Empires in Central Asia
Achaemenid Empire
Many trace the roots of Iran to the Achaemenid Empire, which is also often referred to as the Persian Empire. The Achaemenids were lords of the region of Persis or Fars, centered around the modern city of Shiraz. The history of Iran begins with Elam (ca3000 BCE) and peoples who had their bases in the Zagros Mountains of western Iran and were oriented towards Mesopotamia. A branch of the Indo-Iranians that ca2500-ca2000 had the central Asian steppes to themselves moved south on the eastern side of the Caspian Sea and reached northeastern Persia ca1400. These were the ancestors of the Medes and the Persians. Philological analysis of the Avesta, the ancient sacred text of Zoroastrianism, the religion of the Persians, tends to indicate that Indo-Iranians were occupying the central plateau of Iran ca1000, which at the times was sparsely settled. The Indo-Iranians dispersed throughout Iran and ca836 the Assyrians recorded the existence of the Medes around the area of modern Esfahan, which would put them to the north east of Elam.
Persia became a vassal of Media, which was at war with Assyria. The Persians probably retained some autonomy because their king Cyrus I sent tribute to the Assyrians in 639. The Medes helped the Babylonians take Nineveh (612) and overthrow Assyria. However, when the Medes tried to expand to Osroene (southeastern Turkey), the Babylonian king Nabodinus (556-539) defeated them and secured Harran. Allied with Nabodinus, the Achaemenids under Cyrus the Great overthrew Astyages the king of Media (ca550) and with the combined territories of Elam, Media, and Persia created the core of the Achaemenid Empire.
The Persians penetrated Anatolia and conquered Lydia (547). The Greek cities of western Anatolia submitted to Persian suzerainty. Cyrus then proceeded to defeat Nabodinus and annex Mesopotamia. He assumed the title of king of Babylonia. His capital was in Pasargadae, near modern Shiraz. Aramaic and its alphabetic script was the "official" language of the Achaemenid Empire in Mesopotamia.
Cyrus was killed in Transoxiana (modern Uzbekistan) fighting Scythians identified by Herodotus as Massagetae. He was succeeded by his son Cambyses II (529-522), who invaded the Levant and in 525 defeated Psamtik III in the battle of Pelusium and annexed Egypt as far as Nubia. Cambyses assumed the title of pharaoh. The Persians were friendly to the Jews, many of whom repatriated to Judah from Babylonia, where they had been forcibly settled during the Babylonian or Chaldean Empire. The Temple was rebuilt by Zerubabbel under Persian auspices.
The Persians created satrapies, or viceroyalties, in the lands they conquered. Cambyses was succeeded by one of his generals, Darius I (522-486), which produced some dynastic squabbles quickly suppressed. To outflank the Scythians and the mainland Greeks, Darius crossed the Hellespont, forayed as far as the Danube, and established a Thracian beachhead. He moved the capital of the empire from Pasargadae to nearby Persepolis.
At its acme ca500 BC, the Achaemenid empire extended, in modern terms, from Turkey across northwestern Iran and along the southern coast of the Caspian Sea to northeastern Iran and Turkmenistan, southeastern Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and southern Kyrgyzstan, and southwards to Pakistan; then west along the southern coast of Iran to Arabia (western Iraq to the Sinai), Egypt, Libya, Israel, and Syria. It had footholds in eastern Mediterranean islands. The Behistun (modern Bisitun) inscription (ca518), in western Iran, written 150 meters above the ground on a 1,200-meter rock face in three languages (Old Persian, Elamite, and Assyrian), also claims Gandhara (northwestern Pakistan) as an Achaemenid satrapy, which could mean that the eastern border of the empire was the Indus River, although there is little archaeological evidence for this claim. (The Behistun inscription incidentally was the clue to the decipherment of cuneiform writing from the reading of Old Persian.)
