; the point raised here, relates to Arabic vocabulary carrying concrete meaning, here the term ‘barbican’, ie a tower guarding a gate or a bridge, derived form the Islamic compound meaning ‘gatehouse’ or ‘house on the rampart’.[1]Barbican survives for a London underground station, close to the old London Wall, the object itself disappeared with the widespread use of modern artillery.[2]

Many changes came from the Islamic west, from Spain, from where was borrowed by Christians the Islamic ribât or frontier fighting "monastery" (inherited from the Almoravids, who swept into Spain in the late 11^th century,) and its reinvention as the crusading military order.[3] In land combat, the Islamic tactics of charging the enemy followed by sudden retreat, the Arabic Karr wa farr acquired a great prestige, and was adopted by Christian armies in Spain, who gave it the equivalent of de torna fuye.[4] Norman/Sicilian mechanical and military arts were spread from Sicily to Italy, including the weapons used by Muslim engineers at the sieges of Syracuse and Alexandria.[5]

The Eastern influence, of course, due to the crusades, was much wider. The use of the tunic for the rider and cloth for his steed, worn on top of the armour, was adopted from the Orient ; this, originally, was intended to give protection against the sun but was regarded later as a part of knightly apparel.[6] Amongst other transfers can be cited the bearing of blazons, also began in Syria  during the Crusades , and, which appeared among Turks and Latins alike.[7] This change took place precisely at the end of the 11^th century, when the European knights began to carry coats of arms, these being imitated from Islamic models, the point of this at first was to assist identification of the knights when they were in armour.[8] This soon led to the development of family coats of arms, and numerous symbols indicate the Orient as the beginning of this tradition.[9] The music of the army included horns and trumpets, the pipe, the timbrel, the harp, and the nacaires or metal drums, also all borrowed from the East.[10]

Changes in warfare, the increased importance of archers and infantry forces, for example, also resulted from experience gained in the Orient  and were then employed under different conditions in the fighting of the 13^th and 14^th century in Europe as well.[11] The evolutions of cavalry, the adoption of lighter armour, also exhibited the effect of the pervading Islamic influence. Especially noted here, the role of the Seljuk, the first and main opponents to the first crusaders until the mid 12^th century, and their influence in military terms could have been stirred by the admiration of their military prowess. At the battle of Dorylaeum, a Christian witness says:

 `I speak the truth, which no one can deny: that if they had always been steadfast in Christ’s faith and in Christianity, if they had wished to confess on triune Lord, and if they had honestly believed in good faith that the Son of God was born of the Virgin, that he had suffered and rose from the dead and ascended into heaven in the presence of his disciples, that he has sent the perfect comfort of the Holy Spirit, and that he reigns in heaven and on earth; if they had believed all this, it would have been impossible to find people more powerful, more courageous, or more skilled in the art of war. By the grace of God, however, we defeated them.’[12]

Many of the Turkish military commanders in Syria  and Palestine in the early 12^th century, such as Il Ghazi, Tughtegin and Zangi, had come to prominence, and they must have passed on many of the features of the Seljuk military system to the independent rulers of the Levant.[13]

The Muslim legacy was also in sea warfare, which refutes the general mistake found in historical writing, that the Muslims had little, or no interest in the sea. The very word Admiral, the symbol of sea power, derived from the French amial (the ‘d’ was inserted at some stage under the impression that the name had something to do with the ‘admiration’ due to this exalted rank); the French amial deriving through Spanish , from the Arabic amir al-‘commander of the…’[14] The Arabic term itself does not necessarily refer to a naval commander but to a high-ranking officer generally. Here was an innovation, Wickens points out, of enormous strategic importance, `for supreme commanders, apart from kings, were not a normal feature of Western campaigning for many centuries, reliance being placed instead on the old anarchic system of Germanic-Frankish loyalty to the band-chieftain or boat-captain.[15]

