The Limited Universalism: The Formation of Medieval Islam and the Lasting Nature of the Islamic World

The birth of Islam and the immediate subsequent establishment of the worldly Islamic empires should be considered as the monumental concluding phase of the Late Antiquity Age. The formation of the Islamic World is the continuity of both the hugely distinct cultural and religious diversities that flourished at the Near East and Middle East for centuries at Late Antiquity Age, and the long-term strengthening process of the religious Monotheism ongoing in the regions since the ancient age.

Thus on critical natures of the Islamic World, especially on its core spheres of Near East and Middle East, the thorough inclusions and integrations of the diverse religious ideologies with their strong monotheism traits stand as the fundamental force of transforming the Islam from the newly born conquering ideology to the worldly universal religious system. But meanwhile contradictorily, by embodying the huge diversities into its very nature, the Islamic World never truly consolidates and unites its universal religious ideologies into the constant and absolute centralized system that primarily in the meaning of political execution and state framework.

The diversity in the Islamic World has been mainly presented into the three directions. From the age of early empires, the political imperial authority never fully captured the complete recognition and incorporation of the religious authority, which significantly after the first four consensusly recognized caliphs, the ambiguous tensions constantly presented between the religious authority and imperial legitimacy, and the religious communities steadily preserved their comparative independence of cultivating the own ideological world.

Also at the inside world of religious authority, the unity is not possible to be reached after the first four rightly guided caliphs. The intense dissidents over the ultimate legitimate leadership and representation of the Islamic universal world during the transition to the virgin empire formation, and cited the factor of incomplete and inability of the imperial impositions, has led to the permanent sectarian divide that mainly between the Sunnism and Shiism.

Moreover, within the necessary inheritance of the pre-Islamic world, the Islamic imperial political structure fundamentally relied on the formation and continuity of the great power local elites for the maintenance and stabilization of the centralized imperial entity. And thus the huge contingencies existed for the local political powers to collude with disparate religious authorities and eventually disassembled the massive centralized empire, and thoroughly diversified the political situations with the progress of mutations and maturations of the political system and the strengthening and systematization of the religious communities.

Not until the age of early modern empires could the sufficient integration of the religious authority into the centralized imperial ideological structure become the practical reality, within both imperial and religious systems have been thoroughly reconstructed and expanded in the centuries of decentralized Medieval ages. Nevertheless, the centralized format of the religious authority did not prevent its further collation with the local political powers, which the powers continued to stand as the political foundation for the expanding centralized empires. As well as the sectarian religious worlds that undergone the similar reconstruction process and co-developed with the re-emergence and re-formation of the universal empires only intensified the divide under the substantially more established imperial systems.

The strongly correlated imperial and religious ideologies in the Islamic world fully embraced and executed the unconditional and unequivocal proclamation of the absolute universalism through the different ages. But at the same time the inevitable reality of the constantly presented limited centralization of the imperial structures and the limited unity of the religious communities jointly determine the political and religious diversity as the lasting nature of the Islamic world under its universalism. And that nature has been lucidly illustrated at the age of centrifugation of the firstly born empires, and for these centuries can be referred as the Islamic Medieval age.

At the pre-Islamic Late Antiquity period, while the Arabian Peninsula did not stand as the center of power and culture, it was constantly drawn the the attentions from the two main great powers that presented and dominated the Near East and Middle East regions, the Byzantium and Sasanian Empires. The attempts of building satellite states into the various regions of peninsula were continuous from both sides and certain sorts of political controls had been accomplished.

The tribal societies that with the nomadic roots and with the heavy dependence on the inter-region trades overwhelmingly dominated the Arabian Peninsula. The limited and indirect presence of the imperial political powers through the peninsula opened the avenue for the introduction of the diverse but strongly monotheistic cultural and religious ideologies. Mainly the divergent branches of Christianity and the Judaism found their bases in the peninsulas. And the main tribal societies there gradually and steadily assimilated the monotheism principles and system into the indigenous religious cultures, which the process critically led to the birth of Islam as the unique universal religious system.

The Islam religious system created the principle of universal ultimate God Allah to wholly represent and symbolize the worldly fundamental truth and justice, which essentially is the continuity of the precedent monotheism religions that long existed in the regions. Being formulated with the conclusive influence of the varieties of monotheism and thus imperatively cultivated and heightened the profound quests for ideological universalism, the making of Islam as the religious system soonly became the formidable force for uniting the Arabic tribal groups into the preliminary central political union and with the highly advancing conquering fascinations.

Under the talented leadership of Muhammad, who claimed as the prophet that brought the divine message of the God to the world, and with the following four communally recognized political and religious leaders that all from the closed group with the Prophet, the preparatory structure of the Islamic empire had been formatted with the largely successful military conquests over the territories of the Byzantium and Sasanian empires. The internal political fragility and as the result the military deficiency of the two great powers had been largely exploited.