Besides Persepolis, the other capitals of the Achaemenid Empire were Susa, the ancient Elamite capital; Ecbatana, the former capital of Media; and Babylon. The Achaemenid Empire covered the following satrapies and regions identified by their Greek names (contemporary politico-geographical references in parenthesis): Arabia (western Iraq to the Sinai); Arachosia (southern Afghanistan to southwestern Afghanistan, around Kandahar); Aria (northern Afghanistan and southern Turkmenistan); Armenia (eastern Anatolia); Bactria (northeastern Afghanistan); Cappadocia (central Anatolia); Carmania (west of Gedrosia); Cilicia (southeastern Anatolia); Drangiana (western Afghanistan between Herat and Kandahar); Gedrosia (western Pakistan); Hyrcania (southeastern coast of the Caspian Sea); Ionia (western Anatolian coast of the Aegean sea); Lydia (western Anatolia); Makran (coast of Iran east of the Persian Gulf); Mardi (southwestern coast of the Caspian Sea); Oritae (western coast of Pakistan and eastern coast of Iran); Persis (south central Iran); Putaya (Libya); Seistan (area approximately where the borders of Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan meet); Sogdiana (southeastern Uzbekistan, western Tajikistan, and western Kyrgyzstan); Susiana (area around the head of the Persian gulf, west of Persis); Syria (Syria and Palestine). All of these provinces later became part of the Alexandrian empire. Some were the cores around which later kingdoms and provinces were formed.
Alexander the Great
Alexander, known as the Great, began by slaughtering enough Illyrians to keep them in their place. Then he headed south. Thebes stood in his way and he razed it to the ground. Thebes had become, after the Athens-Sparta wars, the most important military power among the Greek polis, so its destruction was meant as a lesson for the rest of them. Alexander raised a pan-Hellenic army, whose core however was Macedonian, composed of phalanxes, cavalry, and auxiliaries. Leaving Macedonia and Greece under the command of the resourceful Antipater, Alexander headed for Anatolia where in 334 he dispersed the forces that the satraps of the Persian Achaemenid Empire mustered at Granicus, near the sea of Marmara. In 333, at Issus (west of northern Syria), he defeated a Persian army sent to contain him. From Anatolia Alexander marched down the Levant. Tyre resisted and Alexander catapaulted it into surrender. He dragged the corpse of Basis, its commander, like Achilles had done to Hector's around the walls of Troy.
There are two noteworthy traits about Alexander's campaigns. One was that at the start his army was often faced as much by Greek mercenaries of the Persians as by the Persians themselves. The other one was that Alexander did not always substitute Greek rulers in place of the Persian satraps, who were often confirmed in their posts if they submitted to the Macedonians. With its history of rebellions against Persia, the Egyptians received Alexander with open arms. Whatever may be said against Alexander the conqueror, he was also a great civilizer, and in 331 in Egypt, he made the most enduring and largest of his foundations: Alexandria, one of the great cities of Antiquity and the only one of the many Alexandrias which retains undistorted its original name.
After the defeat of Darius III in the battle of Gaugamela (331), in northern Iraq, the empire of the Achaemenids disintegrated and Alexander and his generals very quickly extended Greek sway over its former satrapies. The following year Alexander was in Persepolis, which he burned, according to an often retold anecdote, in a drunken haze on a dare by an Athenian courtesan. Some historians relate this event to a revolt in mainland Greece led by the Spartan Agis III, who was defeated by Antipater at Megalopolis. Presumably, Alexander destroyed Persepolis to avenge the Persian sacking of the Parthenon (481) and to gain approval in Greece.
By 329, the Greeks were in Hyrcania (southeastern coast of the Caspian Sea), where the satrap Satibarzanes was confirmed in his post, although he later rebelled and was put down. Parmenio, Alexander's second in command, an able general but not possessed of Alexander's furious lust for war, had shown a readiness to accept Persian shows of submission. The differences between him and Alexander deepened. Parmenio’s son, Philotas, was accused of treason and executed and Alexander also had Parmenio killed.
Alexander founded Herat and Kandahar, both corruptions of Alexander (although some relate Kandahar with Gandhara despite the geographical difference between them). Persian resistance, though by no means organized or systematic, was coherent in basing itself on Achaemenid legitimacy, which was the case of the pretender Bessus, who was in arms in Bactria and was captured by the Greeks in Sogdiana (roughly today's eastern Uzbekistan). Despite or perhaps because of its remoteness from the imperial centers of the Achaemenid Empire, the Indo-Iranian Sogdians, under the satrap Spitamanes, put up a stiff resistance to the Greeks. Alexander first tried sword and fire and failed, so he married Roxana, a Sogdian or Bactrian princess. In 327 the country was pacified and Alexander could proceed with his conquests. He entered Gandhara from the Kabul area. He was well received at Taxila, where he became an ally of its ruler against another local king, Porus, whom Alexander defeated at the battle of Hydaspes. There is no notice in Indian texts of Porus' kingdom. Some historians speculate that he might have been related to the tribe of the Pauravas, mentioned in Vedic literature.
