The Secret Garden of the Assassins

Rivers of wine and damsels accomplished in the arts of amorous allurement. The birth of a questionable legend.
by Michael Isenberg.

Readers of my novel, The Thread of Reason, frequently ask me about the history behind the various stories I recount in the book. One of the most intriguing is that of the Sheikh (or Old Man) of the Mountain’s Secret Garden. The story comes from Marco Polo:

Mention shall now be made of the old man of the mountain. The district in which his residence lay obtained the name of Mulehet, signifying in the language of the Saracens, the place of heretics, and his people that of Mulehetites…The following account of this chief, Marco Polo testifies to having heard from sundry persons. His name was Aloadin, and his religion was that of Mahomet. In a beautiful valley enclosed between two lofty mountains, he had formed a luxurious garden, stored with every delicious fruit and every fragrant shrub that could be produced. Palaces of various sizes and forms were erected in different parts of the grounds, ornamented with works in gold, with paintings, and with furniture of rich silks. By means of small conduits contrived in these buildings, streams of wine, milk, honey, and some of pure water were seen to flow in every direction. The inhabitants of these palaces were elegant and beautiful damsels, accomplished in the arts of singing, playing upon all sorts of musical instruments, dancing, and especially those of dalliance and amorous allurement. Clothed in rich dresses they were seen continually sporting and amusing themselves in the garden and pavilions, their female guardians being confined within doors and never suffered to appear. The object which the chief had in view in forming a garden of this fascinating kind was this: that Mahomet having promised to those who should obey his will the enjoyments of Paradise, where every species of sensual gratification should be found, in the society of beautiful nymphs, he was desirous of its being understood by his followers that he also was a prophet and the compeer of Mahomet, and had the power of admitting to Paradise such as he should choose to favor. In order that none without his license might find their way into this delicious valley, he caused a strong and inexpugnable castle to be erected at the opening of it, through which the entry was by a secret passage. At his court, likewise, this chief entertained a number of youths, from the age of twelve to twenty years, selected from the inhabitants of the surrounding mountains, who showed a disposition for martial exercises, and appeared to possess the quality of daring courage. To them he was in the daily practice of discoursing on the subject of the paradise announced by the prophet, and of his own power of granting admission. And at certain times he caused opium to be administered to ten or a dozen of the youths; and when half dead with sleep he had them conveyed to the several apartments of the palaces in the garden. Upon awakening from the state of stupor, their senses were struck with all the delightful objects that have been described, and each perceived himself surrounded by lovely damsels, singing, playing, and attracting his regards by the most fascinating caresses, serving him also with delicate foods and exquisite wines; until intoxicated with excess of enjoyment, amidst actual rivulets of milk and wine, he believed himself assuredly in Paradise, and felt an unwillingness to relinquish its delights. When four or five days had thus passed, they were thrown once more into a drugged state, and carried out of the garden. Upon their being introduced to his presence, and questioned by him as to where they had been, their answer was, “In Paradise, through the favor of your highness”: and then before the whole court, who listened to them with eager curiosity and astonishment, they gave a circumstantial account of the scenes to which they had been witnesses. The chief thereupon addressing them, said: “We have the assurances of our prophet that he who would defend his lord shall inherit Paradise, and if you show yourself devoted to the obedience of my orders, that happy lot awaits you.” Animated to enthusiasm by words of this nature, all deemed themselves happy to receive the commands of their master, and were forward to die in his service. The consequences of this system was, when any of the neighboring princes, or others, gave offense to this chief, they were put to death by these his disciplined assassins: none of whom felt terror at the risk of losing their own lives, which they held in little estimation, provided they could execute their master’s will. On this account his tyranny became the subject of dread in all the surrounding countries.*

In other versions of the story, the recruits were given not opium, but rather hashish. From this the cult acquired its name, the Hashasheen, and the English language acquired a word: Assassin.

It’s a fascinating story. One would think that the damsel’s arts of “dalliance and amorous allurement” would indeed make for some very motivated killers, and I'm rather partial to the bit about rivers of wine. And yet, there is reason to think that it is nothing more than that: a story.

Marco Polo is not the most reliable of sources, and he did not travel through the area until years after the Assassin Cult and its castles had been destroyed. And even though they had operated for almost 170 years prior to that, I’m not aware of any references to the secret garden before Polo’s. Not to mention that it would take hundreds of people to build and maintain such a garden, which would make it almost impossible to keep it a secret. It would be widely known that it wasn't the real Paradise.

