Islamic History: Caliphates and Golden Age

• Caliph means "deputy or successor."

First Four Caliphates: Al Rashidun (632-661 CE)

• These are the first four caliphs who succeeded Prophet Muhammad in leading the Muslim community.
• Abu Baker al Sedeeq was the first caliph of Islam and a close companion of Prophet Muhammad.
• Omar Ibn Khattab was the second caliph, known for his administrative and military expansion.
• Othman Ibn Affan was the third caliph, known for compiling the official Quranic manuscript.
• Ali Bin Abi Taleb was the fourth caliph and cousin of Prophet Muhammad, known for his wisdom and leadership during the First Fitna (civil war).

Golden Age

• The Abbasid empire were the patrons and driving force behind the Golden Age.
• This was a period of cultural, scientific, and economic flourishing in the Muslim world between the 8th and 14th centuries CE.
• The Golden Age was centered in Baghdad, Cordoba, and Cairo.
• Islam emerged in the late Antiquity (4th-7th CE).
• The Islamic calendar starts with the Hijra in 622 CE, when Prophet Mohammed established the first Muslim community (ummah) in Medina.
• Medina was the first Islamic capital and foundation of Islamism and the first creation of an Islamic community.
• Ulama are Islamic scholars and jurists specializing in religious studies, including the Quran, Hadith, and Islamic law (Sharia).
• The Umayyads were the first major Islamic dynasty after the Rashidun Caliphate.
• They ruled from Damascus and later from Cordoba, Spain and fell due to internal revolts, leading to the Abbasid takeover.
• The Abbasid was the third Islamic caliphate, which overthrew the Umayyads.
• They established a long-lasting rule centered in Baghdad from 750-1258 CE.
• They then had a symbolic rule under the Mamluks in Egypt from 1261-1517 CE.
• Shah Ismail was the founder of the Safavid Empire in Persia.
• Shah Ismail was the first Shia Muslim ruler to establish Shi'ism as the state religion.
• The Safavid was a Persian dynasty that established Shi'a Islam as the dominant sect in Iran from 1501-1736 CE.
• They converted Iran from Sunni to Shi'a Islam, shaping Iranian identity.
• The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire, centered in Constantinople (modern Istanbul).
• They preserved Roman and Greek traditions.
• The Sasanian Empire was the last pre-Islamic Persian Empire, known for its Zoroastrian religion.
• It experienced conflicts with the Byzantine Empire (~224-652 CE).
• The Janissaries were an elite military force in the Ottoman Empire, recruited through the Devshirme system.
• Christian boys from the Balkans were taken, converted to Islam, and trained as soldiers from the 14th-19th century CE, mainly in the Balkans and Anatolia.
• The Balkans are a region in Southeastern Europe that was a key part of the Ottoman Empire.
• It served as both an economic hub and a major source of military recruits and were a part of the Ottoman Empire from the 14th until the 19th-20th century.
• Napoleon's invasion of Egypt occurred in 1798.
• Egypt was then part of the Ottoman Empire.
• This marked the beginning of direct European intervention in the Middle East
• It's considered the beginning of the modern Middle East, as it exposed the Ottomans to European military superiority.
• Baha Limani was a trade treaty between the Ottoman Empire and Britain.
• It imposed free trade policies on the Ottomans and was signed in 1838, affecting the Ottoman Empire.
• This forced the Ottomans to open their markets to British goods, weakening local industries and strengthening British economic influence in the Ottoman Empire.

Gunpowder Empires

• The Ottomans and the Safavids.
• Devshirme (blood tax) a recruitment system where Christian boys (mostly from the Balkans) taken by the Ottoman Empire.
• They were converted to Islam and trained as elite soldiers (Janissaries) or high-ranking officials and used by the Ottomans from the 14th to 17th century in the Balkans and Anatolia.
• Ottoman Wars of Contraction (1683-1789) were a series of military defeats and territorial losses suffered by the Ottoman Empire as European powers expanded.
• This ranged from the 1683 Siege of Vienna to the late 18th century, affecting Europe and the Middle East and marked the beginning of Ottoman decline, as they lost control over parts of Hungary, the Balkans, and Crimea.
• Mehmet II was the Ottoman Sultan who conquered Constantinople in 1453, ending the Byzantine Empire.
• They transformed Constantinople into Istanbul, the new Ottoman capital and used gunpowder cannons to break the city's legendary walls.
• Suleyman the Magnificent (1520-1566) was the longest-reigning Ottoman Sultan.
• He was known for military expansion, legal reforms, and cultural achievements.
• He expanded the empire to its greatest territorial extent, conquering Hungary, Iraq, and North Africa.
• He codified Ottoman laws, earning him the title "Suleyman the Lawgiver."
• Mehmet Ali Pasha was an Ottoman governor of Egypt who founded a modernized Egyptian state and ruled semi-independently.
• He seized Syria and Arabia, challenging Ottoman rule and establishing a dynasty that ruled Egypt until the 1952 revolution.
• The Second Siege of Vienna was a failed Ottoman attempt to capture Vienna, marking the turning point of Ottoman decline.
• It took place in 1683, Vienna (Austria) and the Ottomans failed to expand into Central Europe, leading to their gradual retreat from the region.