Alexander reached the Indus River, at which point his empire, except for Greece, corresponded territorially to the Achaemenid Empire, or so it might have seemed, for Alexander never actually conquered much of Iran or Aghanistan and the lands that he did conquer were lightly garrisoned. It is possible that Alexander would have been disposed to go on into the Yamana-Ganges doab, where he would have had to defeat the rising power of Magadha, but his troops mutinied and Alexander ordered a retreat along Baluchistan (western Pakistan and southeastern Iran). The Greeks had a beachhead somewhere in the delta of the Indus, where part of the Greek army embarked on a fleet commanded by Nearchus. Alexander and his forces boarded the fleet near the Persian gulf and sailed to the mouth of the Tigris (323).
In Susa, Alexander, who had long before adopted oriental court rituals, including his own depiction in edicts and in coins as a god, staged a mass marriage of Greeks and Persians to symbolyze, or more aptly, to express his fond wish that the Greco-Persian empire he thought he had founded would last. Alexander died in 323, at the age of 33, possibly of advanced cyrrhosis of the liver. Harpalus absconded with his treasury.
Parthia
The Parni or Parthians were an Indo-Iranian people who from modern Turkmenistan invaded south into Persia when the Alexandrian Empire started disintegrating after its founder's death in 323 BCE. The Parthian empire was founded ca250 by Arsaces, who defeated the Greek satrap Andragoras in northeastern Iran (the region of Hyrcania). It constituted therefore an important and extensive offshoot in the dismemberment of the Seleucid Empire. Parthia occupied the whole of the northern tier of Persia and over time had a relation of suzerainty to the surrounding regions: Adiabene, northern Iraq east of the Tigris, with Arbela (modern Arbil) as its capital; Araba or Arabistan in northern Mesopotamia, capital Hatra; Asuristan in mid-Mesopotamia; Elymais, the former Elam (southwestern Iran), also known as Susiana; Garamea, around modern Kirkuk, in northeastern Iraq; Gordyene, in Anatolia east of the Tigris and south of Armenia; Mesene or Characene in southern Mesopotamia, also known as Charax; Osroene in southeastern Anatolia, around Edessa (modern Urfa), including Haran and Nisibis; Persis, the homeland of the Persians in south central Iran; and Sophene (north of Osroene). Some consider Araba the first Arab kingdom outside of Arabia itself, although its princes were always vassals of Parthia and spoke Aramaic. Parthian overlordship extended to Sogdiana and Arachosia (Afghanistan).
During its existence Parthia had mostly hostile relations with Rome in the west and it had to fight off the Sakas and the Ephthalites in the east. Arsaces established his capital in Hecatompylos (northeastern Iran), an important caravan station along the Silk Road. By the early 2nd century, the Parthians had extended their rule to northwestern Iran. Parthia and Armenia (the latter had separated from the Seleucid Empire ca190) both claimed the territory of Azerbaijan, called Atropatene, which became a semi-autonomous dependency of Parthia.
In the mid-2nd century, under Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Seleucids of Syria tried to conquer Parthia but were defeated by Mithradates I (ca171-138), who annexed the former territory of Media east of Mesopotamia, where, in the area around modern Hamadan, the Parthian ruler founded Ecbatana. In 141, Mithradates went further and captured Seleucia, on the west bank of the Tigris, which had been a capital of the Seleucids and gave him a claim on the crown of Babylon. A counter-attack by the Seleucid Demetrius II was repelled and the Seleucid king was captured. Mithradates was killed fighting the Saka, an eastern branch of the Scythians that had occupied Sogdiana and Ferghana.