There are also other possible explanations for the origin of the term Hashasheen that don’t involve sex and drugs. The first Sheikh of the Mountain was named Hasan, and the cult may have taken its name from him.

But as I point out in the Historical Note to my novel,

In his History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Winston Churchill told one of the many legends of Rosamunde, mistress to Henry Plantagenet. He followed it up with a disclaimer: tedious researchers had proven the darn thing wasn’t true. Churchill saw no reason to let that get in the way of a good story; he included it in his book anyway. I feel the same about the story of…the secret Garden of the Assassins. [It’s] just too famous—and too good—to leave out. I hope historians will approve of, or at least forgive, my solutions to the very real difficulties raised by the tedious researchers.

Michael Isenberg drinks bourbon and writes novels. His latest book, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092, and tells the story of the conflict between science and shari’ah in medieval Islam. It is available on Amazon.com

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*- The Travels of Marco Polo, New York: Liveright Publishing Corp. (1926, 1953), M. Komroff, tr.

A Loaf of Bread, a Jug of Wine, and Thou

Did Muslims drink wine in the Middle Ages?
Part IV—Omar Khayyam.
by Michael Isenberg.

Omar Khayyam was a towering figure in the Muslim World at the turn of the 12th century. We in the West know him mainly as a poet, author of the Rubaiyat, but he was also a scientist, a philosopher, a mathematician, the physician of princes, and the companion of sultans.

As the Royal Astronomer, he developed the Jalali calendar, which, with modifications, is still in use in Iran today, and is accurate to one day in 5,000 years. To put that in perspective, the Gregorian calendar we use in the West is accurate to only one day in 3,000 years.

But Omar’s learning was not limited to the physical sciences. His insights into the Quran and the Hadith were well-respected by scholars of Shari’ah such as Abu Hamid Ghazali. To this day, Ghazali is one of the most influential thinkers in Islam. We have a story about him and Omar from the historian Abu’l-Hasan Bayhaqi (d. 1169). Bayhaqi knew Omar; while still a teenager, his dad took him to visit the aging polymath in his hometown of Nishapur, Iran. According to Bayhaqi, Omar once explained some point “concerning a certain verse” (presumably of the Quran) to a group of people, including Ghazali. Ghazali was not an easy man to please, and didn’t always get along with Omar, but on this occasion he exclaimed, “May God increase such learned ones as you; consider me as one of your followers!” Granted, being something of dick, Ghazali then felt compelled to add that he did not expect such a stellar analysis from a scientist [1].

Needless to say, Muslims in general, and Iranians in particular, are proud to have such a brilliant and pious scholar and poet among their numbers. Omar’s beautiful mausoleum in Nishapur was rebuilt in the last century. It is set amid tall pine trees and colorful gardens in what is otherwise a brown and dusty town surrounded by brown and dusty farmland. The park rather stands out on the satellite image. Nearby are the Khayyam Planetarium and Khayyam Boulevard.

And yet, there’s a fly in the ointment: Wine. The oldest collection of Omar’s poems we have is the Ouseley Manuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, transcribed in 1460. Out of the 158 verses that appear there, 90 of them, by my count, or 57%, are about wine—something prohibited in Islam.

I began this series on Islam and wine by citing some of the verses in the Muslim scripture that prohibit the use of alcohol, but I also observed that the literature of the Middle Ages suggests that the prohibition was not very well enforced. In Part II, I backed that up with examples from the history books. Religious hardliners like Ghazali were not happy with wine shops all over town and drinking parties in the palaces. In Part III I wrote about how they struck back, with some success. Since I appropriated Omar Khayyam as the hero of my latest novel, The Thread of Reason, it seems fitting to wrap up the series with a question that has occupied biographers and historians for centuries: Did he drink?

For such an esteemed personage as Omar Khayyam to be as obsessed with wine as his poetry shows him to be is something of an embarrassment to Muslims.

Some condemned his verses. The historian Abu’l-Hasan al-Qifti (d. 1248) wrote that Omar’s poems “are inwardly like snakes who bite the Shari’ah.” [2]

But others attempted to explain them away, and these attempts began almost the moment Omar drew his final breath. The wine in the Rubaiyat, they said, should be interpreted symbolically. Numerous theories have been proposed as to what exactly it symbolizes, but the most common is that it symbolizes the joy of mystic communion with Allah. According to this theory, Omar was an adherent of the Islamic esoteric movement known as Sufism, and the wine in his poetry should be understood in that light, as it is for other prominent Sufi poets such as Rumi and Hafiz. Thus, the question of what wine symbolizes in the Rubaiyat cannot be separated from the question of whether Omar Khayyam was a Sufi.