The Islamic tradition of generosity at war, Le Bon notes, gave birth to chivalrous acts, which all people of Europe followed later.[16] The Chronicle of Salerno  tell of the siege of Salerno in 871 contrasting Christian desperation with Islamic chivalry, suggesting some spirit of rivalry, an almost sporting element which prefigures, if it does not actually caricature, a later phase of chivalry.[17] The treatment of Levantine Muslims at the time of the Frankish conquest resembled, in general terms, that of the Muslims in Spain, but the massacres in the Levant were often more ferocious, probably because most Crusaders-unlike many Spaniards had never encountered Muslims.[18] The crusaders, Oldenbourg explains, eventually adopted the Oriental mentality that their countrymen from Western Christendom  were to accuse them of later, that is a new tolerant spirit, having discovered that the Muslims were just ordinary humans, and that all that was needed was some common sense to cohabit side by side.[19] The Muslim historian/warrior, Usama comments that amongst the Franks are those who have become acclimatized and have associated long with the Muslims, and who are much better than the recent comers from the Frankish lands.[20]A few years after his accession to the throne, Baldwin I, the crusader leader, as Oldenbourg notes, was `already on the political chessboard of Middle East ern politics, an Oriental prince not so different from the Turkish and Arab emirs of Syria … and bowing to the customs of local diplomacy and courtesy, just as though he had been born in the country.[21] Following him, Tancred and Baldwin of Le Bourg adopted the same attitude.[22] The crusaders were also initially bewildered at the array of non-Catholic beliefs they encountered in the Levant, and soon evolved the realistic policy of letting each group observe its `law' which, as far as the Muslims were concerned, was the law of `detested Muhammed.’[23]`We can readily understand,’ Owen observes, `that the crusader, with no imputation on his good faith or his religious perspicacity, might occasionally return from Palestine with a more impaired faith in the Dogmas of Ecclesiastical Christianity, and a higher respect for the miscreant paynim than before his enterprise he could have thought possible.’[24]

Courteous and chivalrous relations, it seems, had also been established during the third crusade between Salah Eddin and Richard who as a boy had been brought up in Aquitaine, in the south of France, where the influence of Islamic culture had been strong.[25] The ease of Richard's relationships with Salah Eddin was doubtless largely due to the growing extension `of Arab manners in Western Europe.  In the same manner today, a Syrian or Iraqi diplomat would mingle easily with Americans in the United States, if he had been educated in the American University of Beirut,’ notes Glubb.[26] Glubb, according to whom, the Muslim code of chivalry, retained by the Spaniards for centuries after the fall of Granada, passed over into France and to England , where it ultimately formed the basis of our codes of sport and fair play.[27]

Away from the field of war, the Islamic affairs and manners of state also impacted in a diversity of forms, at some stage or another finding their way to Western Christendom . Under Caliph Mehdi, was introduced an innovation in the form of a wazeer, or chief minister, who was the head of the government, which, of course, centuries later brought the position of Prime Minister.[28] Al-Kindi, in the 9^th century, wrote short treatises dealing mainly with ethics and political philosophy, such as on Morals, On facilitating the paths to the virtues, on the warding off of griefs, on the government of the common people, and account of the intellect.[29] Myers expands on the impact such literature was to have.[30] The Islamic impact can be seen in the organisation of the state, its institutions and regulatory bodies. Christian Spain reintroduced a central Islamic institution, the Muhtasib (the state inspector), an office that had fallen into desuetude in late Islamic times, in the revivified form of the Mustasaf, with its traditional jurisdiction but armed now with a standard, written code to execute.[31]In the East, during the crusades, the same institution was adopted, the regulation of the markets put by the crusaders under an official called a mathesep, from the Arabic Muhtassab. [32]He had charge of the standard weights and measures, inspected streets and bazaars, and regulated the trade of bakers, butchers, cooks, and corn merchants, dealers in fried fish, in pastry, in butter, oil, and in various drinks, and also the native alcohols, the native doctors, oculists, and chemists, the horse surgeons, grocers, money changers, and hawkers, the cloth merchants, tanners, shoemakers, goldsmiths, blacksmiths, and tinsmiths, the slave market, and the market for horses and mules.[33]

The Islamic impact with regard to state regulations for medical practice, university studies;[34]the preparation of drugs as well as the relations between doctors and apothecaries,[35] have all been considered previously to warrant any more space here.

Muslim rulers management of public affairs in Spain was the most competent in the Western world of that age, maintaining rational and humane laws, effective administration and a well-organized judiciary.[36] The conquered, in their internal affairs, were governed by their own laws and their own officials, whilst towns were well policed; markets, weights and measures were effectively supervised, and a regular census of population and property was kept.[37] It is from that era, in nearly every respect, Letourneau notes, that dates a large Castilian vocabulary borrowed from Arabic to describe administrative functions, technical details, and other facts of civilisation.[38] Over a six-hundred-year period, Glick observes, the borrowing of terms related to social and administrative institutions by the Christians in Spain was pre-eminent in the process, an indication, in the first two periods, of the modelling of a less highly structured society after a more highly structured one.[39]