During the early 1st century, Armenia was at the height of its power under Tigranes. It occupied Osroene, which the Parthian king Mithradates II recovered. It was this Parthian king also who finally ended the Saka incursions from Seistan and drove the invading Tokharians out of Ferghana and on to Bactria, where the Tokharians later created the Kushana kingdom. Rome had acquired western Anatolia and was advancing east along the Mediterranean coast towards Cilicia. In 88, the Roman general Sulla met Mithradates' ambassador, Orobaze, on the Euphrates, which was accepted as the frontier between the two empires. Apparently, eastern Anatolia, including Armenia, were recognized as within the Roman sphere of military and political influence. Parthian sovereignty over Osroene was accepted. Either because he gave too much or he had sat at the same level as Sulla, Orobaze was ordered beheaded by his king.
Parthian successions were often savage, sometimes involving parricide. In one instance a son, Phraates V (2-7), assassinated his father and married his own mother. Orodes (ca57-ca36) founded another Parthian capital in Ctesiphon (Tisfun), on the Tigris across Seleucia. In 53, Marcus Licinius Crassus, who was part of the first Roman Triumvirate (with Julius Caesar and Pompey), wanted to emulate the military prowesses of his co-rulers and he invaded Osroene. The Parthians attacked with cavalry and camels and the legions were destroyed at Carrhae. Crassus' pickled head was brought to Orodes who was watching a staging of Euripides' The Bacchae. A Parthian counter-offensive in the Levant failed.
Roman-Parthian rivalry intensified as Rome persisted in encroaching on Osroene. The Parthian empire manifested tendencies towards disintegration. In the early 1st century CE, a king Gondophernes ruled independently in Afghanistan and Gandhara. This lack of centralization might have prompted Trajan in 113 to occupy Mesopotamia. However, the Parthian nobility rallied and forced the Romans to backtrack (116-117) before Hatra. Under Vologases III (148-192) the Parthians attacked Armenia but were repelled by the Roman Lucius Verus, who secured the Euphrates frontier by capturing Dura Europus and Ctesiphon.
Emperor Septimius Severus attacked Parthia unsuccessfully (198-199). In the reign of Caracalla (211-217), the Romans attacked again, but the Parthian monarch Artabanus V (209-224) resisted the Roman offensive. During another Roman campaign, Artabanus captured emperor Macrinus and held him for ransom. The constant warfare in the west must have weakened the Parthian hold on its vassals, for the Persian Ardashid (Artaxerxes), a descendant of a lord named Sasan, overthrew Artabanus and inaugurated the Sasanid Empire, which would carry on the wars with Rome. Hatra was the military objective of the Roman invasions of Trajan and Septimius Severus. Its monumental ruins, today a World Heritage Site, are considered the best preserved example of a Parthian city. Hatra, which apparently survived the fall of the Parthian empire, was captured and de-populated by the Sasanian Shapur I (241-272).
Sasanid Empire
Ardashir initially took Elymais, southwestern Iran, and southern Mesopotamia. Then he went after the Parthian Artabanus V and defeated and killed him in 224 CE. The Sasanids established their capital in Ctesiphon (Tisfun), founded by the Parthians on the Tigris River. The Parthians had contained Roman expansion eastwards and the history of the Sasanid Empire is in great part that of their wars with Rome and with Constantinople. Later, the Sasanians also had to fight off invading Turkic hordes in the east.
The Romans invaded Mesopotamia but were contained by Ardashir at Hatra (near Mosul in Iraq). Still underestimating the Sasanids, Roman emperor Gordianus (238) invaded Mesopotamia again. The Romans were defeated by Shapur I (241-272), the successor of Ardashir, who went on to take Armenia, eastern Anatolia, and Osroene. Valerian tried to contain Shapur, but was defeated (260) and died in captivity. Despite this coup, Persia did not manage to retain its conquests. Armenia reverted to Roman influence. Osroene became the principal bone of contention between the two empires. The conflict over Osroene intensified under the Sasanid Bahram II (276-293). Under Shapur II (337-358) the Persians attacked Anatolia but they themselves were being besieged in the east by the "Chionites" (possibly Turkic Huns) and the campaign did not prosper. Nevertheless, Shapur certainly ruled Sogdiana and might even have incursioned beyond the Hindu Kush into Gandhara. The Sasanid Empire reached its greatest extent and power under him.
