Conversion to Islam in the medieval period: an essay in quantitative history 9780674732810, 9780674170353

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CONVERSION TO ISLAM

IN THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD

Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period An Essay in Quantitative History

RICHARD W. BULLIET

HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England 1979

Copyright © 1979 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Bulliet, Richard W Conversion to Islam in the medieval period. Includes index. 1. Islamic Empire—History. 2. Muslim converts. 3. Islam—History. 4. Islamic Empire—Social condi-

tions. I. Title. DS38.3.B84 9097.09’7671 79-14411 ISBN 0-674-17035-0

To my wife,

Lucianne Cherry Bulliet

Acknowledgments

Many people have contributed in one way or another to the formulation of the ideas put forward in this book, and a few have

rendered particularly valuable service in the shaping of concepts. I wish to acknowledge with thanks the advice of Donald Olivier, Michael Bonine, and Lucy Bulliet. My special gratitude goes to my parents, Mildred and Leander J. Bulliet, for helping

me understand the mathematical aspects of the project. The writing of this book was greatly facilitated by a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

Contents

1. Introduction 1 2. Regional Variation in Islamic History 7 3. The Curve of Conversion in Iran _ 16

4, Conversion as a Social Process 33

5. The Development of Islamic Society in Iran 43

6. The Curve of Muslim Names 64 7.i1raqg_ 80

8. Egypt and Tunisia 92

9. Syria 104 10.Spain I[14 11. The Consequences of Conversion 128

Notes 14] Index 155

CONVERSION TO ISLAM

IN THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD

1. Introduction

This book is about Islamic social history. It flies the colors of an essay because it represents an initial, tentative effort—not at describing Islamic social history, which has certainly been attempted before, but at formulating an integrated conceptual approach to the subject. It attempts to tie together the histories of parts of the medieval Islamic world that are more commonly treated as discrete entities by means of a number of sometimes

quite speculative hypotheses based upon and inspired by a close examination of certain quantifiable aspects of medieval Arabic sources. Many of the conclusions reached through these hypotheses, such as the suggestion of a causal relationship between the conversion of a majority of a region’s population and the dissolution of central Islamic government in that region or the explanation of endemic factional strife in certain areas as a virtually inevitable conflict between the descendants of early converts and the descendants of later converts, will require further corroboration. Nevertheless, the heart of the essay lies in the overall conceptual approach, and the primary effort has been placed there rather than upon the elaboration of its various ramifications.

The approach is predicated upon the notion that there is a direct and fundamental relationship between conversion to Islam and the development of what may be called an Islamic society. When in the second half of the seventh century a.pD. the

Arabs conquered the Persian empire and half of the Byzantine empire, they did not bring with them the religion that is de-

scribed in general books on Islam. They brought with them something far more primitive and undeveloped, a mere germ of later developments. Similarly, the society in which Islam grew I

Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period

and developed was not exclusively the society of the Arabian desert: it was that of the conquered lands as well. Yet the society

of these conquered lands was certainly not an Islamic one to begin with. There were from the time of the conquests onward Muslims in these lands, but they at first represented one small element, albeit the ruling element, within a territory that was dominated numerically by adherents of other religions. As time went on, of course, the relative place of this society of Muslims vis-a-vis other religious groups changed, as did the composition of the society of Muslims. ‘These changes came about through conversion.

The altered composition of the Muslim population in turn affected the course of development of the Islamic religion. Non-

Arab converts and their descendants made contributions in every area of cultural life under the aegis of Islamic rule, and the customs and outlook of the non-Arab peoples in general

became accommodated in various ways within the developing

institutions of the Islamic state and religion. Yet as long as the Muslim population remained a minority or constituted only a bare majority of the entire population of a region, the society of that region as a whole was not an Islamic society, nor

the culture of that region an Islamic culture. Nor would it be appropriate to consider the Muslim population of such a region to constitute in itself an Islamic society without taking into consideration its position as a minority or bare-majority group

embedded in a larger population containing rival religious eroups. What was required to make the society of the Middle East and

North Africa as a whole a single Islamic society was, first, the completion of the conversion process at least to the point at which internal threats to the dominance of the Islamic religion became inconceivable and, second, the elaboration and spread of a more or less uniform set of social and religious institutions. That the Middle East and North Africa did, in fact, develop into a single Islamic society to a very great extent is undeniable; it is the central historical fact that underlies most discussions of Islam. Yet it is an error of historical hindsight to regard this resultant uniformity as the product of a uniform development. 2

Introduction

It is the premise of this book that the two necessary steps in the development of a unified Islamic society, namely, conversion and the elaboration of Islamic social institutions, took place at different times in different parts of the vast territory conquered by the Arabs. There is no reason to suppose that all the conquered territories converted to Islam at the same rate. Indeed, since the lands involved were inhabited by peoples with

varying religious, linguistic, and social identities, it would be more reasonable to assume the opposite. If, then, the development of religious and social institutions was to some degree de-

pendent upon the accomplishment of a significant amount of conversion, it stands to reason that such institutional development would have occurred at different times in different places according to regional differences in the rate of conversion. Or, alternatively, institutional developments taking place in areas converting relatively early could have spread into other regions as they successively reached similar stages of conversion.

This book attempts to elucidate this complex relationship between conversion to Islam and the development of Islamic society by first establishing a hypothetical timetable of conversion for six major parts of the medieval Islamic world and then comparing those timetables with the course of historical development in each area. The findings for the six areas are finally compared with one another to reveal common features or consequences of the conversion process. Ultimately, there may be no alternative quantitative outline

of Islamic conversion against which to test the conclusions reached in this manner, and they will have to be tested instead against the established facts of Islamic political, social, and

religious history. However, even without conclusive independent corroboration, the methodology employed here may be

deemed at least heuristically valuable if it helps elucidate the general history of medieval Islamic society and provides new insights into it. Beyond the area of Islamic social history, there are several other purposes that this book may serve. First, it attempts to deal quantitatively with the phenomenon of mass religious or ideological conversion. Study of this subject has been hitherto, 3

Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period

almost of necessity, characterized by impressionistic historical judgment. After all, how can one tell, particularly for the medieval period, when or at what rate the faceless masses converted

to a new religion or adopted a new idea? The routes of missionaries may be traced and the creation of new bishoprics recorded, but there is no way of knowing what percentage of the population the missionary contacted, much less converted, or what proportion of a community’s inhabitants belonged to the first bishop’s flock.

For the Islamic world, the history of popular conversion is even less explored than it is for Christian Europe. Although 1interest in the subject has grown in recent years, most scholarly

effort is being devoted to areas of relatively recent Islamic penetration, such as West Africa and Indonesia.! ‘The great conversion experience that fundamentally changed world history by uniting the peoples of the Middle East in a new religion

has had few modern chroniclers, the reason being that conversion plays so slight a role in the narratives of medieval chroniclers. Without data it is difficult to write history, and medieval Islam produced no missionaries, bishops, baptismal

rites, or other indicators of conversion that could be conveniently recorded by the Muslim chronicler. In this book I have attempted to compensate for this lack of primary data by analyzing changes over time in the patterns of first-name giving in medieval Islam. I have tried to show that changes in name patterns accurately reflect the general course of religious conversion and that the course thus revealed ties the phenomenon of religious conversion into a broad current of theorizing about the ways in which people adopt new things. To the degree that this linkage is a sound one, conversion to Islam can be considered as but a single example of a pattern characteristic of mass ideological change. ‘The hypotheses advanced about Islamic conversion may thus be of significance for students of other proselytizing religions or of mass ideological change.

The second additional purpose this book may serve is to en-

courage experimentation with quantitative methods by historians of the Middle East. ‘The controversy over the value of 4

Introduction

quantitative methods for historical study has not yet struck the field of Middle Eastern history. Since not much effort has been made to apply such methods, there has been little to discuss. It'may be anticipated, nevertheless, that some students of the Middle East will be either offended or depressed by the

numerous graphs and calculations upon which this book depends. For these individuals, two considerations may possibly relieve some of their distress. First, the conclusions reached in this book

probably could not have been reached by any other historiographical approach. Graphs and figures are not used to belabor the obvious or to corroborate previously accepted ideas; they give rise to fresh ideas that may serve to stimulate further research even if they do not ultimately prove to be correct in all particulars. And second, although all graphs and tables have an aura of precision, this can easily be misleading. What is important in this book is the soundness of the arguments arising from the data rather than their graphic presentation. Other or more abundant sources of information might alter the latter in some particular without invalidating the former. For those who are more receptive to the idea of quantitative history, it is hoped that the methodology explored here will encourage similar efforts. The history of the Middle East is in need of the methodological insights that have been developed by historians of other periods and places. Materials exist for quantitative studies in Islamic history; what is lacking is the perception that such an approach can yield something of value. A final purpose of this book concerns the potential usefulness

of medieval Muslim biographical dictionaries. This genre of literature, which has been my scholarly concern for many years, holds the promise of greatly revising our notions about Middle Eastern history. Utilizing the data contained in these compila-

tions is not an easy task, however. Several approaches, both quantitative and nonquantitative, have been advanced by myself and others in earlier publications. ‘This book continues the process of methodological inquiry. However, the type of analysis presented here—the examination of patterns of name giving— has implications beyond the genre of biographical dictionaries 5

Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period

strictly speaking. Almost any extensive list of first names extend-

ing over a long period of time has the potential to be used for quantitative analysis. ‘This holds true for European and Ametican history no less than for Middle Eastern history. In a separate study of changes in the first names of ‘Turkish parliament members in the nineteenth and twenties centuries, I have attempted to demonstrate that the sensitivity of naming to currents of social and political change is still a fact.? Since the analysis of nam-

ing patterns is underexploited as a tool for writing history, it is hoped that the following demonstration of its usefulness will encourage further exploration of its possibilities.

6

2. Regional Variation in Islamic History It has been advanced as a reasonable assumption that timetables

of conversion differed from one region of the Islamic world to another and that these regional differences were reflected in political and institutional developments that depended to some degree upon the conversion process. The purpose of this chapter is to present a quantitative demonstration of the existence of significant variations in regional importance throughout a part of Islamic history. The complex causes of these variations do not yield to simple analysis, but an initial look at the type of

data used to reveal them and at the overall pattern thus revealed will serve to indicate a place to start in a region-by-region study of conversion. The reader has already been warned that this book is heavily

laden with graphs. The first graph, however, should give rise to no anxiety in the breasts‘of the mathematically disinclined. It shows by fifty-year periods what proportion of biographies from a large biographical compilation emanate from different regions of the Islamic world. Leaving aside for the moment the question of the source utilized and the character of the biographies, one can readily note the correspondence between the changing proportions on the graph and the generally accepted political history of Islam. Iraq’s substantial importance under the Abbasid caliphate, for example, is quite clear as is its rapid decline following the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century and its virtual obliteration after the time of ‘Timur around a.p. 1400.