World System Theory & Defensive Developmentalism in the Ottoman Empire & Egypt

• Modernization Theory is a historical and sociological theory that suggests societies progress in a linear and deterministic way toward modernity, with Western Europe as the model of progress.
• This was developed in the 19th and 20th centuries and applied globally to analyze the "progress" of societies.
• World Empires are a historical system where multiple powerful empires coexisted, dominating different regions through military and economic control.
• The Modern World System is a global economic structure in which some countries (the "core") dominate global trade, production, and finance, while others (the "periphery") supply raw materials and cheap labor.
• Defensive Development is a strategy used by non-Western states, particularly the Ottoman Empire and Egypt, to modernize their military, administration, and economy in response to European imperial threats.
• This involved reforms such as strengthening the military, creating a new bureaucratic class, expanding state revenues through cash crop cultivation, and borrowing from European financiers.
• However, rather than achieving true independence, these efforts often led to economic dependency on European markets and financial institutions, ultimately weakening state sovereignty.

Imperialism

• Berats were subjects of O sultan who were given a special certificate that said he had all legal and economic rights of citizens of the European government.
• Without the certificate, they would have to pay 20% taxis on her goods to trade.
• Territorial Rights were legal agreements allowing foreigners in the Ottoman Empire to be tried in their own courts instead of Ottoman courts, giving them immunity from local laws in the 16th century.
• Historicism sees history as a series of events that gradually lead to global modernizations.
• Islamic modernists wanted to find an Islamic essence by looking into history to observe what hasn't changed.
• Islamic Modernism was a movement that sought to reconcile Islam with modernity, arguing that Muslim societies could modernize without Westernization
• It promoted reform Islamic law and governance and advocated for education, science, and democracy within an Islamic framework.
• It was opposed by traditionalist scholars and Wahhabis, who saw modernity as a threat to Islam.
• Wahhabism was a fundamentalist movement founded by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, aiming to purify Islam by returning to its early teachings.
• Ottomanism saw reformers attempt to foster a notion of political community made up of equal citizens but together by their commitment to a common set of legal norms.
• Islamism was the intellectual current that sought to reform society by reforming Islam.
• Constitutionalism was the movement that promoted the idea that it was constitutional rule that would solve the problems the Muslims communities had been facing since the early 18th cen.
• Twelver Shi'ism developed between the 8th and 9th centuries CE and is the largest branch of Shi'a Islam, which believes in Twelve Imams, with the twelfth (Imam al-Mahdi) in occultation, awaiting his return.
• The Safavid Empire made Twelver Shi'ism the official state religion of Iran, shaping modern Iranian identity.
• The Tanzimat era was a time of reform in the Ottoman Empire that spanned from 1839 to 1876.
• During this period, the Ottoman government sought to strengthen and modernize their military, administrative, and legal structures, against both internal and external threats.
• They aimed to centralize authority, and reinforce their sovereignty through legal equality, financial reform and infrastructural development.
• They introduced "Ottomanism," an ideological framework intended to cultivate a unified national identity among the empire's diverse population.
• By the early 19th century, the Ottoman Empire had lost much of its former power and was falling behind European powers in terms of military strength, industrialization, and economic development.
• The Ottomans realized their decline relative to the rising European commercialization in the Middle East, their desire to modernize emerged.
• The first major step to modernizing was the Hatt-ı Şerif of Gülhane passed in 1839 that promised legal equality among all Ottoman subjects, as well as secured property rights and fair taxation to eliminate corruption.
• These reforms helped secure funding and improve rights for non-muslims
• Tanzimat reforms were a necessary move towards modernization, they were also implemented as a tool to deter further European influence and authority in the empire.
• In their rush to adopt European legal and political structures, the Ottomans overlooked crucial social realities within their empire.
• The European blueprint for modernization proved incompatible with Ottoman demographics and social structures.
• policies disrupted long systems and ethnic groups rejected Ottoman identity

Premodern vs. Modern Concepts of Women

• In early Persian texts, women were considered part of the household (manzil), with no independent identity.
• Their primary role was to bear children, while fathers had sole responsibility for their children's education and discipline.
• By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, women were redefined as mudabbir-i manzil (managers of the household), shifting from mere domestic presence to active household organizers.
• The idea of educated women emerged within a framework that emphasized their role in raising children and managing households efficiently, rather than for personal empowerment.
• Women were seen as playing a role in polticial governanace
• Education was encouraged but limited to domesticity which reinforces traditions
• Education became a tool for national progress: Hasht Bihisht (coauthored by Kirmani and Ruhi) explicitly argued that men and women should be equal in education, industry, and government affairs.
• Motherhood became a national duty: Mirza Aqa Khan Kirmani wrote that a mother's womb was the first school for the nation.
• The government promoted education for women as a way to control family life and improve household management.
• Iranian reformers argued that education was essential for the nation's survival and modernization, but they envisioned a gendered system where men would lead public life while women would manage homes
• Schools for girls expanded slowly by 1911, there were 47 girls' schools in Tehran, but these schools primarily focused on basic literacy and domestic skills, reinforcing women's traditional roles
• Early girls' schools were often founded by women in their own homes.
• Women used reformist arguments to push for greater agency and were active agents in expanding their roles.
• They challenged the dominant narratives of modernization and were not merely objects of reform but active participants in shaping their own history.