The Turkic Ephthalites, called Huna by the Indians and White Huns by the Byzantines, were a nomadic central Asian nation, possibly Turkic. They were minor vassals of the Juan-juan in the area from the north of the Tarim Basin to lake Balkhash. In the 5th century, the Ephthalites migrated westwards and in 410 were established in Sogdiana. The Ephthalites divided into two branches. One of them might have destroyed the Kushana kingdom in Bactria and went on to Gandhara in India. The Ephthalites of Sogdiana tried to conquer the Sasanid Empire. Around 420, there was a succession struggle within Sasania in which Bahram V eventually won the throne with the support of al Mundir, prince of Al Hirah, an Arab vassal state of the Sasanids in central Iraq. Bahram warred against the Romans (421-422), but was forced to make peace when the Ephthalites began their attacks in the east. The wars to contain the Ephthalites lasted nearly a century and a half. The Sasanid king Firuz (457-499) was mostly engaged in fighting the Ephthalites, who killed him in battle and occupied Khurasan, Merv (modern Mary), and Herat. Kavadh I, son of Firuz, ascended the throne with Ephthalite help.
Between 527 and 532, the Sasanids were at war with the Roman Empire under Justinian. The reign of Khosru (Khosrow or Chosroes) I (531-579) was one of the most agitated in history. This monarch had to fight off the Romans, the Ephthalites, and the Tujue, the ancestors of the modern Turks. He made peace with Justinian in 532, but war flared again ca540. In Osroene, Khosru defeated the famous general Belisarius, the destroyer of Vandals and Ostrogoths. Hostilities went on for two decades. In that time, Khosru made gains against the Ephthalites, but the decisive influence in these struggles was the alliance he made with the Tujue in 565, who fell on the Ephthalites from the rear and the Sasanid emperor crushed them in Sogdiana. That the Tujue were enemies of the Ephthalites did not mean that they were friends of the Persians and from Sogdiana they began raiding the Sasanid Empire, but they were also contained by Khosru, who recovered Sogdiana.
War with the Roman Empire in the east started again in 572 and lasted until 591, during which time Khosru died and was succeeded by Hormizd IV (579-590). The war ended when Khosru II, son of Hormizd, was overthrown by Bahram Chubin (590) and regained his throne with the help of emperor Maurice (582-602). The two emperors agreed to a sort of dual overlorship in Armenia, which in effect allowed the Armenians to remain autonomous. When Maurice was overthrown and executed by Phokas (602), Khosru went to war against the Romans and conquered as far as Chalcedon (near Constantinople), captured Antioch (611), Damascus (613), Jerusalem (614), and Egypt (619). Khosru also deposed king Numan III and annexed Al Hirah.
In Constantinople, Heraclius (610-641) deposed Phokas, who was hated for his friendliness to the Roman church. Heraclius is considered the founder of the Byzantine Empire to the extent that he made Greek the official language and he himself adopted the Greek title of basileus. He not only threw back the Persians but defeated their armies in victories so conclusive that the eastern Roman Empire was restored to all its previous eastern frontiers, down to Egypt, and the Sasanid Empire was so shaken that it fell into a civil war in which Kavadh II (628-633), Khosru's son, rebelled and defeated and killed his own father.
The greater menace to Persians and Byzantines was a power that had arisen in Arabia. Under Abu Bakr (632-634), the first caliph after Muhammad, the Arabs had begun invading the Near East. After a brief succession war, Yazdegerd III came to throne in Persia. The Arabs were carrying everything before them and under Umar (634-644), the second caliph, they overran Egypt and were riding into the Levant and Syria. In 636, they invaded Iraq where, in the battle of al Qadisiyya (637), south of Baghdad, they confronted and defeated Yazdegerd's forces. To explain in part the ease with which the Arabs conquered these lands, it is to be noted that the Sasanids called northern Mesopotamia Arabistan, which gives an indication of how much the Middle East had been pervaded and infiltrated by Arab migrations. Yazdegerd fled to Media but at Nehavand (642), south of Hamadan, he was defeated again. He fled from province to province and was finally killed in Merv (651). Thus ended the empire of the Sasanids. However, some Sasanids took refuge in Tabaristan, in the Elburz Mountains of northern Iran and along the southern coast of the Caspian Sea. They were wiped out in 902 by the Samanids.