Similarly, the great swell in the proportional share of Iran coincides exactly with the heyday of the independent Iranian dynasties with decline setting in only under the late Seljuqs 7

ib OE Or

Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period

+ VV ,840A \ < 50F \ \ YU \ \

Inland \ \AW Inf \\—WA Wl I BORK al-Jazira mai z \\ \\ ) " | Coastal LQ ANS ee ee , Wl ZZ

0Y/ZWy N \Y AN ‘ L/h) hk Fe lh V//) _ Y, Y ; : _ py 30 TTA OV \ \ \) oy ria

by, yf wy io-L Yi on OMYYY Arabia Y/ YUL Arabia EE eens cence oem

AH. 75125 175 225 21S 325 315 425 41S 525 STS GS 615 725 TH 825 815 50S 975 AD.695 743 791 840 888 937 985 1034 1082 1131 1179 1228 1276 1325 1374 1422 1471 1519 1568

Graph |. Proportional representation of regions in Shadharat adh-dhahab.

when security and governmental order are well known to have plummeted. Again, the Mongol invasions mark a further decline. In Arabia the often noted depressing effect of the tribal

migrations that followed upon the Islamic conquests and of the movement of the caliphal capital outside the peninsula is indicated by the near total absence of any Arabian representation on the graph between the ninth and the fourteenth centuries. After that, however, there is a noticeable revival that coincides with the installation of the Rasulid dynasty in Yemen and later with the political emergence of the Sharifs of Mecca.

Turning to Syria, the most remarkable feature is the tremendous growth beginning with the consolidation of power 8

Regional Variation in Islamic History

under the Ayyubid dynasty but waxing even stronger under the

succeeding Mamluks. In Egypt much the same pattern prevails with the apparent difference that the end of Mamluk rule and the transition to Ottoman rule after 1516 coincides with a diminution of importance that is much more substantial than that in Syria. Finally, at the top of the graph, Spain waxes under the caliphate of Cordoba in the tenth century and retains its prominence into the Almohad period when it gradually declines as Morocco and Algeria (Maghrib West) wax in turn. As for Anatolia or

Rum, its rise coincides precisely with that of the Ottoman Empire.

This rough correspondence between regional variations in a collection of biographies and the ebb and flow of historical prominence and political power during the first ten centuries of Islam naturally raises a question as to what sort of biographies

were used. As is generally known to specialists on Islam and Middle Eastern history, one of the characteristic cultural products of Islamic society from very early until recent times has been the literary genre of the biographical dictionary.* Extant biographical compilations, published and unpublished, contain many hundreds of thousands of separate entries. Some works concentrate upon members of separate worthy professions— poets, doctors, mystics, and the like—others upon cities or regions, and others upon individuals of religious eminence. Some compilations are arranged alphabetically by first names, others by names known as nisbas signifying a person’s tribal, religious, geographical, or occupational afhliation, and others by date of

death. The variety and range of biographical dictionaries is enormous, and their utility as sources of quantifiable data on Islamic history is only beginning to be explored.” Graph | was derived from a single compilation of biographies,

Ibn al-‘Imad’s Shadharat adh-dhahab fi akhbar man dhahab [Nuggets of gold in the stories of those who have passed away].®

Ibn al-‘Imad died in 1687, which means that his compilation, terminating in the Muslim year 1000 (a.p. 1592), contains none

of his contemporaries and was made entirely from written sources. For every year from | to A.H. 1000 he gives biographies 9

Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period

of individuals who died in that year. After the first Islamic cen-

tury, when totals are quite small, the number of biographies given per twenty-five years ranges from approximately one hundred to more than three hundred. Because of the structure of medieval Arabic names, most of these biographies reveal the place of origin of the subject. Arabic

names, whether borne by ethnic Arabs or by non-Arabs, were typically composed of several distinct parts: 1) the ism or first

name, which was given at birth, (2) the kunya, a name beginning with Abi, meaning “father of,’ or Umm, meaning “mother of,’ which was theoretically acquired after one had become a parent but which was very frequently given at birth for euphonic or other reasons unrelated to potential parenthood, (3) the nasab or genealogy, which was a series of isms, kunyas, or other names strung together with the word zbn, “son of,” or bint, “daughter cf,” (4) the nisba, a name most frequently ending in -z, which signified some sort of affiliation (for example, al-Baghdadi = person from Baghdad) and often served for sev-

eral generations as a family surname, and 5) the lagab or or honorific name, under which may conveniently be lumped all sorts of honorary titles, nicknames, and epithets. An example

of a medieval Arabic name using all these parts in the order laqab, kunya, ism, nasab, nisba would be Burhan ad-Din Abu Ahmad Muhammad b. Yusuf b. al-Hasan al-Misri. The category of name that is of interest at the present moment

is number four, the nisba. An individual might have more than cne nisba or none at all, and the nisba might be inherited

or acquired during his lifetime for any number of reasons. Hence, it is impossible to rely entirely upon the literal meaning of these names. Still, it is quite apparent from an examination of thousands of biographies that the great majority of geograph-

ical nisbas relate directly to the individual’s place of origin. Sometimes, when there are two or more such nisbas, specific mention is made of which of them refers to place of birth, which to later place of residence, which to place of ethnic origin, and so forth.

In going through the Shadharat adh-dhahab from the year 100 to the year a.x. 1000, a total of 6113 biographies were found 10

Regional Variation in Islamic History

in which a place of origin could be ascribed to the individual. In the great majority of cases this ascription was made on the basis of a geographical nisba combined with a reading of the biography for corroborative evidence, and in a minority of Cases

ascription was made on the basis of an explicit statement of place of birth. While the task of ascription was usually a straightforward one, it frequently was not. A variety of problems arose: for example, cities of the same name from different regions had

identical nisbas, or the spelling of geographical names was inconsistent, or ethnic identity was not easily distinguishable from place of birth. Once the ascription was made, the names were aggregated in twenty-five-year groups in each of eleven geographical regions: (1) the Arabian peninsula, (2) Iraq as far north as ‘Takrit

on the Tigris and ‘Anah on the Euphrates, (3) al-Jazira or Mesopotamia as far west as Raqqa and as far north as the ‘Taurus mountains, (4) Iran, including the Iranian-speaking areas of Kurdistan, Transoxania, Afghanistan, and Azerbaijan; (5) inland Syria, including parts of modern Syria, Jordan, and ‘Turkey east of the Jordan-Biqa‘-Orontes valley, south of the ‘Taurus, and into the desert as far east as Raqqa and Palmyra, (6) coastal Syria from ‘Tarsus to al-‘Arish, including the Cukurova in Turkey and the Jordan-Biqa‘-Orontes valley, (7) Egypt, (8) the eastern Maghrib comprising Libya and Tunisia, (9) the

western Maghrib comprising Algeria and Morocco, (10) alAndalus or Muslim Spain, and (11) Rum or those parts of the Byzantine Empire progressively conquered by Muslims after the battle of Manzikert in 1071. For graphing purposes, the twenty-five-year periods were further consolidated into fifty-year periods. Al-Jazira was treated as a subcategory of Iraq; the two parts of Syria and the Maghrib were separated by dotted lines. Finally, the terminal dates of the fifty-year periods were all put back twenty-five years

on the assumption that whatever gained for an individual sufficient fame or notoriety to warrant his inclusion in the biographical dictionary would normally have transpired well before his death although it was under his date of death that he was recorded. ‘The twenty-five-year setback, in other words, was

Il

Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period

an effort to change known death dates into approximate “prime of life” dates. Many objections may be raised against constructing a graph in the manner described and then stressing its correspondence

with the ebb and flow of historical prominence and political power. After all, the graph actually shows nothing but the

course of regional representation in a single seventeenthcentury biographical dictionary. Yet the obvious fact remains that the graph does appear to correspond rather closely to the generally accepted course of Islamic history. ‘The changing proportions for the different regions are not merely coincidental, as can be determined from the nisbas themselves. When a region

has a very high representation, many nisbas pertain to specific

villages and quarters of major cities. For example Karkh, a popular quarter of Baghdad, appears in the nisba al-Karkhi when representation from Iraq is high. When the proportion is smaller, the name of the major city itself 1s a common nisba.

In the example given, a later resident of Karkh would appear as al-Baghdadi. Finally, when the proportion is very low, the nisba will frequently be derived from the entire province, that is, al-Baghdadi becomes al-‘Iragi. Since the nisbas are part of the individuals’ actual names, this progression cannot be due to the editorial activity of the compiler, Ibn al-‘Imad, or of the earlier compilers he drew from. It must reflect the actual plenitude of individuals from different regions at the point or points of original compilation. The question, therefore, is not whether but why the distribution cf biographies of eminent Muslims in this single work reflects the general course of Islamic history. ‘The answer involves

a number of factors, the first of which pertains to the sources from which Ibn al-‘Imad compiled his work. ‘The ten thousand or so biographies from which the 6113 used

for the graph were taken were culled from a huge hbrary of earlier biographical compilations. Ibn al-‘Imad directly cites virtually every biographical dictionary of importance. He does not specify his procedure for selecting individuals for inclusion

from the vastly greater number of biographies he must have read through, but the existence of biographies of the same per12

Regional Variation in Islamic History

son in several works was clearly one important index of eminence. Moreover, many of the works he used were themselves editorial selections of the most eminent individuals found in the sources available to the earlier compilers. In other words, biographical dictionary compilation in Islamic history has been a continuous process of collection, collation, and culling out. Ibn al-‘Imad is the beneficiary of many earlier generations of editors of biographies. Editorial responsibility and sensibility is not his alone, nor does it belong solely to members of his political-religious group, the Hanbali law school, or to people from his area of origin, Syria. A specific comparison of the relative proportions of biographies in Shadharat adh-dhahab from Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Egypt with the proportions for the same areas contained in an identically structured work by adh-Dhahabi, Kitab al-‘Ibar fi khabar man ghabar |The book of significant points in the tale of those who have gone by], shows

an average variation of less than two percentage points even though the number of biographies per fifty-year period differs by as much as 130.4 This close correspondence is instructive because adh-Dhahabi was a Shafii and therefore in a religious camp opposed to that of Ibn al-‘Imad, and he died in a.p. 1348, 339 years before the latter. Of course, the possibility of a certain degree of editorial bias within the entire biographical tradition of which Ibn al-‘Imad is the inheritor cannot be ignored. For example, low representation from Egypt during the two centuries of Fatimid rule might suggest an anti-Shii bias. But by and large, biographical compilations grew out of the study of the traditions of the Prophet and were thus inclined to be nonpartisan.> Moreover representation from Iran during the rule of the Shii Buyids is very high. Yet even if a continuous and very consistent process of biographical editing did occur, why should it reflect the political

history of Islam? Here other factors must be considered. The subjects of the biographies are eminent Muslims, mostly religious figures but also including many government officials, poets, philosophers, and rulers. The latter groups would understandably be distributed according to the vagaries of political history because they were normally denizens of princely courts 13

Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period

or recipients of court patronage. ‘The more illustrious, powerful, and wealthy a ruler, the more extensive and impressive his state apparatus and the greater the amount of patronage at his disposal.

