Islam at War: a History

Islam at War ISLAM AT WAR A History George F. Nafziger and Mark W. Walton Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Nafziger, George F. Islam at war : a history / George F. Nafziger and Mark W. Walton. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–275–98101–0 (alk. paper) 1. Islam—History. I. Walton, Mark W., 1949– II. Title. BP50.N335 2003 297Ј.09—dc21 2002044957 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright ᭧ 2003 by George F. Nafziger and Mark W. Walton All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2002044957 ISBN: 0–275–98101–0 First published in 2003 Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.praeger.com Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10987654321 CONTENTS Introduction vii 1. Birth of Islam: Islamic Expansion and Muhammad as Battlefield Commander 1 2. The Great Conquests 15 3. Islam and the Crusades 37 4. The Sword and India: The Moghul Conquest 51 5. Egypt in the World of Islam 63 6. The Muslim Conquest and Loss of Spain 81 7. The Rise of the Ottoman Empire 91 8. The Sick Man of Europe: The Balkans and the Fall of the Ottoman Empire 109 9. The Sword and the Sea: Muslim Navies, Lepanto, and Malta 141 10. Mullahs and Machine Guns: Colonial Wars in the Middle East 153 11. Mullahs and Missiles: Islamic Wars since 1945 171 12. Islam and Jihad: For It Is Ordained unto You 207 13. Dying for God: The Assassins—Past and Present 235 vi CONTENTS 14. Conclusion 255 Bibliography 263 Index 267 INTRODUCTION On September 11, 2001, America suddenly discovered the Islamic world. The word jihad became commonplace in the spoken American lexicon. An unknown people with unusual customs and even more unusual ideas struck at the American heartland and secured our undivided attention. Yet, despite the thousands of words spoken by the media since September 11 the history of the Islamic world has barely been exposed to our view. And we are even less aware of what has motivated this attack on our peace and tranquility. Many in the Islamic world see the events of September 11 as a military operation. Surely Osama bin Laden did. Many will be surprised to dis- cover that this is not the first blow struck by the Islamic world against the Christian world or the West, nor the worst blow. It is merely the latest. Indeed, a large part of the Islamic world’s history revolves around armed conflict, much of it with the Christian and Western worlds. War has been part of the Islamic world since the Archangel Gabriel first spoke to Mu- hammad, and it is the principal process by which Islam spread throughout the world. It is the intent of this work to explore that ancient and rich military history. It begins with Muhammad, the first Muslim warlord, and follows the first world superpower, the Ottoman Empire, as it rose from the ob- scurity of the central Asian steppes and vanished at the stroke of a pen in 1918. It explores the history of suicidal religious zealots that fought the viii INTRODUCTION crusaders in 1100 and their modern counterparts driving airplanes into buildings filled with innocent civilians. It was not the intention of this work to provide a detailed, scholarly examination of the military history of the Islamic world. Such a work would be far too massive to be anything other than the work of a lifetime. Instead, this survey touches on the high points of Islam’s military history. It also seeks to set straight the record on the military nature of Islam, which has been broadly represented as being a peaceful religion. It cer- tainly has a peaceful side to it, but its military history is so rich and so long that any attempt to suggest that it doesn’t exist is a disservice to the truth. Chapter 1 BIRTH OF ISLAM: ISLAMIC EXPANSION AND MUHAMMAD AS BATTLEFIELD COMMANDER Warfare is ordained for you, though it is hateful unto you; but it may happen that ye hate a thing which is good for you, and it may happen that ye love a thing which is bad for you. Allah knoweth, ye know not. Koran, Surah II, 216 Muhammad was born, it is thought, in the year A.D. 571, at Mecca. The name given him by his mother is lost to history, but not the name given him by his peers—Muhammad. His father, Abdullah, died before his birth, and his mother, Aminah, a member of the Yathrib tribe of Medina, lived only until he was six. The honor of raising Muhammad fell to his grand- father, Abd-al-Muttalib, and when he died it fell to his