Golden Horde
As with all Central Asian nomadic and semi-nomadic empires, the borders of the Golden Horde, also known as the khanate of Kipchak (from its Muslim Turkic subjects), are impossible to trace with precision. Vaguely, then, the Golden Horde extended from the middle reaches of the Irtysh River (western Siberia) to the northern shores of the Aral and Caspian seas to the Caucasus and the Crimea and along the borders of Kievan Rus (Russia) to the margins of the northern Siberian forest and back to the Irtysh.
The Golden Horde was formed by the ulus (appanage) of Jochi, the eldest heir of Jenghiz, although not likely his son but of a Mongol warlord who held Jenghiz' wife captive for a time. There was no formal discrimination but there is evidence that Batu, the son of Jochi, and the actual conqueror of the Golden Horde territory from the Polovtsy (ca1230), did not consider his empire to be more than nominally part of the Mongol Empire. The Mongols, generally known in Russia as Tatars, first started raiding Kievan Rus between 1223 and 1227. They returned in force in 1236, crushed all resistance and went as far as Poland and Hungary. They did not annex the Russian principalities but made them vassals, especially Vladimir, where Alexander Nevsky, bowing to the inevitable, became an agent of Mongol overlordship, even forcing his fellow Russian princes to obey Mongolian dictates.
The independence of the Golden Horde commenced with the Islamization of its rulers ca1250 and became unmistakable when ca1270 the Golden Horde took the side of the Chaghataite Khanate in its separatist wars against the Mongol Empire. If disputes arose in Russia, princely successions were dictated from Sarai, the Golden Horde capital (near the Volga River delta). During the 14th century, the Mongols, who became indistinguishable from the Kipchaks (both Muslim Tatars as far as most Russians could tell), were losing their grip whereas Moscow was becoming hegemonic among Russian principalities and under Dmitri Donskoi routed the Golden Horde Khan Mamai at Kulikovo (1380). As two years later the Tatars came back and sacked Moscow, the Russian triumph can only be taken as symptomatic of change.
The eastern territories of the Golden Horde, corresponding today to western Kazakhstan, were ruled by the White Horde, a semi vassal of the Golden Horde under the command of Urus when Timur was shoring up his political base in Samarkand. Urus was of the line of Jochi and Batu, hence a Jenghizid.
Toqtamish, a related Jenghizid, wanted to take over the entire Golden Horde and he came to Tamerlane for aid. It was Timur himself who had to cross the Syr Daria and defeat Urus allowing Toqtamish to occupy the city of Otrar, on the right bank of the river. Toqtamish attacked khan Mamai from the rear and finished him off, thus achieving the original goal he had set himself. Timur Qutlugh gathered forces to reform the Golden Horde with the aid of the Lithuanians. Toqtamish did not die in the subsequent encounter, but he wandered the steppes looking for an opportunity to strike again until he was caught by Qutlugh's successor and dispatched. (See below Toqtamish, the greatest betreayer of them all.) The debilitating effect of Timur's campaigns against the the Golden Horde eventually led to the separation of the khanates of Crimea (1430), Kazan (1445), and Astrakhan (1466). With the destruction of Sarai by the Turco-Mongols of Crimea with the backing of Russia in 1502, the Golden Horde was extinguished.
Islam
The prophet Muhammad (ca570-632), who according to one account was an illiterate camel-herder from Mecca, belonged to the ruling Quraysh and to the Hashem clan (Banu Hashim), hence the Hashemites (at different times sherifs of Mecca and kings of Jordan and Iraq) as descendants of Muhammad. According to another account, Muhammad maintained significant links with the Quraysh. Still another makes him a merchant in spices.
The Meccans were idolaters and resisted Muhammad's monotheistic preaching, which led to the Hegira, or Muhammad's flight from Mecca to Medina in 622. This event marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar. In 630, Muhammad returned to Mecca, now converted, where the Kaaba, a quadrangular construction of granitic stone, formerly a pagan shrine, became the central focus of Muslim veneration. The Kaaba has an interior area and is covered with black cloth. The eastern corner of the Kaaba contains a small black stone of meteoric origin, which is often thought to be the Kaaba itself.