For the religious figures, however, the ulama who make up a majority of the 6113 biographies, direct government employment or patronage was considerably less important. A connection with political history could nevertheless be argued on the following grounds: since the Islamic religion did not develop a formal ecclesiastical structure with an established hierarchy, the prevalence of learned religious figures in a particular time and place was not so much a function of office-holding and organizational structure as of a cultural climate conducive to intellectual endeavour. ‘The elements of such a climate included large urban populations, important educational institutions, a cosmopolitan atmosphere, sufficient prosperity to support a non-

productive class, and so forth. ‘These elements would not be typical for all religions, but they are the most recurrent ones for medieval Islam. In the same way, although they are not always connected with political prominence, they usually are: medieval Islamic governments tended to cause rapid growth in capital cities and provincial governing seats. ‘They also acted as magnets for international trade and as sponsors of religious and

educational institutions through pious endowments. Accordingly, it should not be surprising to find the largest number of ulama concentrated at any given time in the wealthiest and most powerful states and, in particular, in their capitals and major administrative centers. Yet as plausible as this line of argument might sound, strong objections to it can be raised. Leaving aside the apparent anom-

aly of low proportional representation for Egypt during the Fatimid period which, as already mentioned, may result from an anti-Shii bias in the sources, it 1s difficult by the above reasoning to account for the very low representation of Syria during the first fifty-year period when it was the capital province of the caliphate; it is almost as difficult to account for Syrian promi-

nence during the last two centuries when it was politically subordinate either to Egypt or to the Ottoman Empire. Looked 14

Regional Variation in Islamic History

at more closely, in fact, the graph appears to represent the ebb

and flow of Sunni religious prominence more than it does that of political power. On the one hand, this fact is quite under-

standable since the primary data relate mostly to religiously important individuals; but on the other hand, the undeniable but somewhat less precise correlation with overall political history hints at a possible linkage between religious eminence and political power on grounds somewhat different from the direct equation of the two mentioned above. ‘The question suggested by the graph is why the importance of a region in Islamic history generally parallels the region’s political importance but in specific instances differs from it to a significant degree. ‘There are a number of possible approaches to answering this question, but two in particular are useful in ind1cating a place to begin a region-by-region study of conversion. One approach is demographic and departs from the simple notion that a region with a large population will produce more outstanding individuals than a region with a small population and be able to muster greater political power as well. ‘The other approach is religious-historical and hinges upon the idea that both religious eminence and political prominence may be directly

related to the percentage of Muslims in the population of a given area. The fact of one area’s becoming prominent on the

graph earlier than another would thus be related to a more rapid rate of conversion in the former area.

15

3. The Curve of Conversion in Iran If an intellect capable of significant achievement in the religious

sphere appears once in every five thousand Muslim births, it seems reasonable to assume that a region with a million Muslims will produce two hundred noteworthy scholars compared with the two produced by a region with a Muslim population of ten thousand. [his view, of course, represents a simplistic approach to the question of regional variation in Islamic history, since the field of endeavor and level of achievement of an individual in his lifetime are influenced by many factors besides his innate intellectual endowment. Yet the approach obviously has some validity.

If we look at graph | in these very gross terms, the general

validity of this quantitative relationship between Muslim population and religious achievement suggests Iran as a point of departure for the study of Islamic conversion. As mentioned in chapter 2, one likely contributor to the change in proportional representation among the various regions is demographic fluctuation. In the case at hand, demographic fluctuation can be approached regionally, or it can be approached religiously. Fither way, it must be approached gingerly. As to the regional method, for example, it is widely assumed that from the twelfth

century onward for a period of several centuries Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Egypt experienced significant population losses.? Without knowing the relative extent of these losses, however, it is difficult to assess the demographic contribution to the increase in the religious prominence of the latter two regions at the expense of the former. Yet other cases are quite straightforward on a regional demographic basis. In the first fifty-year period shown on the graph,

Arabia has over four times the importance of Egypt, but no demographic historian would ever venture the assertion that 16

The Curve of Conversion in Iran

the overall population of Arabia even approached the population of Egypt during this period or any other. Clearly, what is involved here is not regional but religious demography. ‘The implication of the broad relationship between population and religious prominence in this case is that Arabia probably had

substantially more Muslims than Egypt at that particular period. There is no surprise in this since it has never been claimed that the bulk of the Egyptian population had converted to Islam at this early date or that the Arab settlement in Egypt

after the initial conquest was particularly heavy, but this extreme example serves to illustrate the influence of religious demography on the proportions shown by the graph. Needless to say, religious demography depends not only upon

the birth and death rates of religious groups, which can vary appreciably, but also upon the net gain or loss of members through conversions from one religion to another. ‘The first factor is imponderable at such a great distance in time, but the second is not. Since it is known that the vast majority of the population of the lands conquered by the Arabs converted to Islam at some time or other, it must be assumed that the increase through conversion of the Muslim population in a given region shows up to some extent on graph 1. If conversion proceeded at the same rate in every region, the only evidence on the graph would naturally be the decline of Arabia relative to the conquered territories as a whole. However, the assumption of an equivalent effect of conversion on the religious demog-

raphy of every region is quite unwarranted if for no other reason than that there are different timetables of conquest for different areas. It is much more reasonable to assume at least some difference in the timetables of conversion from region to region.

If different regions had different timetables of conversion,

and if at least some of the relative change in the religious prominence of the regions is attributable to the increase in the Muslim population through conversion, then what should appear on the graph is a more rapid increase in the relative importance of earlier-converting regions over later-converting regions. Looking at graph 1 with this expectation in mind, we 17

Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period

note that Iran increases in importance earlier and faster than any other region. Does this imply that Iran converted earlier than the other regions represented? Perhaps. At least it suggests that we should look at the evidence for conversion in Iran with this thought in mind. For evidence relating to the conversion of Iran to Islam, we turn again to the genre of biographical dictionaries discussed earlier. Here we are greatly aided by the fact that Iran adopted

the Arabs’ religion but not their language. Arabic was used as the language of religion by converts to Islam, but it was not the language of everyday speech. This bilingualism posed a dilemma for converts trying to decide what names to give their children. An examination of a body of some six thousand biographies contained in Iranian biographical dictionaries—4299 of people from the city of Nishapur in the northeast who died before A.D. 1130 and 1635 of people from Isfahan in the west who died

before A.p. 1000—reveals a number of significant facts about Iranian Muslim naming customs.” Most obvious is the almost total absence of Persian names among the subjects of the biographies, a group drawn primarily from the religiously eminent upper class, what may be termed the patrician class.? Yet despite the

nearly universal custom within this class of giving male children Arabic names, many Persian names do appear in the biographies. They appear in the patricians’ genealogies or nasabs which are normally given for two generations and frequently for more. It appears that Persian names were more acceptable among the Muslim ancestors of the patricians than among the patricians themselves. One explanation of this fact could be that the patricians’ forebears. were frequently people of lesser religious eminence and hence felt less constrained to use the language of the Muslim religion in naming, but a tabulation of where in each genealogy each Persion name occurs suggests a different explanation. . Over two-thirds of all Persian names initiate the genealogical sequence in which they occur. An example might be Muhammad the son of Ahmad the son of Rustam, Rustam being a Persian name. Moreover, in certain cases it can be positively 18

The Curve of Conversion in Iran

confirmed that the Persian name that initiates the sequence is that of the first family member to become a Muslim.* This predominating pattern indicates that a common practice in Iran was for the first Muslim member of an Iranian family to give his children names drawn from the Arabic onomasticon, a practice that was then continued in the following generations. Furthermore, it indicates that whenever a Persian name occurs at the beginning of a genealogical sequence, it is the name of the first member of the family to convert to Islam. Naturally, this interpretation does not take into account other naming patterns within Muslim families. For example, if the initial convert changed his own name to an Arabic name, which was probably the normal practice,> and the family reckoned its genealogy from him, there would be no way of distinguishing such a genealogy from that of a genuine Arab family. Similarly, the practice of fabricating Arabian genealogies is known to have been followed to some extent, and in most cases there is no way of detecting such fabrications. However, the obvious avoidance

of Persian names within Iranian Muslim families during the first five Islamic centuries makes it quite unlikely that many genealogies containing Persian names were fabricated. The likelihood thus seems quite high that the subgroup consisting of genealogies that commence with a Persian name can provide reliable data on the approximate date of conversion of specific Iranian families. Of the overall group of 5,934 biographies, 469 genealogies fall into this subgroup. In each case, the subject of the biography can be assigned to a chronological period, the termini of each

period being based upon dates of death and deduced from internal evidence in the biographical dictionaries (table 1, column A).® Since the type of names in question are isms, corresponding to our first names, given shortly after birth, these chronological

periods based upon dates of death must be adjusted to reflect dates of birth instead. This is accomplished by subtracting a standard figure for average lifespan (table 1, column B). The figure that has been used is seventy years, a figure arrived at

by averaging all the lifespans specifically reported in the biographies from Nishapur.? 19

rs q a = 7 | fs) sao ~~ paro, jaa)

& Le) = CO _ Ol — — —

Is V F 17 —- —- — — 4

Is V H 3 —— 8 ] ] 5 Total 469 2 45 9 18 30.5 43

Percentage of 469 4 95 1.9 3.8 6.5 9.2

Cumulative percentage 4 1.35 3.25 7.05 13.55 22.75 a. Data from table 1.

shaped and the second S-shaped, are extremely interesting and

tie the phenomenon of Islamic conversion in Iran directly to a substantial body of theoretical and empirical literature dealing

with the diffusion of innovations. ,

Some fifty years ago a conceptual transfusion was made from 26

The Curve of Conversion in Iran

I5l- 176 201— 226— 251— 276- 301- 326—- 351— 376— 40]-

175 200 225 250 275 300 325 350 375 400 425

— — ——- — 2.5 2.5 2 — —_- — —

——5]I5—————

4 ] — — — — — —— — — — — 5,5 7 2.5 — — ~~ — —- — — 21.5 21.5 — —- — — — — — — — 5.5 — — — — —. — —. — — —

— ~— — ] 2 2 ] — — — —

— — 10.66 10.66 10.66 — — — — — —

3 10.5 10.5 8 — — — — — — — 5.5 5.5 2 — — — — — — — — 64.5 82.5 77.165 62.165 31.165 17.5 10 9 3.5 2.5 2

13.8 17.6 16.4 13.3 6.6 3.7 2.) 1.9 15 5 4

36.55 54.15 70.55 83.85 9045 94.15 96.25 98.15 98.9 994 99.8 the area of biology into that of sociology. Laboratory experimen-

tation had revealed that the pattern of growth of a population of fruit flies in an environment with a fixed and limited amount

of food conformed to what is known as a logistic curve. This curve, which takes its name from a logarithmic term in its equation, describes a stretched-out letter S.8 In the case of fruit flies, 27

Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period

this shape summarizes a population growth pattern characterized by slow initial growth during which reproduction takes place at a maximum rate but population size is limited by the paucity of reproducers, a very steep rise in the middle as the reproductive base expands, and gradual diminution at the end as the limit of

the food supply is approached thus lowering the rate of reproduction. This concept of a logistic growth curve of population was transferred, not illogically, to the field of human demography.® From demography, the laboratory-derived equation was sub-

sequently applied to other problem areas, such as business market projections. But there were limitations to its utility. In the demographic field the Malthusian simplicity of the concept vitiated its usefulness. The subsistence base of human populations was not as inherently limited as that of fruit flies in a bottle. Analogous problems arose in other areas as well. Eventually, dis-

cussion of the logistic curve disappeared from most textbooks on statistics except as a historical curiosity.” The logistic curve was not altogether abandoned, however. Geographers and sociologists adopted it enthusiastically for studying technological and cultural diffusion, some going so far

as to regard it as a fundamental natural law governing such phenomena.!! This enthusiasm arose from the observation that in a great many cases the logistic curve proved to be a rough approximation of the actual diffusion process. The adoption of all sorts of new techniques, from hybrid corn and weed killers to kindergartens and language laboratcries, fit the S-curve pattern. The demographers’ problem of an indefinite subsistence base did not affect the geographers and sociologists. If a new

technique was coming into use in a given area, the “subsistence base” became the totality of individuals who had previously used the outmoded technique. According to the scheme, a few innovators would first adopt the new technique,

then it would catch on with a bandwagon effect causing the steep rise in the middle of the curve, and finally there would be a steadily diminishing number of new adopters as the potential market for the new technique became saturated. In making this comparatively successful conceptual transfer 28

The Curve of Conversion in Iran

of the logistic curve from the study of fruit flies to the study of innovation diffusion, however, the implication of the steep rise in the middle part of the curve necessarily changed. ‘The simple reproduction rate explained this part of the curve in the case of the fruit flies; but in the case of individuals adopting a new device or technique, reproduction played no significant role. Instead, what was postulated was a notion of contagion by transfer of information. If one individual adopted a new technique, he might have five contacts with other potential adopters

of whom perhaps three would see the superiority of the new technique and adopt it themselves. ‘Then these three would each

“infect” with the new idea three out of five of their potential adopter contacts, and so on. Through this interpretation, innovation diffusion came to be considered primarily a function of access to information.

In light of this successful application of the logistic curve to cases of innovation diffusion, it is appropriate to ask whether the S-shaped curve of Iranian conversion reflects a phenomenon similar to that studied by investigators of modern technological

change. To begin with, it may readily be established that the S-shaped curve of Iranian conversion follows with great exactness the logistic curve as defined by mathematical equation. Graph 4 shows the comparison between the conversion curve plotted on graph 3 and the logistic curve calculated from parameters derived from two points on the conversion curve. But does the nearly exact match really reveal anything other than the fact that one S-curve is much like another? This question cannot be answered by mathematics. All that can be positively stated is that the conversion to [slam of 469 Iranian families followed a pattern that has repeatedly emerged in the study of innovation diffusion in the twentieth century. Beyond that, one must look to what has been deduced from the curve by students of innovation diffusion and see if some of their insights can be transferred to the question of religious conversion in medieval times. In doing this it is important to specify in exactly what sense the curve is felt to be a useful abstract description of the conversion process. Whatever meaning the curve may have obviously does not come from simple 29

100 ‘

Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period e

30

80

60 \ Mathematically

70 determined points of logistic curve

ra

™

® SO

@

a.

40

10

30

20

AH. 25° 50 75 100 125 150 175 200 225 250 275 300 325 350 375 400 425 450

A.0.646 670 695 719 743 767 791 816 840 864 888 913 937 961 985 1010 1034 1058

Graph 4. Comparison of S-shaped conversion curve with logistic curve.

reproduction as in the case of the fruit flies. Although reproduc-

tion is naturally an important factor tn determining the size of a religious population at any particular time, assuming—and in the case of Islam this 1s a fairly safe assumption—that apostasy

was rare and that all of a convert’s descendants adhered to the new religion, reproduction can be ignored in the absence of concrete evidence for different birth rates for members of different religious communities.

Religious conversion is more closely analogous to technological diffusion than it 1s to the population growth of fruit flies in a bottle. Perhaps, therefore, the contagion model would be more helpful in explaining the curve’s apparent applicability to Iranian conversion. Yet here, too, the matter is not clear-cut. An iron plow may be superior to a wooden plow in an absolute sense that would make its adoption an obvious act for anyone who had the means to obtain it and to whom its superiority was

clearly demonstrated. One religion is not in the same sense 30

The Curve of Conversion in Iran

clearly superior to another. Without prejudgement of the matter of revealed truth or moral worth, it may safely be said that whatever superiority one religion may have to another, it 1s not clearly demonstrable in a practical or mechanical sense. Inevitably, some individuals reject the arguments that are put forward by their converted neighbors and cling to their ancestral faith. In many instances a practical superiority of one religion over

another may be created, often for brief lengths of time but sometimes permanently. Such phenomena as persecution, differential taxation based upon religion, and direct or indirect financial rewards for converts obviously have an effect upon the rate of conversion. Yet these selective factors are frequently

unrelated or only peripheral to the doctrines of the religion involved; they may change from one period to another.” Indeed such factors may be as much the result of stages in the conversion process as actual causes of conversion. Still, even while

admitting that the adoption of a new religion is more complicated than simply perceiving a new technique or implement to be superior to an old one, it would be wise to keep in mind that access to information is a prerequisite for conversion. A second useful insight from the field of innovation diffusion

relates to the bell curve (graph 2) of which the S-curve is a summation.!® This bell curve represents standard distribution and is used in a vast variety of situations. Essentially it says here that most families in the sample converted to Islam in the mid-

dle of the curve and that the probability of someone's converting markedly decreases as one moves forward or backward in time from the middle of the curve. Statistically it is possible to divide the entire body of converts into categories according to how improbable it was for them to convert at the time that they did. ‘The greatest improbability attaches to the earliest con-

verts, who are pioneers in the new religion, and to the latest converts, who are lagging behind the bulk of the population. ‘The set of terms used by specialists on innovation diffusion for

describing these different groups would be the following: the first 2.5 percent are “innovators,” the next 13.5 percent are “early adopters,” the next 34 percent are the “early majority,” 31

Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period

the next 34 percent are the “late majority,” the final 16 percent are “lJaggards.’’14 What is useful about this division into categories is that it suggests that people who converted at different times had very different motives and experiences. ‘The two things to consider, then, as clues to the conversion process gleaned from the study of innovation diffusion are the idea of looking at the adoption of something new as a function of access to information about that thing and the notion of dividing the entire body of converts into groups according to the probability of their converting at the time they did. With these in mind we can proceed to a discussion of the actual process of Islamic conversion.

32

4. Conversion as a Social Process °

Conversion to Islam in the Middle Ages was somewhat different from conversion to other religions. There was, for example, no rite involved comparable to baptism.1 ‘The verb aslama, mean-

ing “he submitted [to God],” is used to describe the procedure of becoming a Muslim, but where the verb occurs, there is no elaboration to indicate the real content of the act. Religious treatises speak of the simple utterance of the confession of faith, the shahdda, as the defining characteristic of adherence to Islam;

but there is disagreement as to the precise nature of this utter-

ance, whether it must be made with the heart or by the lips only. Nevertheless, since we lack any concrete statement to the

contrary, it may be hazarded that the formal process of conversion to Islam consisted primarily of speaking eight words. More certain is the fact that conversion did not depend upon a priestly individual. For one thing, Islam did not have priestly individuals in an institutionalized fashion; for another, there is frequent mention of people who converted at the hands of Muslims who had no noteworthy position of any kind as well as at the hands of those who held governmental but not religious office.

For present purposes, therefore, formal conversion, in the sense of utterance of the confession of faith, is not as significant as what might be termed social conversion, that is, conversion involving movement from one religiously defined social com-

munity to another. li is reported, for example, that various North African Berber tribes converted to Islam and _ subsequently fell away. This type of conversion, although the words of the confession of faith might actually have been mouthed by 33

Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period

the tribesmen, would not qualify as social conversion. The tribesmen were not leaving their non-Muslim tribe to join a different, Muslim tribe. Apostasy probably had little significance because formal conversion alone meant very little in any social sense. The same could be said at a later period for the conversion

of various ‘Turkish tribes and possibly for nontribal groups as well, some of which are reported to have apostatized several times as groups.

What is implied by the term social conversion is individual

rather than communal action. Having performed the act of conversion, the convert henceforth saw his identity in terms of the new religious community of which he had become a member. This possibiltty, in turn, imphes or presupposes a society in which social identity was normally defined in religious terms as opposed, say, to tribal or national terms. Such a society pre-

vailed over much of the area that converted to Islam in the Middle Ages, but it was the product of relatively recent historical development and was by no means universal. One of the most important social changes of imperial Roman times was the gradual development of religion as the focus of social identity. Why this development occurred 1s not altogether clear, although it unquestionably was related to the changes in religious orientation associated with the rise of Christianity and to the vitiation of the meaning of citizenship within the context of the universal Roman Empire. Yet if the origin of this broad social change remains cloudy, its practical dimensions are easier to delineate. Different religious groups were organized somewhat differently, and organization changed over time; but the following features are of common occurrence:

I. A formal authority structure, often hierarchical. Within the various sects of Christianity the priestly hierarchy is well known. Sassanid Zoroastrianism was likewise structured in a hierarchical fashion, as was Manichaeism.? With Judaism the situation is more complex since the destruction of the second temple left the religion without a center, but authoritative bodies still were recognized in Babylonia (Iraq) and Jerusalem.‘

2. Some degree of legal autonomy. With Christianity and Judaism the jurisdiction of religious courts grew steadily under 34

Conversion as a Social Process

the late Roman Empire, and bodies of religious law were com-

piled and written down. The areas in which the church had the greatest legal autonomy were those of religion and personal

status, but some administrative and taxation functions fell to the religious authorities as well.’ The Zoroastrian legal system is little known, but what is known suggests a closer identification of church and state than was the case with the other religions.®

Nevertheless, Zoroastrian legal decisions continued to be rendered after the Sassanid Empire had fallen to the Arabs.’ 3. Fusion of language with religion. Although some religions, such as Manichaeism, utilized whatever languages were encountered, the more common pattern was for a given religion to utilize as a religious language the ancestral tongue of the bulk of its adherents. For Egyptian Monophysitism this meant Coptic, for Syrian Monophysitism and Nestorianism, Syriac, for Zoroastrianism, Avestan, and for Judaism, Hebrew. For purposes of instruction or exegesis, of course, vernacular languages were used wherever and whenever the liturgical language had fallen out of common use. 4. Recognition of religious authorities as spokesmen for the religious community and as exemplars of religious life. Here the role of the religious authority as the successor of the civic

official is quite marked.’ Christian bishops and Zoroastrian priests sometimes appear as the primary authorities of sizable communities. Given the preeminence of religiously defined social identifi-

cation in the immediately pre-Islamic period in the Middle East, the notion of social conversion is both significant and quite specific. It may be proposed as an axiom of religious conversion that the convert’s expectations of his new religion will parallel his expectations of his old religion. In the case of an

ecstatic convert, the old religion may have failed to satisfy spiritual expectations which seem to have greater promise of fulfillment in the new religion. Such a convert might appear as a religious malcontent before conversion and very likely as a zealot or spiritual athlete after conversion. Most converts are nonecstatic, however. People who are more or less satisfied with their previous religious life and who convert more for mundane 35

Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period

than for spiritual reasons find life in the new religion more at-

tractive the closer it approximates life in the old. In other words, a socially stodgy and conservative Zoroastrian would be more likely to become, upon conversion, a socially stodgy and conservative Muslim than a wild-eyed fanatic; and the attraction of Islam would be related to his perception of it as a religion that had room for stodgy conservatism.?