uncle, abu-Talib. Legend relates that at the age of twelve Muhammad accompanied his uncle on a caravan journey to Syria and that during the course of this trip Muhammad met a Christian monk that legend identifies as Bahira. From this encounter he may have learned some of the tenets of the Christian faith. Little else is known about Muhammad’s youth except that some years after the trip he went into the service of a wealthy Meccan widow named Kadijah. So faithfully did the young man transact her business, and so excellent was his demeanor, that she married her young agent. The marriage proved a happy one, even though she was fifteen years older than he. Throughout the twenty-six years of their life together, he re- 2 ISLAM AT WAR mained devoted to her. Even after her death, when he had taken many wives, he continued to speak of her with the greatest love and reverence. This marriage, however, was pivotal in Muhammad’s rise to power. It gave him wealth, position, and status within the ranks of notables of Mecca. These men gave him the title Al-Amin, the “trustworthy” a tribute to his honesty and ability. Having gained a position of wealth, Muhammad had leisure, and in that leisure time he pursued his own inclinations. He took to secluding himself and meditating in a small cave on the hill outside of Mecca called “Hira.” While meditating in this cave Muhammad heard a voice commanding, “Read!” He responded, “I cannot read.” Again the voice commanded him to read and he responded he could not. A third time, and more terribly, the voice commanded, “Read!” Muhammad said, “What can I read?” The voice responded, “Read thou in the name of thy Lord, who created man from a clot and it is thy Lord the Most Bountiful who teacheth by the pen, teacheth man that which he knew not.”1 When his trance broke, Muham- mad stepped out of the cave and heard a voice say, “Oh Muhammad! Thou art Allah’s messenger, and I am Gabriel.” Before him stood, in likeness of a man, an angel. This was the first of many revelations; Mu- hammad had received the call of Allah. Highly distressed and filled with emotion, he rushed home in alarm. Kadijah convinced him that Allah would not send a harmful spirit to him. Inspired, Muhammad became as prophetic as any of the Hebrew notables of the Old Testament, preaching initially only to his family and closest circle. At first his message was God is one. He is all-powerful. He is the creator of the universe. There will be a day of judgment. Splendid rewards await in paradise those who follow God’s commandments. Those who do not, face terrible punishment in hell. As his convictions grew stronger, Muhammad went out among his fel- low Meccans with his revelation, initially to be met with derision and scorn. His message changed to one of dire warnings, and he became a prophet of doom, alternating between stories of the pleasures of paradise and the torments of hell. Muhammad’s wife and her cousin Waraqh ibn- Nawfl were among the first of his followers. However, the aristocratic and influential Ymayyad branch of Quraysh2 stood against him. They believed his heresy would damage their commercial interests because it attacked the pantheon of deities that stood at the center of the pan-Arabian pil- grimage upon which their commerce rested. This was the KaÛbah, the holy place to which all Arabia made pilgrimages, and Mecca was the node of this sacred place. BIRTH OF ISLAM 3 Despite this resistance, over a period of about four years Muhammad slowly gathered recruits from the slave and lower classes drawn to the promise of relief from their earthly sufferings. Alarmed, the Meccan au- thorities began to actively persecute Muhammad’s followers and forced the migration of eleven families to Abyssinia. In 615, a further eighty- three families followed. They found sanctuary in the domain of the Chris- tian Negus, who refused to deliver them into the hands of their oppressors. Muhammad did not flee to Abyssinia, but remained shut up in his family’s stronghold. At first, the defenders of the status quo tried to bring Muhammad to a compromise in his preaching against polytheism. They offered him a throne as king if he would give up his preaching. When negotiations failed to work, they turned to ostracizing him. His entire clan was shunned by the powers of Mecca. Undaunted by the persecution of his fellows, Muhammad continued to preach and convert.

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