Muhammad was both ruler and spiritual leader. His governance was theocratic. Muhammad was succeeded by four caliphs (successors or deputies), three chosen from among his in-laws. They all were among his first converts, although they were not all of the Hashemite clan. The first three are the "elected caliphs": Abu Bakr (632-634), Umar (634-644), and Uthman (644-656). Abu Bakr was one of Muhammad's fathers-in-law. Uthman was a son-in-law. All three ruled from Medina, but Islam spread widely through their military agents, first within Arabia (Bahrain and Yemen) and then to the Middle East. Umar was assassinated by a Christian slave. Uthman is credited with having made the definitive compilation of the Qur'an. He was killed by rebellious Muslims. The holy book of Islam is also spelled Koran. The use of the "q" as a consonant denotes the usual spelling in Arabia proper. In the rest of the Arab-speaking world, the "k" is used in its stead.
All three elective caliphs are recognized by Sunni Islam. Shia Islam believes that Ali (656-661), the fourth caliph, was designated by Muhammad as his successor and thus count him as the first caliph. Ali, cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad (through his daughter Fatima), hence a true Hashemite, was suspected in the death of Uthman. The Muslim governor of Syria, Muawiya, contested Ali's claim on the caliphate.
The sect of the Kharijites initially favored Ali but turned against him because he tried to be conciliatory with Muawiya. The Kharijites held fundamentalist views (in the sense of the literal reading of the Qu'ran). They became rebellious and were defeated by Ali in 658, but later assassinated him (661). Their oppositionist and vaguely egalitarian attitude was influential among the Berbers of North Africa in the 8th century. Among Kharijites and later the Shiites, the title imam was equivalent to that of caliph in the sense of religious succession. Ali's son Hasan inherited the caliphate but was deposed by Muawiya (661-680), who had the backing of one of the Prophet's widows. Hasan's brother Husein or Husain (also Husayn) upheld the cause of Ali and he, his family, and his followers were massacred by Yazid, son of Muawiya, in the battle of Karbala (in modern Iraq) in 680.
Muawiya founded the Umayyad caliphate in Damascus (661-750). In 697, the Kharijites were suppressed, but not destroyed. Shias were the principal opposition to caliphal authority, hence their stance served as the rallying point for anti-Arab movements, especially in Persia. In the Maghreb it is difficult to distinguish Kharijites and Shias. The word Shiite itself is an abbreviated form of shi-at Ali or party of Ali.
The history of Shiism is extremely complex. Ali's faithful considered him not caliph but the first imam and his sons the second and third imams. There was a uncontested succession of imams in the Middle East until the death of the sixth imam, Jafar al-Sadiq, in 765, at which time Shiite loyalty was divided between two of his sons: Ismail and Musa al-Kasim, considered by each side as the seventh imam. When Ismail died, his followers claimed that the succession passed to "hidden imams". The other Shia line continued until a 12th imam died (873) and his followers in turn adopted the doctrine of hidden imams. Both branches believed in the coming in the course of time of a mahdi. Hence, Shiism was divided between Seveners and Twelvers. The Twelvers are closer to Sunnism than the Seveners and to this day constitute the vast majority of Shiites.
The Seveners considered themselves Ismailis or Ismailites. The founder of the dynasty of the Fatimids was an Ismailite. The Fatimids, who adopted the title of caliphs, founded Cairo proper and made it a center of Ismailite learning and preaching. When the caliph Al Mustansir died, the Ismailites divided between those who favored the succession of Al Mustali and those who inclined to Nizar, who lost the dynastic quarrel. The Persian Ismailites as well as some Shiites in Syria, both known as Nizaris, became extremely militant and recurred to terrorism against the Baghdad caliphate and especially against the Seljuks, who were Sunni. In Syria the Ismailite terrorists opposed the Crusaders and were known as Assassins from their use of hashish. In Persia the Nizari Ismailites founded a state that succumbed to the Mongols. In Syria and Lebanon, the Druzes and Alawites are vaguely descendants of the Ismailites. The Ismailites proper today are the followers of the Aga Khan.