Naturally, no hard and fast determination of the individual reasons for and reactions to conversion can be derived from such an axiom, but the overall implication of the axiom 1s that as conversion progresses, the new religion becomes, in its social dimension, increasingly like the old. This is not to say that dif-

ferent religious doctrines or institutions inevitably have continuities or even close parallels, but simply that the social functions that were served by the previous religion are likely to be served by the new religion to an increasing degree as the membership of the new religion becomes dominated by converts.

Since for Middle Eastern society in the pre-Islamic period, as has already been remarked, religion prevailed as the source of the individual’s social identity, conversion to Islam normally resulted in a major change in the convert’s social identification;

but in the long run, conversion gave rise to strong pressures that affected the course of development of the new religion. For the individual, conversion meant that he was no longer a part of his old community. He may actually have been regarded as legally dead in the eyes of his former coreligionists.1° Consequently, for defining his social life he looked to new exemplars to replace the bishop or rabbi or mobad (Zoroastrian priest) who had previously filled that role. He came to think of a new language, Arabic, as a sacred language, and he normally gave his

children names from the Arabic onomasticon. If there were

too few Muslims in his home community for him to feel that he could live a good Muslim life—a concept that was inevitably affected by how he had conceived a good Christian, Jewish, or Zoroastrian life—he was likely to emigrate to a community with a larger Muslim population. This last tendency might well be enhanced by economics insofar as a convert might find himself frozen out of his customary participation in 36

Conversion as a Social Process

the economic life of his erstwhile coreligionists and consequently seek out a large Muslim community in whose economic life he could participate more or less in his accustomed fashion." ‘To-

gether these changes constituted what has been termed social conversion.

A given individual could obviously utter the profession of faith and go through none of these social changes, but such an individual would scarcely be noticeable as a member of the Muslim community. What built the Muslim community as a distinct and historically visible social entity was social conversion. It was also social rather than formal conversion that created pressures for change which affected the course of Islamic religious development. In the earliest stages of Islam, when the Muslim community

was still confined to the Arabian peninsula, social conversion was as yet an uncommon phenomenon. It 1s not that the bedouin,

of whose conversion the Quran speaks disparagingly, were merely mouthing words without understanding or appreciating their meaning; it is rather that the religious expectations of the bedouin were colored by their pre-Islamic religious experience. Outside of Mecca and the Yemen, religion in tribal Arabia impinged only slightly upon the social lives of the Arabs.!? Even among nominally Christian Arabs religion appears to have had scant social impact. Sacred shrines and mantic seers known as kahins played only an occasional part in tribal life. The rules

governing the normal turning points in personal life—birth, puberty, marriage, death—were determined by tribal custom more than by religious doctrine and required no supervision by priestly persons." As a consequence of this tangential relationship of religion to Arab tribal life, the religious development of Islam was af-

fected primarily by the original Meccan community where religion meant more than it did elsewhere in the peninsula. The

impact of the conversion of the Arab tribesmen was most of all a steady dilution of the early sense of Islam as a social community. An Islam dominated numerically by converts of tribal

nomadic origin was an Islam threatened with relegation to a subordinate social role. ‘The Umayyads did not deliberately 37

Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period

promote an Arab kingdom at the expense of an Islamic caliph-

ate; the tribal preponderance of the Muslim population dictated a course to be followed which they could not ignore and still continue in power.

In part, indeed in large part, Islam survived this threat through efforts made in Mecca, Medina, Kufa, and Basra during its first century and a half by an Arab Muslim society that was

tribal to a steadily decreasing degree and not nomadic at all. The pious circles of these cities raised and debated religious questions that were of little concern to most Muslims of that time. But socially speaking, the Muslim societies of these four cities were still dominated by Arab tribal identity to a strong degree.'* ‘The questions that were raised and debated were more concerned with the relation of the individual believer to God than the relation of the individual Muslim to his fellows. The socialization of Islamic thought was largely the product of pressures brought by non-Arab converts from the Christian, Jewish, or Zoroastrian communities. Insofar as Islamic social life was oriented toward Arab tribes to which all Muslims belonged by birth, or by fictive adoption in the case of converts, Islam did not provide the social structure afforded by the religions whence converts were to be made. ‘This lack was a barrier

to conversion which could be broken down only by developing

such a social structure on the basis of the Quran and the experience of the early community in Mecca and Medina. Certainly there was no conscious effort to create a society that would “compete” with the various non-Muslim societies in attractiveness. Yet it is hardly surprising that the interests of converts fre-

quently centered around social questions as they searched in their new religion for the social structure they had abandoned by converting and that in their search they adumbrated the shape of such a structure. Looking back at the four characteristics mentioned earlier as hallmarks of pre-Islamic religious social structure, the first of them, a formal authority structure, was most strongly promoted

in Islam by converts. Ibn al-Mugaffa‘, a convert from Zoroastrianism, is the best known early advocate of caesaropapism as a model for the caliphate, and the development of the cen38

Conversion as a Social Process

tralized judicial system in early Abbasid times was a concrete

step in that direction. There may also be something of the same impulse in the attraction of many converts to Shiism, with its rigid authority structure based upon the theory of the Imamate. The truest expression of this drive, however, was the later

emergence of the Muslim religious scholars, the ulama, as a quasi-priestly class.

The second point, legal autonomy, is exemplified in the development of Muslim religious law, the sharia. Although civil law has always existed in Islam alongside religious law, it has been comparatively insignificant. Yet Islamic religious law, for all its importance, did not take shape until some two centuries after the origin of the religion. During the Umayyad period, when Arabs constituted the vast majority of all Muslims, the ideal of judgment was the sage determination of the caliph acting more as a tribal arbitrator than as a religious figure. ‘The numerous stories of the hilm or judicial forbearance of Mu‘awiya bespeak this ideal.46 Only when the convert population began to become numerically significant did religion come to the fore in the legal field. The third point, fusion of language with religion, needs some comment. Obviously, Arabic was as important when the Arabs were numerically predominant as tt was after the convert popula-

tion began to make itself felt. Formal study of the Arabic language for purposes of elucidating religious texts was a later development, however: only then did Arabic begin to become a sacred tongue of the type familiar in the other religious communities. It is noteworthy that many of the pioneering grammarians of the Arabic language were themselves non-Arabs.

The fourth point is possibly the most important. It deals with the recognition of religious authorities as the spokesmen for religious communities. Since medieval Islam did not develop a clerical hierarchy or, indeed, a formal priestly office of any kind, no direct parallel to the bishop, rabbi, or mobad can be put forward. The converts to Islam did desire guidance, how-

ever, in how to live a good Muslim life. Since the role of exemplar was not filled by a formally invested religious func-

tionary, certain obviously pious individuals came to be in39

Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period

formally recognized as exemplars. Recognition might derive from membership in or association with the Prophet’s family or the families of other saintly early figures, but more often it went to individuals who simply appeared to be good Muslims, notably to those who were studious and ascetic. Indeed, to some extent the Muslim population of convert origin probably recognized as exemplars of good Muslim life individuals whom they

judged to be so qualified not by still-uncertain Islamic social standards but by standards they were accustomed to associate with formally defined religious leaders in the non-Islamic communities. ‘he Muslim ascetic or zahid, for example, may have

taken the place in the minds of converts from Christianity previously filled by the monk. Not only did the pious, the ascetic, and the studious achieve notice in this fashion, but they had the role of spokesman thrust

upon them. The convert population used them as their life models as well as their communal voices in the way Muslim Arab tribesmen had previously used their tribal shaikhs.17 Lack-

ing a formally constituted priesthood, the community looked to them as surrogate priests. Ultimately, the product of this evolution was the accumulation of power and authority in the hands of this unappointed clergy.

In this entire process, it must be realized, the role of the Muslim population of non-Arab convert origin was primarily that of applying pressure for social-religious development and providing a receptive audience. The convert population was proportionately still small when this pressure began to be felt, and the individuals who responded were more often than not Arabs, at least up to the tenth century when the convert population began to overwhelm the Arab population numerically. ‘To be sure, specific non-Arabs made significant contributions as the pressure began to bring responses, but they were much more visible on a local level as social exemplars or proto-ulama than they were at the top level of intellectual achievement. This was undoubtedly owing to much of the convert population’s feel-

ing that the lifestyle of someone of their own linguistic and social background provided a more meaningful model than that provided by an Arab who was ethnically and linguistically 40

Conversion as a Social Process

a foreigner. How the fuller accomplishment of the conversion process affected this situation must be left for a later discussion, however.

What is necessary at this point is to introduce a second axiom of conversion, which states that leaving aside ecstatic converts,

no one willingly converts from one religion to another if by virtue of conversion he markedly lowers his social status. More

starkly put, if an emperor converts to a religion of slaves, he does not become a slave: the religion becomes a religion of emperors. The import of this axiom for the history of Islamic conversion in the medieval Middle East is great indeed. ‘The conquests of Islam are just as properly viewed as the conquests of the Arabs. Be-

ing an Arab and being a Muslim were so much the same thing that people in the conquered territories were sometimes unaware of the specific religious character of the invaders. This identity of Arab and Muslim continued to be the predominant view for over a century. As already mentioned, non-Arabs who converted to Islam were obliged to become mawaili, that is, fictive mem-

bers of Arab tribes.1® Only thus could they obtain any social identity as Muslims. Yet being a mawla of an Arab tribe was fraught with disadvantages. Mawali were regarded as racially inferior by many Arabs because they did not truly share the pure blood lineage that was the focus of tribal honor and loyalty. ‘They were discriminated against in marriage, denied inclusion on the military payroll, and made to suffer revilement and social slights.1®

Applying the second axiom of conversion, one must conclude that those who converted to Islam during the period when the mawali were so heavily stigmatized must have been people for whom being second-class Arabs was superior to any other options. In effect, for the Umayyad period, this statement implies that the major sources of non-Arab converts were two: prisoners of war who might seek through conversion to escape slavery and people, such as poor farm laborers, from the very lowest classes. Civil servants working for the new Arab rulers were not obliged to convert to keep their jobs. Certain others who felt economic pressure under the new regime preferred to convert to Christian4}

Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period

ity and become clerics, thus evading taxation, rather than convert to Islam and become lackeys of the Arabs.?° This highly discriminatory situation eventually changed, but while it obtained it shaped the character of the first several gen-

erations of converts. The product was a mixture of a relatively few upper class converts, largely former prisoners of war, and a larger number of riffraff. ‘The former found a better reception in the new religious community than the latter, who were on occasion herded about like cattle; but all suffered from their subordinate status. It is scarcely surprising that some Arabs, such

as Ibn Qutaiba, formed the opinion that non-Arab converts to Islam were, in general, the dregs of society.?! It was this mixed eroup, however, that initially, by their very existence, posed questions about the social character of Islam which had such far-

reaching results in later centuries. ‘0 examine stage by stage how this process occurred, we must return to a consideration of Iran and make use of the curve of conversion derived in the last chapter.

