Byzantium and Islam
The Age of Justinian
In 527, Justinian became the emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire. He succeeded his uncle from the throne. A strong-willed and ambitious leader, he was determined to restore the Roman Empire in the Mediterranean. After a series of campaigns,
Justinian finally achieved his goal. Through his prominent general, Belisarius, he has conquered Italy, part of Spain, North Africa, Asia Minor, Palestine, and Syria. However,
Justinian’s campaigns had resulted to victories and defeats. Because the barbarians were consistent in attacking and raiding the cities and lands they conquered. And due to the fact that the reclaimed territories were heavily taxed that resulted in revolts and riots. As
Justinian’s generals fought to reclaim territory, Justinian ruled as an agent of God, enjoying supreme authority on both church and state. Beginning in the seventh century the emperor styled himself as “basileus”, or “ruler of the world” in addition to the title autocrat, or “sole ruler” to emphasize his absolute power. Justinian launched the most ambitious public building program ever seen in the Roman world. He rebuilt fortifications and constructed a wall along
Constantinople’s coastline. He superbly rebuilt the Hagia Sophia or Holy Wisdom in Greek, the unrivalled monument to his reign and name. Justinian preserved much of the Greco-Roman culture. Byzantine students focused on Greek and Latin grammar and Philosophy. The
Byzantine scholars were the ones who preserved most of the Greeco- Roman culture like the works of Homer and such. The most important contribution of Justinian was his codification of
Roman law. He created a single uniform code known as the Justinian Code. The four works of the code are the: Digest, Institutions, Code, and Novels. The code decided legal questions that regulated whole areas of Byzantine life; marriage, slavery, property, inheritance, women’s rights, and criminal justice. Even after Justinian’s death in 565, his code still served the Byzantine Empire for 900 years. In 532 two fan groups of the “Hippodrome” (Greek words meaning horse and racecourse) sparked city wide riots called the Nika rebellion. Nika means victory in Greek. Bothsides were angry with the government because they felt that the city

officials had been too severe in putting down a previous riot of Hippodrome fans. They demanded the overthrow of Justinian. As Justianian considered fleeing during the Nika rebellion his wife Theodora convinced him to stay and put an end to the rebellion. In the end
Justinian’s general Belisarius men slaughtered about 30,000 rebels which ended the Nika rebellion.Justinian married Theodora around 525, when he was in his early forties and she was in her late twenties. Before they got married, Theodora was Justinian’s mistress. As empress,
Theodora generally acquitted herself effectively. She and Justinian had quickly provided aid to the city of Antioch after it was devastated by an earthquake in 528. She also extended monetary assistance to the churches and villages of Asia Minor. Her experience in government prepared her to run it when Justinian was sick with plague in 542. The plague was named The
Plague of Justianian, which resembled in today’s what is known as bubonic plague. Historians estimate the plague lasted in the end of 700, which Constantinople population endured and suffered. After Justinian’s death in 565, the empire suffered countless setbacks. There were street riots, religious quarrels, palace intrigues, and foreign dangers. Each time the empire moved to the edge of collapse, it found some way to recover only to face another crisis.
Economy and Society under the Byzantine Empire
The main source of wealth of the empire is agriculture, especially starting the seventh century, when manufacturing and commerce decline as a result of the continuing warfare and decline in population. During the fourth and fifth centuries the basic agricultural unit was a large estate worked by hundreds of sharecroppers bound to the land as coloni. Agriculture continued to develop in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. There was an abundance of olive oil, grain, wine and cheese. Byzantine farmers were able to produce plentiful amounts of food despite the lack of technological improvements such as iron plows and scythes. During the last centuries of the empire, however, this prosperity was destroyed when peasants were valued more as military manpower than as farmers. The gross abuse of the peasantry and consequent decline of agriculture significantly weakened the empire. Commerce still played an important role in the empire’s economy. Constantinople was the primary center of trade between the Middle East and Asia on the one hand and Europe on the other. The Byzantines exported various commodities of their own, including cotton, glassware, and enamels from
Syria and timber, flax, and honey from the Balkans. The greatest Byzantine export, however, was silk, whose manufacture was first learned in the mid-sixth century, thanks to two monks who smuggled silkworm eggs out of China. In the later centuries, much of the profit of the extensive trade network belonged to the Italians for they took over most of it. They manipulated the economy for their own benefit, a factor that also contributed to the empire’s decline.
Although Constantinople was the center of Byzantium’s major industries, the provincial towns were the home of artisans and merchants who plied their wares in rural fairs. The greatest of these fairs was held in Thessalonica, which attracted traders from as far as Spain and France. Aristocrats, typically referred to as archons or magistrates, enjoyed superior social status because of their service as courtiers or officials of the government.