Consequently the retreat of Byzantium Empire from the Near East and North Africa and the complete demise of the Sassanian Empire led to the creation of original Islamic empire. But internally that newly born empire quickly confronted the two major predicaments respectively from the fields of political transition and religious authority.

Both predicaments were triggered from the same cause, which after the ruling of first four commonly consensus leaders, and particularly after the lost of the fourth one Ali due to the civil war, both the political and religious legitimacy in the neonatal Islamic world were forced to embrace the uncertain condition and further following drastic transitions.

With the formation of the world empire, the still overwhelmingly existed and functioned tribal societies became increasingly unadaptable with the imperial structure. The heartlands of the new Islamic empires coincided with the demised Sasanian Empire, and thus correspondingly and consequently the already well-established imperial political system at the Sasanian was greatly succeeded in the early Islamic empires as the actual necessity for surviving and maintaining the new empire.

For the political imperial authority, not only the death of Ali and the lost of internal civil war made the transition of rulership reasonably transfer from the exclusive closed group with the Prophet Muhammad to the broader elite groups, but essentially the leadership nature of the first four consensus caliphs that heavily rooted into the tribal politics of clan collations, would no longer be practical in the empire framework.

The new caliphs in the early empires adjusted and then enlarged the concept of caliph as not only the protector of god but also the protector of the Islam as the universal world that enclosed with the strong indication and emphasis on the unrivaled and supreme authority of the imperial ruling. Moreover, the ambitious and aggressive attempts were devoted to the deification of the caliph as the imperial ruler that obscurely be on the equal status with the God Allah.

The oppositions for the progressing deviations from the tribal traditions had been one of the direct causes for overthrowing the Umayyad Caliphate, the very first Islamic world empire. But the imperial bureaucratization and centralization progress only further developed under the successor Abbasid Caliphate that moved its political and cultural center deeper into the center hub of Ancient Persia.

However, another predicament of the religious authority during the imperial transformation was seemingly impossible to identify the permanent remedy. The building of the ideology of ultimate imperial ruling with the divine elements never received the complete and faithful approval and endorsement from the religious authorities and communities. The complete unity between the political and religious authority had been inevitably lost and sacrificed as part of the imperial transition.

The crash of the unity simultaneously took place inside the religious community. While the majority of religious scholars accepted the community-based approach for interpreting and defining the religious doctrines and ideologies, and further determining the religious authority, the group that fervently followed the Ali, made the radical and absolute assertion that only the descendants of Ali will have the eligibility to be the leader of whole Islamic world, and meanwhile the remarkable divinization was systematically performed on the chosen Ali descendants.

As the imperialization of the Islamic world was overwhelmingly relied on and guided by the Sasanian political model, the centralization and consolidation of the empire was crucially dependent on the grant of great autonomous ruling to the local rulers that composed both the newly cultivated Persianized Arabic elites and the old elites who initiatively converted to Islam and continued from the Pre-Islamic empires.

These local rulers who privileged for the significant independent governance stood as the cornerstone for sustaining the centralized empire with the expansive scale by acting as the agent of centralized government for executing the orders but with the vigorous self-determination, and also by fully recognizing and submitting to the centralized empire in the way of political ideology. But meanwhile the vibrantly open political spaces were potentially left open for the partially disjointed and highly self-governing religious communities to seek the opportunity of cooperation with the local power for the spiritual zeal of translating the faithful religious ideologies into the idealized political realities, as well as reciprocally the local powers would have their own political ambitions by utilizing these religious authorities.

The political balance among the centralized imperial government, the local ruling powers and the highly self-governing but internally competing religious communities can be reached in the decently successful degree at the peak of the empire. And the true and full nature of the limited political centralization and religious unity would be comprehensively highlighted when the empire started to be decentralized.

The decline of the empire central powers that mainly caused by the internal political instabilities and over-dependence on the nomadic Turk mercenaries that started to apparent at the late ninth century aggravated the autonomous pattern of the local elites and naturally galvanized them to disaffiliate with the empire.

The religious communities, which had always preserved their unique and exclusive ideological identities, captured the exceptional opportunities for expanding the influences to be the preeminent authorities in the politically chaotic world and with the course of completing the competent systematization of the communities.

The Shia communities made the great advance to their utopia vision of the world with the heavy engagements into the political arena. On the tenth century, the heartland of the Abbasid Empire was fell under the controlled of the Buyid rulers, and the Abbasid Caliphs were treated as the merely nominal imperial rulers with the humiliation inflicted. For another branch of Shiism, the Fatimid Empire that based on Egypt and reached to the broader North Africa and Near East on its peak political control, further integrated the Shiism into the theocratic empire by building the imperial legitimacy through the claim of caliphate is the direct inheritor of the Shia Imams that purely based on the Ali’s bloodline and under the heavy influence of the mystic apocalypticism.