The theory is not entirely without merit. There are certainly many verses in the Rubaiyat where this interpretation would make sense. Consider one of the most famous:

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou
          Beside me singing in the Wilderness—
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow! [3]

It’s certainly plausible, but by no means certain, that all the elements of Sufism are there. The wilderness is the dwelling of the holy man. Ishmael, Moses, Jesus—they all found Allah in the desert. The loaf of bread is the simple diet of the Sufi. The book of verses is his song. As for the jug of wine, it’s the ecstasy of communion with Allah, the ‘Thou,’ singing beside the ‘me.’

Further, Ahmad Ghazali (d. ca. 1123), who probably knew Omar, included some of Omar's verses in his Treatise on Preaching, a collection of Sufic verses and commentary [4]. Ahmad was the brother of the aforementioned Abu Hamid Ghazali and a prominent Sufi himself. That he included Omar's verses in such a collection suggests that he viewed Omar as a Sufi himself.

But there is no corroboration of that from Omar himself, or any of his contemporaries or near-contemporaries, unless you count Abbas Kayvan Qazwini’s claim that the ghost of Omar Khayyam visited him in a dream and told him it was so [5]. Indeed, it is unusual for someone who has dedicated his life to rational pursuits such as astronomy and mathematics to go in for mysticism. In the same passage where he compares the Rubaiyat to snakes, al-Qifti also tells us that even though “Sufis understood his poems outwardly and considered them to be part of their tradition,” when Omar “arrived in Baghdad, members of [a Sufi] tradition and believers in primary science came to him and began to socialize with him. He did not accept them.”

The debate continues into our own time. Robert Graves, better known as the author of I, Claudius, threw his hat into the ring when he agreed to collaborate with Omar Ali-Shah to publish The Original Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1968), based on a manuscript that had allegedly been in the Shah family for many generations and supported the Sufic interpretation. Alas, Shah never produced the original manuscript, and it is now widely believed that the whole thing was a hoax—of which Graves himself was the greatest victim.

Mehdi Aminrazavi of the University of Mary Washington took on the question in The Wine of Wisdom (2005), unquestionably the best Khayyam biography out there, and an indispensable help to me in writing both The Thread of Reason and this article. On the question of Omar Khayyam and Sufism, Dr. Aminrazavi concludes, “None of his biographers have alluded to his Sufi affiliation, and the one exception I have mentioned previously asserts that Sufis misunderstood his Ruba’iyyat and interpreted them as they wished,” i.e., the al-Qifti passage, cited above. Further, “For all we know, Khayyam neither had a Sufi master nor was he initiated into a Sufi tradition.” Both transmission of knowledge from a master and the initiation ritual are of great importance in Sufism, so their absence in Omar’s case is highly significant.

Although he doesn’t accept that Omar was a Sufi, and therefore the notion that wine in the Rubaiyat represents Sufic communion, Dr. Aminrazavi nevertheless argues for a symbolic interpretation, and indeed he took the title of his book from it: “Khayyam’s use of the concept of wine is as the ‘wine of wisdom,’ a philosophical image which enables one to come to terms with the merciless forces of nature through an all-too-human-wisdom.” Aminrazavi cites a number of verses in support of the wine of wisdom symbolism, including this one:

The mystery is great and the answers are rare
Wise men have searched but you should not care
          Make thy own heaven here with this moment and wine
For the heaven is a fairy tale, nothing but Air.

With all due respect to Dr. Aminrazavi, I disagree with the wine of wisdom metaphor, along with the Sufic metaphor. I believe that when Omar talks about wine in the Rubaiyat, what it symbolizes is…wine. I have two reasons for that. Regarding the first, consider the following, somewhat humorous verses from the Ouseley manuscript: #38,

I drink wine; my Enemies, high and low,
Say—“Do not drink it; ‘tis Religion’s Foe.’
          When I learned wine was a Foe, I answered—
“’Tis permitted to drink the Foe’s Blood, you know.” [6]

And #75,

I drink wine, and every one drinks who like me is worthy of it;
my wine-drinking is but a small thing to Him;
          God knew, on the Day of Creation, that I should drink wine;
if I do not drink wine, God’s knowledge was ignorance. [7]

In these verses, we see that Omar clearly views wine drinking as a sin. He knows it’s prohibited, but he drinks it anyway. He can’t help it. It’s foreordained. Fortunately, Allah is a loving god, and won’t judge him too harshly.