42

5. The Development of Islamic Society in Iran It has already been indicated that Iran was the first major seg-

ment of the vast territory conquered by the Arabs to accept their religion. It has further been argued that the acceptance of Islam by the population followed a specific pattern, namely, an S-shaped curve. To appreciate the likelihood and potential importance of these two assertions, one must look at the political and religious history of Iran during the first four centuries of Muslim rule, the proposed duration of the conversion process, and see whether it is illuminated and made more comprehensible by them.

The S-curve in graph 3 has been reproduced in graph 5 with

a number of political events and trends plotted above it and a number of religious developments plotted below it. If this graph 1s reasonably accurate, it should depict in summary form the political preoccupations and religious outlook of the Iranian population as it went through the dramatic change from being overwhelmingly non-Muslim to being overwhelmingly Muslim.

However, it must be kept in mind that the completion of the conversion process described by the S-curve does not represent total conversion of the Iranian population since a certain percentage remained non-Muslim well beyond a.u. 400. As a guess,

a figure of 20 percent might be hazarded for this population of adamant non-Muslims, whose number was reduced only very slowly after the completion of the basic conversion process.

If we look first at the arena of political activity, three noteworthy points spring immediately into view. First, the graph supports the conclusions of recent investigators of the Abbasid revolution who have seen it as primarily an Arab movement, despite its origin in eastern Iran.1 The earlier idea that it rep45

Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period

100 som Gu {as ; ; Ney Period of factional — ands

30 Period of independent oy ee ae ona lranian dynasties es} Emergence of yrece nd Asharis

80 70

60 -oP

rag

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20 | cS £ Early adopters

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overt nor Early majority Late majority Laggards

AH. 25 50 75 100 125 150 175 200 225 250 275 300 325 350 375 400 425 450 475

A.D.646 670 69% 719 743 767 791 816 840 864 888 913 937 961 985 1010 1034 1058 1107

Graph 15. Correlation of historical developments with Iraqi conversion Curve.

conversion process in the ‘Tigris-Euphrates valley and in Iran. Although there is no way of quantifying the magnitude of these differences, three seem particularly noteworthy. First, there is a

larger prisoner-of-war element in Iraq in the period of innovators because of the concentration of the Sassanid army there at the time of the conquest and the sending back to Basra and Kufa of captives taken during campaigns further east. Second, government administrative personnel, most of them converting in the early adopter period, loom larger in Iraq as an important body of converts, both because of the heavy concentration of administrators in the capital province and because of the bias of the historical literature toward recording the personalities and events connected with the operation of the caliphal establishment. ‘Third, Iranians, being an upper class minority of foreign

origin before the Arab conquest, had less resistance to conversion than they had in Iran proper, presumably because join83

Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period

ing the Arabs was a way of continuing a degree of social superiority over the Aramaic-speaking majority of the population.

The non-Muslim Iranian presence in Iraq diminishes greatly in the early adopter period indicating extensive early conversion

of this group. When one turns to the arena of political history, these various chronological and social differences between conversion in Iraq

and Iran reveal themselves in different ways. In Iran, nonMuslim religious revolts flourish prior to the attainment of approximately 50 percent on the conversion scale, although the last revolts were in remote areas, which suggests that such resistance movements actually tended to fade away in more central areas well before the 50 percent point was reached. After

that point, Iran became dominated by independent Muslim Iranian dynasties that progressively adopted the symbols and regalia of the pre-Islamic Iranian empires. In Iraq the proximity of large Arab armies and the concentration of the population in an easily traversed river valley of

relatively limited size made non-Muslim religious revolts virtually impossible from the moment of conquest on. Instead, Iraq was visited by a steady succession of Khariji revolts that almost exactly coincides with the period of the early adopters. The Kharijis came into existence as a political movement in the 670s, and uprisings were still reported as late as 796 in more remote northern Iraq. Kharijism, of course, is a variety of Islam, and Arabs unquestionably predominated in these revolts. Nevertheless, mawali were also drawn to Kharijism either because of the egalitarian character of Khariji ideology or, perhaps more important, because for the humbler stratum of converts, which formed one of the mainstreams of conversion in the innovator and early adopter periods, violent rebellion offered hope of the material betterment that had not been achieved by simple conversion.® Converts of prisoner-of-war or administrator origin do not appear to have been involved with the Kharijis. In short,

leaving the Arabs aside and taking the point of view of the mawali converts, one can see the Khariji revolts of Iraq as the equivalents of the non-Muslim religious revolts in Iran.° ‘That they did not continue as long is a function of Iraq’s easy and 84

Iraq uniform geography, which did not provide mountainous refuges and isolated pockets of population. As for Iraq’s political history following the point of 50 percent conversion in 882, there are again parallels with Iran. Instead of independent local dynasties, one encounters a progressive deterioration in the central government’s ability to control the countryside. Earlier, during the Samarra period (836-893),

there had been a similar breakdown caused by the infighting among different components of the army, but the vigorous regency of al-Muwaffag and the reigns of his son and grandson had demonstrated unexpected resource and governing ability in the Abbasid family. Stil, the recovery during those reigns could not prevent the decline of state power that set in as a result, in part, of the conversion process. On the one hand, rebels became able to cut off and hold, sometimes for appreciable periods, large chunks of territory. ‘he Zanj rebellion in southern Iraq and the

virtually independent tribal principality of the Hamdanids in the north were harbingers of future political dissolution. Finally,

in 945, the advent of Buyid power in Iraq brought what was essentially a permanent end to the secular power of the Abbasid caliphate. After that the ability of small dynasts to set up inde-

pendent principalities in Iraq was limited only by the power of the caliph’s foreign captors. ‘The theory of unified central government had lost its hold on the population. ‘The way in which conversion appears to have played a causa-

tive role in this process of political decay can be seen, again,

from what happened at a parallel point in Iran. The rise of the independent Muslim Iranian dynasties was made possible by the realization that Islam in Iran was a permanent fact and could not be harmed by a fractioning of political power. ‘This realization could only be produced by conversion, for that alone could give the individual Muslim the assurance that he and his fellow

Muslims were dominant. That prime desideratum satisfied, would-be dynasts were free to recruit supporters for a variety of reasons.

In Iraq the caliphate was a much more central issue. ‘The caliphate’s existence was justified, in the first instance, by the need to hold the Muslim community together in the face of ad85

Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period

versity, the need to protect it and guarantee its survival. In the long run, this was the only permanently valid justification for the existence of the caliphate. Consequently, whenever Islam’s survival came to be taken for granted, the caliph’s underlying

source of authority evaporated leaving only a brittle superstructure. More than any other single element, the accomplish-

ment of majority conversion among an area’s population brought about the feeling of Islam’s permanence and of the caliph’s superfluousness. If the rebels that surfaced on every hand toward the end of the ninth century had seriously threatened Islam in Iraq, they would have been resisted by military contingents from other lands hurrying to the aid of the caliph; but they did not pose such a threat, and thus they were met only by local political and military forces.’ Similarly, if the Buyid occupation of Baghdad and seizure of the caliph in 945 had had any significant effect upon the local populace, Iraq would have been ungovernable; but the caliphate was already an outworn institution in its capital province, and the Buyids

did not even bother to replace the Sunni incumbent with a puppet who shared their Shu views. Yet half a century later the Abbasid caliph was still an important symbol of Islamic unity and permanence on the eastern marches where Mahmud of Ghazna was making conquests in India. Although it is possible to see the increasing seclusion of the caliph and ritualization of his functions during the two centuries of the early and late majorities as responses to the expectations that the non-Arab convert population had of their ruler, it is only conjecture since the tastes of the court were substantially isolated from those of the population at large and since many court functionaries came to Baghdad from other parts of the caliphate. A different phenomenon of the same period seems to correlate well with the notion of bandwagon conversion, however: the phenomenon of urbanization. The large cities of Kufa, Basra, and Wasit which dominated Iraqi politics throughout the first century after the conquest were, in origin, Arab military encampments, and they retained their predominantly Arab character despite a growing non-Arab

mawali element. With the foundation of Baghdad in 762 a 86

Iraq

second period of urbanization began, however, a period characterized by the influx of non-Arab converts into new cities. Baghdad was the first. The army it was built to accommodate was

largely Arab, but the extensive unplanned civilian quarters that

grew on the outskirts of the Round city of al-Mansur were heavily populated by non-Arabs. The growth of Baghdad was phenomenal, but even more phenomenal was the creation of the city of Samarra only a hundred miles up the Tigris from Baghdad starting in 836. Samarra, like Baghdad, began as a caliphal capital and cantonment for troops, but it also had a very substantial population of civilians who were predominantly of non-Arab origin.* Since there is little evidence that the entire population of Baghdad abandoned the older capital for the

newer one, it must be concluded that much of the civilian population of Samarra represented a continuation of immigration from the countryside, immigration that had a reflection in

the reduced density of population in the Diyala River basin northeast of Baghdad.® Although the lure of the grand new cities may have had some-

thing to do with this rural-urban immigration, a more plausible reason for it can be found in the desire of converts to migrate to purely or heavily Muslim communities, as was the case in Iran. Indeed, the fate of the two capitals reflects the dwindling

of convert migration as the rural areas rapidly became overwhelmingly Muslim. Samarra was abandoned as a capital in 893,

the midpoint on the conversion scale, and Baghdad seems to have suffered severe population loss during the century of Buyid

mastery from 945 to 1055. To be sure, political and economic reasons can be adduced to account for this termination of what

had been a period of rapid urbanization, but economic crisis and political upheaval had also occurred earlier without impeding the trend. It seems much more likely that urbanization was brought to an end largely by the fact that new converts no longer felt the need to migrate since they were already living in heavily Muslim communities at the time of conversion. It is noteworthy

in this connection that as Baghdad and Samarra declined, a number of secondary Iraqi cities took on increasing political and cultural importance.’

87 :

Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period

In the area of social] and religious development, Iraq presents a somewhat different picture from Iran. In Iran it was possible

to construe the ubiquitous factional rivalry of the tenth and eleventh centuries as a logical outcome of the conversion process. Conversion produced a partial inversion of the social hierarchy of the pre-Islamic period, and this in turn engendered a rivalry between the families of early converts and the families of later converts for control of the Muslim establishment and direction of the future course of Muslim social development. The early convert families were generally linked to the Hanafi law school, Mu'‘tazili theology, and asceticism as a form of extreme religious observance; the late convert families were similarly linked to the Shafii law school, Ashari theology, and Sufism. As the capital province and the cockpit of early Muslim theo-

logical controversy, Iraq does not afford an easy analogy with Iran. Indeed, there appears to be one complex of conversionlinked factional rivalries associated with the city of Baghdad, and another rather different complex for the province as a whole. The history of factional rivalry in Baghdad is well recorded.