The disadvantaged status of the Shia communities might result into the stronger urges for the political involvements, but the comprehensive institutionalization of religious ideologies is the core theme for the religious community as whole.

Rooted in the original formation, the Islam as the religious ideology is inherently shaped by the profoundly diverse religious and cultural philosophies that had been flourished in the region and in fact continued to shine by being incorporated into the Islam. Typically the vigorous debates between the traditionalism that emphasizing on unquestioned and unconditional faith of the original doctrines that fully represent the God’s will and command, and with the rationalism that highlighting the logical reasoning and people’s free will but under the God’s ultimate guide, became the major intellectual motivations for the standardization of the ideological system under its great expansions and developments. And the ideological system was further embellished with the mystical Sufism to encompass the spiritual and transcendent connections with the God and divine world that served as the pivotal component of the ideological systematization.

The progress of the ideological systematization was generally shared by both the Sunnism and Shiism. The extensive intellectual networks were established across the Islamic world that mainly on basis of the established schools of thoughts. The high flexibility and interconnections among the established schools greatly enabled the substantively expanding religious system to form the tentative unity.

With the exception of Shia regimes, the majority of the religious communities had the discernible trend of keeping distant with the de facto independent local political powers in the Medieval age. The significant rise of the nomadic Turk powers that originated from being facilitated by the mid-late Abbasid state and accumulated to form the far-reaching Seljuk Empire but with the escalating deterioration of the decentralization shift by allocating large territories to the private nomadic elites and clans, further strengthened the deviation trend of the religious communities and ensured the religious systematic expansions chiefly functioned on their own directions.

But meanwhile the large-scale nomadic ruling imprinted the traits of relentless expansions and conquests into the Islamic world. The following disastrous conquest and dominion of the Mongol power completely destructed nomadic Seljuk Empire but also further reinforced and ignited the conquest mindset. The rise of the Ottoman Turks followed the traces of Mongol and Timurd Empires and greatly fulfilled the vast political vacuums left to finalize and formalize the reconstruction of the centralized imperial structure with the well-executed incorporation of the aspects of nomadic expansions.

The Ottoman Empire remarkably expanded the territory with the full control of the Anatolia, the previous heartland of the Byzantium for thousand years, and based on there extended the imperial rulings into the Balkan Europe, as well as with the inclusion of traditional Islamic territories of North Africa and Holy Lands in Arabic Peninsula.

Its committed inheritance of the nomadic conquest nature enabled the recovery and renovation of the world empire become the possibility. And correspondingly the highly expanded and institutionalized religious system, for the first time ever, was fully incorporated into the imperial structure that the authority of religious community was under the direct and effective political governance.

However, the principle nature of the fundamental reliance on the significantly autonomous local elites was echoed with the age of early centralized empires. And the Ottoman situation only became more distinctive that referred to the overwhelmingly dominated Christian communities on the Balkan Europe and without considerable conversion attempts performed.

The formation of Ottoman Empire was also not the only revival of the early modern centralized empire. The Safavid Empire merged the Shiism with the reawakened Persian identity to establish the imperial structure on significant political dependence of the tribal groups and on building of imperial ideology of following the Ali’s divine bloodline. The co-exist of Ottoman and Safavid states and the continuous political and ideological rivals between them iconically displayed the border of unity of the early modern empires. And the case of Mughal Empire that impressively united the Islam and Hinduism on its peak time is more properly interpreted under the particular Indian historical context.

When the Ottoman Empire confronted the decline of central imperial power and increasingly threatening local high independence powers that eventually developed into the cradle nationalism, the completely political centralized religious community and authority lost the magic to once again revolutionize itself to prepare for the next great transformation. And for the Safavid Empire, its decline apparently undermined the claim on succeeding the Ali’s divine bloodline and led to the Shia community returned to the secretive apocalypse.

On political sphere, the two eras of the centralized empire shared the nature on great reliance and permissions to the local power groups, which constantly restricted the centralization and the imperial universal claim. On religious sphere, the interactions with the political authority shifted from the internal tensions of the ideological conflicts on universalism at early empire age to the mainly external tensions on incurable religious divide that particularly after the course of ideological systematization.

Therefore, the universalism in the Islamic world, from the perspective of both political and religious scenarios, could only be the partial and limited reality at the two chapters of the imperial age. And the Medieval age as the transitional period between, is essentially the magnification and heightening of such reality and correlatedly the showcasing of vibrant potentials and opportunities.

*** The essay is written for the Postgraduate Program of World History and Philosophy at King's College London and is featured on Big News Network as the published article.