Unlike the feudal societies of contemporary western Europe, vertical mobility was a characteristic of Byzantine society. Vertical mobility refers to the movement from one social status to another. By the eleventh century, the Byzantine aristocracy even included foreigners, particularly Germans, Normans, and Englishmen, who served as officers in the military. Shortly thereafter, Byzantine society underwent a major change when the elite families in the military aristocracy banded together through intermarriage, forming a powerful “clan” linked to the Comnenian dynasty, which governed the empire from 1081 to
1185. In the late twelfth century, the civil aristocracy regained dominance when Emperor
Andronicus I (1183-1185) crushed the military elite. Even so, the last centuries of the empire was most likely characterized by the rule of semifeudal warlords than of a civil bureaucracy.
In general, Byzantium evolved from a highly centralized state to a virtually feudal society ruled by a military aristocracy.
Islam and Arabs
Arab Traditions
Before the rise of Islam the Arabs, apart from a few Christian tribes, were pagans deeply rooted in superstition. They worshipped the stars, stories, trees, wells, rocks, and montains. Each tribe and clan had its household god and even a god for every day of the year.
There were gods of good fortune and powerful evil spirits which are called jinns.
Mecca is an important trade center in the western part of the Arabian Peninsula, Mecca was also the center of worship for all nomadic Arabs and some travelling merchants. The city’s holiest shrine was the Kaaba, a cubic stone structure that housed many tribal idols. Near its eastern wall was the Black stone, which the Arabs held in special reverence. The Moslems explained in a legend the existence of the Kaaba and its Black Stone, which is still set in its southeastern corner, before the coming of Mohammed. According to the legend, when
Abraham banished his servant Hagar and his younger son Ishmael, Hagar sat down on a rock in the desert and wept in despair. As Ishmael waited beside her, he kicked the hot sand and a fresh spring gushed forth. Abraham constructed the Kaaba on the site of the miracle. Then he put the black stone that Adam had bought out of Paradise. Abraham built a well around the spring and called it Zamzam. Its waters which are still flowing, were thought to have healing properties. Even before Mohammed’s birth, Arab and other Semitic tribes around Mecca believed that they were descended from Ishmael, who had settled in the city and grew around the Zamzam. The Quraysh undisputedly controlled Mecca. Which controlled the business of selling Zamzam’s waters.
Mohammed
In about 570 A.D, Mohammed was born in born in Mecca. He came from a minor Quraysh family. In adolescence he accompanied his uncle on long caravan journeys, and it is believed that one of these trips he became familiar with Christianity in Syria. When he was 40,
Mohammed began to visit a cave on a hill outside Mecca, where he meditated for long periods. Soon after he heard the voice of the archangel Gabriel, Mohammed began to proclaim that there was only one God. Allah, and that he was the Prophet of God. He zealously preached against the worship of idols and against the vices common in Mecca’s marketplace. The Quraysh merchants opposed him because they did not want to lose their the trade of the people came to worhsip the idols in the Kabba. Mohammed’s few followers were persecuted by the Quraysh and banished from Mecca.

In 622 AD, Mohammed, left Mecca and came to Yathrib because he was persecuted by the
Quraysh. The date of his travel, called Hegira, is reckoned in Islamic time as the year 1 Anno
Hegira (A.H.) and is the start of the Islamic Calendar.
In Yathrib, which came to be known as Medina, meaning city, Mohammed strengthened his position as a religious and political leader and shaped the tenets of the faith into a defined theology. He organized his followers into an armed force and initiated the Jihad, or holy war, which became the means of Islam’s enormous expansion in the following years. Under the principles of Jihad, Moslems killed while fighting for the faith were promised direct entry to
Paradise without waiting for Judgement day.
From its base at Yathrib, Mohammed’s army attacked Meccan caravans trading with Syria.
Finally, in 630 A.D. Mohammed reentered Mecca with an army of 10,000, including many new converts. He destroyed all the idols in the city and converted its inhabitants to Islam. Even before the conquest of Mecca were to be directed to the Kaaba, the sacred shrine of Islam.
Missionaries were sent out all over Arabia and won thousands of converts. At Mohammed’s death in 632 A.D the Jihad spread to Syria, Palestine, and Iraq, where its victories shook the foundations of the great Persian and Byzantine empires. The Arab Muslims conquered lands as far as Spain to India, spreading Islam to its conquered peoples. For 600 years, Islam was the world’s most potent and vital religion, culture and military force.
Islamic contribution to civilization
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They issued receipts for payment and bills of lading that listed all goods in a shipment.
Later, these practices were adapted by merchants in Western Europe.

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Al-Razi, was the greatest physician of the Muslim world between 500-1500. He wrote approximately 120 medical books including, “Treaties on smallpox and measles” and an encyclopedia called “Comprehensive Book”.

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Ibn Sina, whose Canon of Medicine synthesized classical and Islamic medical knowledge, was translated into Latin in the twelfth century, and served as the leading medical text in Europe for 500 years.

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Muhammad ibn-Musa al-Khwarizimi, a mathematician, wrote a textbook explaining the art of bringing together unknown to match a known quantity. He called this technique, algebra (al-jabr, “integration”). It was subsequently influential in Europe. Later mathematical work involved quadratic and cubic equations and led to the development of analytical geometry and spherical trigonometry.

➢ Firdawsi composed the Shah-Nameh (“Book of Kings”), the Iranian national epic. It recounted the history of Persia’s rulers from legendary times to the fall of Sassanian

dynasty in 651. Nearly 60,000 verses long, it was instrumental in establishing the definitive form of the Persian language.
➢ The Koran is the Islamic sacred book, believed to be the word of God as dictated to
Muhammad by the archangel Gabriel. It is the focus of Islamic scholarship.
➢ Apart from Koran, the best known literary work in the Islamic world and in Europe was
The Thousand and One Nights. A fabulous collection of stories from the Middle East and Asia that were originally transmitted in orally.
➢ Omar Khayyam was best known for his “Rubaiyat”