Expansion of Islam
Despite the Sunni-Shia division, it would appear that there is a fundamental political and territorial continuity from the foundation of Islam by Muhammad and his successors to the elective caliphs and Ali and to the Umayyad Empire. The period of the elected caliphs saw the consolidation of Islam in Arabia under Abu Bakr and its extension to Syria (636), Egypt (640), Persia (642), and Afghanistan (652). Under the Umayyad caliphate, Islamic rule extended to Murannawarh (709-712), the Arab name for Transoxiana, and to southern Pakistan (712). The Maghreb was conquered between 642 and 708 against persistent Berber and Byzantine opposition. Kairouan, in northeastern Tunisia (Ifriqiya to its Muslim conquerors), was founded in 674 by an Umayyad general. Tunis was founded in 698. The Maghreb was constituted as a wilaya or province separate from the wilaya of Egypt.
Iberia, the Arab Al Andalus, was invaded in 711 by Arabs and Berbers. Berber resentment of Arab imposition was manifested by their adoption of Kharijism, which placed stress on tribal loyalties. A rebellion broke out in 700 in northern Morocco, which spread to Algeria. Other Kharijites usurped power in Ifriqiya and in Tripolitania in 747.
The Abbasids, descendants of Abbas, uncle of Muhammad, formed in 749, partially at least in league with Shiites, an opposition to the Umayyads, whose last caliph, Murwan II, was killed with most of his family in 750. In 761, the Abbasids recovered the Maghreb as far as eastern Algeria. Abu al Abbas, the first Abbasid caliph, was succeeded by al Mansur, who founded Baghdad in 762 and established the caliphate there.
With this move, Islam begins to disintegrate as a relatively unified political entity starting with the foundation of the independent emirate of Córdoba in 756 by Abdul al Rahman, a survivor of the massacre of the Umayyads. Around 777, Abdul al Rahman ibn Rustam, a leader of Persian origin, created a kingdom in Algeria, with its capital in Tahart (Rustamids). In 788, the Idrisids began their ascent to power in Morocco with Berber and Arab support.
Arabs first introduced Islam in Sind (southern Pakistan) in the 8th century. Around 800, Arabs founded the Aghlabid dynasty in Tunisia and eastern Algeria (Aghlabids). In 868, the Tulunids of Egypt went independent. Abbasid control of Persia foundered in the 10th century.
Islam is first mentioned in China in the 8th century and in Champa in the 11th century. Muslim merchants from Cambay, Gujarat, carried on trade with Sumatra and spread Islam to Malaya and Indonesia. Cambay was a crucial transfer point for goods from the west (mainly textiles) towards South East Asia and China. In 1350, the Moroccan traveller Ibn Batuta reported advances of Islam in Indonesia. Islam "skipped" continental South East Asia (Myanmar and Thailand), perhaps because of the close correlation between commerce and its diffusion.
Most of modern Islam is Sunni. Shiites are concentrated in Iran, Iraq, Yemen, and parts of Central Asia. Iran is almost solidly Shia. Shiites are a majority of the population of Iraq. There is an estimated 1.2 billion Muslims in the world. The countries where more than 75% of the population is Muslim are: Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Iran, Turkey, Morocco, Algeria, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Tajikistan, Senegal, Guinea, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Mali, Libya, Niger, Jordan, Oman, Mauritania, Turkmenistan, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, and Brunei; countries with between 50 and 75% Muslim population are: Sudan, Malaysia, Tanzania, Kyrgyzstan, Albania, Lebanon, and Sierra Leone; countries with between 25 and 50% Muslim population are: Nigeria, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Ghana, Kazakhstan, Ivory Coast, Chad, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia; countries with between 1% and 25% Muslim population are: India, China, Russia, Myanmar, Thailand, Philippines, Georgia, Germany, UK, France, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Madagascar, Congo-Kinshasa, Kenya, Taiwan, Rwanda, Burundi, Cameroon, Belarus, Mozambique, Serbia, Bulgaria, Malawi, Congo-Brazzavile, Zambia, Central African Republic, Netherlands, Uganda, Israel, Denmark, Equatorial Guinea, and Mongolia. The third largest number of Muslims is in India, after Indonesia and Pakistan.
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