The early dominance of the Mu‘'tazili theological doctrine, which was closely associated in Iraq with certain tendencies in

Shiism, was confirmed during the period of the mihna, the government-sponsored persecution of non-Mu‘tazilis that lasted from 827 until 847. The Mu‘tazilis were resisted, within Baghdad in particular, by what eventually crystallized into the Hanbali school of law and theology. There is substantial evidence that the social support for this resistance movement came from the descendants of individuals who had converted around the middle of the early adopter period, and their eventual attainment of a dominant position in the capital confirms that their goal was

the seizure of control of the Muslim establishment from the

backers of the Mu'tazilis.1! As for the Mu'‘tazilis themselves and their supporters, some of them were very early converts to Islam

and many others were of Arab descent. Factional rivalry does not stop with the Mu'tazilis and the Hanbalis, however. In the tenth and eleventh centuries the most visible rivalry in Baghdad was between the Hanbalis and the 88

Iraq Shiis. Although some Shiis were closely associated with the early

Mu'tazili movement, this later Shiism was much more popular and its appeal more emotional. To all appearances it represents a quite late stage in. the conversion process, a more extreme form of the populism characteristic of the Shafii-Ashari-Sufi

faction in [ran. Its supporters were evidently part of the late majority who converted to Islam quite late and who had no implicit claim to social leadership based on prior social eminence. In fact, the Shiis never achieved the degree of power or recognition that the Hanbalis had achieved before them. If we look at the countryside at large, the Mu‘tazili-Hanbali rivalry does not seem to be particularly important. This is doubtless because most converts migrated to the large Muslim cities

during the period of this rivalry leaving the countryside and the smaller communities predominantly non-Muslim in character. Factional rivalry only reaches the countryside in a visible

manner right around the 50 percent point on the conversion curve. It takes the form of the Qarmati movement, a rather mysterious form of Ismaili Shiism that sprang up at roughly the same time in eastern Arabia, southern Iraq, northern Iraq, and Syria.? As with the earlier Khariji revolts, a problem is posed by the mixture of Arab tribesmen and non-Arab peasants in the same movement, but the latter element was particularly

in evidence in southern Iraq. The Qarmati movement in Iraq also resembles the earlier Khariji revolts in its utopian, revolutionary message and ultimate futility. Quite clearly, the supporters of the Qarmatis did not have a strong stake in the existing society.

In comparison with Iran, then, the political cleavages engendered by conversion in Iraq are more complicated. ‘The social elite of the pre-Islamic period, represented by government administrators and the Iranian segment of the population, tended

to convert at an earlier date in Irag than did the dihqans of Iran. Although this prevented a clear-cut inversion of the preIslamic class hierarchy from taking place, it did not prevent the development of a rivalry between early and late convert families. ‘Chis rivalry was played out almost exclusively in the great

89

Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period

cities, however, instead of being dispersed among a larger number of smaller cities as 1t was in Iran, and the players were not as evenly matched socially as they were in Iran. The Hanbalis eventually attained the degree of social respectability that their

Iranian counterparts, the Shafiis, had from the beginning; but for a long time they represented a distinctly lower social element. Finally, the converts of the late majority did not follow the guide of their social betters and become spear carriers in the

factional disputes of the major Sunni factions as they did in Iran. Instead, they supported the respectable but déclassé doctrines of moderate Shiism in the capital city and, at least to some

extent, the utopian revolutionary doctrines of Qarmati Shiism in the countryside. An important consequence of this more complicated socialreligious situation in Iraq was a lack of clear direction in institutional development. Instead of acting as the pioneers of a popularized Islam as the Shafiis did in Iran, the Hanbalis found themselves confined between the elitist Mu‘tazili camp and the even more popular Shiites who cut them off from their natural constituency of late converts. Like. the Shafiis, the Hanbalis supported common sense intepretations of the Koran, and some of them favored Sufism; but they did not foster fraternal forms

of social organization. When the Hanbalis eventually encountered in the late eleventh century the new Shafii-Ashari form of Islam that had been developing independently in Iran, they looked upon it as an opponent to be resisted as fiercely as

they resisted the Shiis of Baghdad.4* They may have quite realistically seen it as a rival for the support of the same social groups that had previously been Hanbali backers. From the earliest conquests, Iraq had been the center of intellectual and religious development in the conquered lands.

After the Abbasid revolution made it the capital province in 750, there was every reason to expect it to retain its preeminence.

That it did not, that it was surpassed tn these avenues of development by Iran, which was conquered later and was much less heavily colonized by Arabs, is only partly the product of the more rapid rate of conversion in the latter territory. It was also due, in part, to a more complicated social profile of conversion 90

Iraq

in Iraq which produced fruitless factional infighting instead of more creative, if equally vicious, bipartisan rivalry, and to the cleavage between capital and countryside which curtailed the tendency to develop religious institutions on a.mass basis and made the various factions more dependent upon court favor than upon their own resources.

91

8. Egypt and Tunisia

Since graphs 10, 11, and 13 show the popularity of the group of five distinctive Muslim first names peaking in Egypt and

Tunisia at about the same time it does in Iraq, the. line of analysis followed in this book would seem to suggest that the preceding chapter might be simply repeated here, or else this one skipped altogether. After all, similar peaks tend to yield similar graphs that are subject to similar mterpretations. ‘The historical development of Egypt, however, leaving ‘Tunisia aside

for the moment, has never precisely duplicated the historical development of any other part of the Middle East, and there is good reason to question whether it really follows Iraq in this particular case. The shape of the popularity curve is the first apparent indication of a different line of development. According to graph 16, which compares the curves of graphs 10 and 11, the popularity in Iraq of Muslim names among the indigenous convert popula-

tion and among ethnic Arabs shows nct so much two clearly separate peaks as one great rise with the Arabs’ earlier attainment of a maximum appearing as a shoulder rather than a completely separate prominence, while the curve for Egypt, in strik-

ing contrast, shows a deep valley between the two peaks of popularity. Unfortunately, the importance of this contrast is clouded by the fact that the very low totals of biographies per twenty-five years in Egypt (average 7.5) by themselves create great fluctuations in the shape of the curve with a change of only one or two names from one group to the next. That two peaks exist in the

Egyptian case is certain, but their height and the depth of the trough between them may well be exaggerated by the smallness 92

Egypt and Tunisia

70 \ 60 y’ ~ \ aa5 ms /? 50 / \ ae | 40 f ~ 100

90

80

/\ 4jN

~, ae \

30 y 20 pany

/

/

/

/

10 A ae,/ B /

|

AH. 25 50 75 100 125 150 175 200 225 250 275 300 325 350 375 400 425 450 475 A.D. 646 670 695 719 743 767 791 816 840 864 888 913 937 961 985 1010 10% 1058 1082

Graph 16. Comparison of graphs 10 and 1]. A, popularity of Muslim names in Iraq (curve from Ibn al-‘Imad only); B, popularity of Muslim names in Egypt.

of the samples. Nevertheless, the apparent contrast with Iraq is too striking to dismiss so simply, particularly since the curve for Egypt is very closely paralleled by that for Syria shown on graph 12. Assuming, then, that the contrast is significant, one possible source of the disparity is that somehow the much larger population of Arabs that entered Iraq during and after the conquests

may have generated a pattern of adoption of Arabic names markedly different from that caused by a smaller number of Arabs entering Egypt. If the overall number of Arabs were a significant factor, however, then it might be expected to have had an effect upon the total conversion process as well. The innovation diffusion model, after all, rests ultimately upon access to information on the part of potential adopters. In a largely

nonliterate society in which information was disseminated 93

Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period

primarily by word of mouth, a smaller number of Arabs could be expected to have contacted and possibly influenced a smaller number of possible converts. However, even without concrete or reliable figures regarding the number of Arabs who migrated to Egypt as compared with Iraq, this complication can be largely

discounted. Quite imprecise but not unreasonable published estimates of the overall population of the two regions indicate that the exposure to Arab Muslim contact was probably roughly comparable. ‘The figure of 9.1 million was used to indicate the

order cf magnitude of the Iraqi population at the time of the Arab conquest, and estimates of equivalent generality for Egypt

at that time indicate a population on the order of 2.7 million. In other words, even if the number of Arab Muslims migrating to Egypt was only a third to a quarter as great as the number migrating to Iraq, the potential for spreading information about the new faith would have been roughly equivalent. A more’ promising route than demography for investigating the difference between the Egyptian and Iraqi data lies in Egyp-

tian political history. It is striking that between the great depression in the cutve around the year 950 and its highest peak around 975 one of the most important political events in Islamic history occurred: Egypt was conquered by the Fatimid dynasty and made into the capital province of an Ismaili Shii caliphate.

There are two obvious ways in which this event might have affected the curve of Muslim names. The religious doctrines of the new rulers could have led people to believe that an obviously Muslim name would be a prudent one to bestow upon a child. Or else the new dynasty could have given a segment of the popu-

lation with predominantly Muslim names an opportunity to rise to sufficient prominence to have their biographies recorded. The former possibility has little to recommend it. The early Fatimid regime was not known for its intolerance of non-Mus-

lims, and there were several Fatimid political figures of note who had religiously neutral names, notably al-Jawhar, the conqueror of Egypt, and Buluggin b. Ziri, the Berber tribal chief who assumed control in Tunisia as a Fatimid governor after the shift of the capital to Egypt. Moreover, the popularity of the five 94

Egypt and Tunisia

Muslim names drops sharply in the mid-eleventh century while the Fatimids were still ruling. The other possibility is far more attractive. Prior to the Fatimid invasion, Egypt had been a part of the Abbasid caliphate ruling from Baghdad, albeit at times a quasi-independent part. Not only were its governors usually appointed from Baghdad, but many lower level administrative personnel ,were as well.? As for the favor shown by this essentially foreign administration to the Egyptian populace, it is more likely to have fallen upon the kindred Arabs than upon the native converts to Islam. With the advent of a Fatimid regime, this tendency must certainly have been reversed. The Arabs who had been prominent in the military in Egypt during much of the period since the original Arab invasion were supplanted along with other troops from the east

by Berber and other troops entering in the conquering army from Tunisia. These earlier military forces represent elements in the local population that lost favor under the new order. In the same way the pro-Abbasid Arab element in other branches of government service was gradually purged and supplanted.* One does not hear of prominent administrators continuing for long in office under the Fatimids as happened in Iran when the Seljuqs swept away the native Iranian dynasties. As for the people who supplanted these administrators, it is easier to believe that they were native Egyptians than that they were immigrants

from Tunisia since Tunisia was still a Fatimid territory and could not be simply stripped of its educated population to staff the much larger Egyptian bureaucracy. In short, the sharp and sudden rise in frequency of characteristically Muslim names is quite plausibly explained by a change in government favoritism incident upon the installation of the Fatimid regime. By comparison, the convert population in Iraq would appear to have eased quite gradually into positions of prominence. Explicit confirmation of this hypothesis would require a detailed examination of the family backgrounds of large numbers of early Fatimid officials and their immediate predecessors in office. In the absence of such a study, a strong indication of the soundness of the hypothesis can be gleaned from the graph of 95

Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period

popularity of Muslim names in Tunisia (graph 13). As pointed out previously, the first popularity peak in ‘Tunisia comes a bit earlier than the analogous peaks in other areas, but what is of particular interest in comparison with Egypt is the fact that the deep trough between the two peaks is earlier than the similar trough in Egypt and Syria. As a result, the recovery in the popularity of Muslim names in Tunisia takes place between 913 and 961 while in Egypt it takes place between 950 and 975. Since the Fatimids took power in ‘Tunisia in 909, this finding means that in both countries there was a dramatic increase in the percentage of children given distinctive Muslim names immedtately following the advent of Fatimid rule. The Tunisian data thus reinforce the equation suggested by the Egyptian data be-

tween Fatimid rule and the popularity of Muslim names, an equation that is best accounted for in both cases by a change in governmental orientation from the Arab segment of the population to the indigenous convert segment. . Just as important as the earlier occurrence in ‘Tunisia than in Egypt of the trough in the name curve is the fact that the Egyp-

tian curve peaks in the period immediately after the trough, around 976-1000, while the Tunisian curve rises more gradually from its low point to crest at roughly the same time in the year 1010. What this indicates is that the Fatimids came to power in Tunisia well before that peak in the naming curve that applies specifically to converts had been reached, while in Egypt Fatimid rule barely preceded the peak. To demonstrate this difference between the two areas more fully, a graph of a type ‘already familiar will prove helpful. Graph 17 compares major stages in Egyptian and Tunisian political history with the putative curve of conversion common to them both, that curve being taken directly from the one cal-

culated earlier for Iraq. The correlation between events in Egypt and Tunisia and events in Iran discussed earlier is quite striking. In all three cases the outbreak of non-Muslim rebellions occurs at the same point on the respective curves of conversion. In all three cases the later revolts took place in less accessible parts of the country, the last one in Egypt being in

Upper Egypt and late rebellions in Tunisia centering in the 96

90 Le 80 < 70 be & i60 o Oo 2 20 S Egypt and Tunisia

100

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10 Cogt= 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500 550 600 650 700 AD.622 670 719 767 816 864 913 961 1010 1058 1107 1155 1204 1252 1301 Graph 21. Popularity of Muslim names in Spain.

mad, Ahmad, ‘Ali, al-Hasan, and al-Husain derived by pooling the data contained in six different biographical dictionaries.’ The data were pooled because several dictionaries with large numbers of entries covered relatively short time spans, and pooling was the best way to obtain large numbers of names for every

period. As with the name curve of Iraq shown on graph 10, the first peak of the curve is more a shoulder on a larger rising curve than a completely independent peak of the type shown on the graphs for Egypt, Tunisia, and Syria. This early peak on the Spanish curve occurs over fifty years later than the more or less synchronous early peaks from the eastern lands, however. In

view of this chronological disparity and of the quite small population of Arabs in comparison with Berbers who entered Spain, the explanation used to account for the early peaks in the eastern lands seems insufficient. If a shared tendency toward

increasing use of distinctively Muslim names among ethnic 118

Spain

Arabs were solely responsible for the first peak, the peak would logically be better synchronized with the peaks in the east. In-

stead, a likely reason for the later timing of this peak is that it represents not just the Arabs’ adopting the characteristically Muslim names, but the Berbers’ doing so as well.

If this is the case, of course, the implication is that the expected crest in the Muslim name curve representing the conversion of the indigenous population must be sought at a later date. Unfortunately, a second clear-cut peak in the Muslim name

curve seems never to occur. The names simply become more and more popular until they account for three-quarters of all male first names. Most probably, what is depicted on the graph is a popularity curve resulting from Islamic conversion being overtaken by a second surge of popularity resulting from the accelerating Christian reconquest of Spain and the strong feeling it aroused that one should openly proclaim one’s Muslim identity. Particularly suggestive is the plateau that seems to have been

reached between 1107 and 1155. Immediately after 1155 the grimly intolerant Almohads took control in Spain, and the percentage of Muslims bearing one of the five names jumps dramatically. ‘Then, immediately after the waning of Almohad power around 1213, the popularity rise abruptly ends. Given this complicated situation, it is difficult to determine where the naming peak representing indigenous conversion might occur, but a likely possibility is that it is signified by the plateau reached in 1107. The half century of this plateau encompasses the period of Almoravid rule in Spain, and there is no obvious reason why the sharply rising trend of the preceding century and a half should level out at this particular time other than because of the attainment of the popularity crest resulting from conversion. By way of a conclusion, therefore, we may hypothesize the following interpretation of the entire Muslim name curve. ‘The peak reached in 913 represents the adoption of the five distinctive Muslim names by Arab and Berber immigrants, the inclusion of the latter causing the peak to be later than parallel early peaks in the eastern lands. The plateau reached in 1107 represents the crest of naming popularity caused by the conversion 119

Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period

of the indigenous population. ‘The reason the curve does not descend after this crest is that the Almohad invasion of Spain produced a wave of intolerance which made parents loth to give names that did not clearly identify their sons as Muslims. Popu-

larity rises sharply during the period of Almohad domination and remains high as the Muslim-Christian struggle approaches its climax.

Two additional sets of tabulations lend further support to these hypotheses. The first is the changing ratio of the five distinctive Muslim names to the group of names labelled biblical / Quranic in chapter 6. In Iran there was a pronounced but brief surge of popularity of biblical/Quranic names which preceded

and then gave way to the growing popularity of the Muslim names. The popularity curves of the two groups crossed in the early adopter period, and this was interpreted as indicating the use of biblical/Quranic names by some converts as a means of religious protective coloration in the very early stages of the

conversion process when the great preponderance of the indigenous population was still non-Muslim and Islam not yet perceived as a permanent fact of life.

If conversion in heavily Christian Spain took place in approximately the same fashion as conversion in Iran, then it might be expected that the relationship between these two sroups of names would be the same. Data pooled from two bio-

graphical dictionaries with large samples from the very early

period indicate that this is so, but with a single significant anomaly.5 Essentially, biblical /Quranic names increase in popu-

larity much faster than the five distinctive Muslim names before the year 816 when the curves cross and the biblical /Quranic names become permanently and substantially overshadowed by the Muslim names.

The anomaly occurs early in the series when the Muslim names greatly outnumber the biblical/Quranic names among people born between 743 and 766. The significance of this anomaly arises from the fact that the immigrant Berber popuiation was for the most part as unattached to the Christian religion as to the Islamic at the time of their entry into Spain. For them the adoption of biblical /Quranic names was pointless. ‘They had 120

Spain

no desire to blend into the indigenous Christian or Jewish population, nor would they have been able to do so if they had desired. Thus, the social conversion to Islam of the immigrant Berbers would lead directly to the adoption of purely Muslim

names. This extremely early preponderance of Muslim over biblical/Quranic names makes sense, therefore, 1f one assumes an early wave of social conversion among immigrant Berbers. This wave was soon overtaken, however, by the much greater wave of conversion among the indigenous population. ‘This latter wave produced the same type of relationship of Muslim to Biblical /Quranic names as the parallel conversion process did

in Iran. On the Iranian pattern, then, one might expect the crossover point of the two names curves, the year 816, to be located somewhere in the early adopter period of a final Spanish

conversion curve. This expectation will be tested later in this chapter.

The final confirmatory indicator of the early-Berber versus late-indigenous interpretation of the Muslim name curve may be gleaned from an examination of the generation of occurrence of the non-Arabic components in the group of 154 genealogies

used to derive the genealogical conversion curve. Again, the Iranian data suggest a rather obvious pattern. In the genealogies

of people who died comparatively early, the Persian name in the series shows up as that of a father or perhaps a grandfather. As the subjects of biographies die at later and later dates, the Persian name beginning their genealogy moves to generations further and further back. For example, a typical name of an

Iranian Muslim dying in the year 770 might be Ibrahim b. Rustam, while a typical name of someone dying three hundred years later might be Muhammad b. Ahmad b. ‘Ali b. al-Hasan b. Muhammad b. ‘Abd Allah b. Rustam, the last name, of course,

being Persian. This movement of the generation bearing the Persian name progressively backward in the series with the passage of time happens in Iran in a perfectly regular manner and helps confirm the overall impression of a wave of conversion.

In Spain the same phenomenon might be anticipated, and the same phenomenon in fact occurs. Yet again there is a significant anomaly. Table 4 shows by century the distribution of 121

Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period

Death dates Le A.H./A.D. ist 2d 816-912 ° eT 913-1009 : 5 5 Table 4. Generation of language change in Spanish genealogies.®

Generation

(father) (grandfather) 3d 4th 5th 6th 7th

200-299 /

300-399 /

1010-1106 ° . ‘ 5 4

400-499 /

1107-1203 4 : 5 ft — 8 1204-1300 : , Pt $8 FO

500-599/

600-699 /

a. Numbers represent rank order of generations in each time period in terms of genealogical language change: 1, the generation with greatest occurrence of language change; 2, the generation of second greatest occurrence; and so on.

non-Arabic names among several generations. ‘To make the data

comparable, the generations have simply been ranked: number | has the largest number of non-Arabic names, number 2 the second largest, and so forth. ‘The anomaly occurs in the earliest century. ‘The subsequent centuries clearly follow the expected pattern: fathers and grandfathers predominate as bearers of non-Arabic names among peo-

ple who died in the fourth Islamic century, grandfathers and great-grandfathers in the fifth century, grandfathers, greatgrandfathers, and great-great-grandfathers in the sixth century, and great-grandfathers in the seventh century. If we go back to the earliest group, those who died in the third century, however, they appear to be the grandsons and great-grandsons of converts instead of sons as the Iranian pattern would indicate. ‘Thus, here again is evidence of two quite separate types of conversion. ‘The

earliest group reflects an early wave of conversion that had already passed its peak by the third century, exactly as indicated by the early peak on the curve of Muslim names according to 122

Spain

the already established principle that the climax in naming comes at the beginning of the laggard period in the conversion process. This earlier wave of conversion is then overtaken by a later wave that reaches the same approximate stage as the first wave only in the fifth century when once again grandfathers

and great-grandfathers predominate as they did in the third century. Since the like phase of the earlier conversion wave in the third century was followed by a peak in Muslim naming in A.H. 300, its fifth-century parallel in the later wave could be expected to be followed by a second naming peak in A.H. 500. As already pointed out, a second clear-cut peak in nam-

ing never occurs, but A.H. 500 does mark the plateau that has been hypothesized as a trace of where such a peak would have occurred if political events had not changed naming priorities. ‘Thus, the tabulation of the generation of occurrence of non-Arabic names in genealogies affords additional support for the idea that Spain experienced two waves of social con-

version, one very early involving primarily the immigrant Berber population which did not favor biblical /Quranic names and a second and greater one substantially later involving the indigenous Christian population.

Since these independent tests of the hypothesis that early Berber conversion tends to distort the conversion curve on graph 20 have had positive results, it seems increasingly likely that the indigenous Spanish population converted to Islam ac-

cording to a bell-shaped curve just as the Iranian population was earlier judged to have done on the basis of totally independent but remarkably parallel genealogical data. What remains to be done is to construct an S-shaped conversion curve and show its usefulness in interpreting the history of Muslim Spain. Since the midpoint of this curve is set at approximately 961 by the conversion curve on graph 20 and the related peak in

Muslim naming, tentatively identified on the Muslim name curve (graph 21) as occurring in 1107, has been interpreted in chapter 6 to signify the beginning of the laggard period in

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the conversion process, it is a straightforward matter to deduce

by formula the entire S-shaped curve. Graph 22 shows that

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