This notion that wine is weakness and sin recurs in seven other verses (#45, 62, 64, 78, 99, 104, and 118). It’s not consistent with the view that wine symbolizes mystic communion—which is not a sin (or at least a Sufi wouldn't say it was). I haven’t run across this angle in the poetry of known Sufis like Rumi. Nor is it consistent with the wine of wisdom—also not a sin in a religion which puts as high a premium on scholarship as Islam does. But wine equals sin makes perfect sense if it’s to be understood as simply plain old tavern-variety fermented grape juice.

The second reason I believe that wine means wine is not based on quite so scholarly an analysis. I’m rather fond of wine myself, and have some experience with it. Reading the Rubaiyat, I just get the gut feeling that Omar knows what he’s talking about.

Michael Isenberg drinks bourbon (and wine) and writes novels. His latest book, The Thread of Reason, featuring Omar Khayyam, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092, and tells the story of the conflict between science and shari’ah in medieval Islam. It is available on Amazon.com Photo credit(s): touriar.com, Google Maps

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[1] Bayhaqi, Abu’l-Hasan, Tatimah siwan al-Hikmah, Lahore (1351 AH), pp. 116-17 [2] Qifti, Abu’l-Hasan al-, Tarikh al-Qifti (History of the Scholars), Leipzig (1903), pp. 243-44. [3] Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, 3rd ed. (1872), Edward Fitzgerald, tr., xii. Fitzgerald’s translations tend to be a little loose, and this is actually a composite of #149 and 155 in the Ouseley manuscript, but the Sufic elements I allude to are all there in the original. [4] Ghazzali, Ahmad, Risalah maw’izah, Tehran (1371 AH) Nourbakhsh, ed. [5] Qazwini, A.K. Sharh-i ruba’iyyat-i Khayyam, Tehran (1379 AH), M.R.M. Chahardehi, ed., p. 19. [6] Adapted by me from the translation in The Ruba’iyat of Omar Khayyam, Boston: L.C. Page & Co. (1898), Edward Heron-Allen, tr. [7] Heron-Allen translation, loc. cit.

The Saudi Oil Facility Attacks: What the US Should Do Now

It will take more than tweets for President Trump to show the Iranians that they will not benefit from attacking the world’s energy supply.

by Michael Isenberg.

The video was quite dramatic. Mountains of white-orange flame dwarfing the buildings and lighting up the sky. Billows of red smoke trailing off into the night.

The attacks on the Saudi oil facilities, believed to be from a combination of cruise missiles and drones, struck the Abqaiq processing plant and the Khurais oil field at 4 AM Saturday morning. The Saudi government reported that there were no fatalities or injuries, fortunately, but the Abqaiq facility will be offline for an undetermined period of time. The facility removes sulfur from some 5 to 7 million barrels of oil a day, about half of Saudi Arabia’s production, and around 5% of the world’s oil supply.

Now that the fires are, if not exactly out, at least “under control,” the question for those of us in the US is what, if anything should we do about it? And that question can’t be separated from the questions of who was responsible for the attacks and what were their motives.

Who did it?

Within hours of the attacks, a spokesman for the Houthi rebels in Yemen appeared on their al-Masirah news channel and claimed responsibility. The Houthi, based in the country's western hills, have been at war with their government since March of 2015, in what has been called “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.” The war has been a stalemate, with little change in the territories subject to government and Houthi control. Almost from the beginning, the Saudi military intervened on the government side, conducting a massive air campaign, but with little effect. In retaliation, the Houthis have launched drone and missile attacks against defense and oil facilities within Saudi Arabia, but none of these earlier attacks were as damaging as Abqaiq and Khurais.

It’s about 550 miles from Abqaiq to Houthi-held territories in Yemen, within the 930 mile range of the most advanced Houthi drone, the UAV-X. Nevertheless, there is some reason for skepticism whether the Houthis were actually responsible. An anonymous US military source has claimed that the damage to the facilities were on the west-north-west sides, suggesting a direction of attack from Iran, or possibly Iraq, where there are many Iran-backed militias. Indeed, as the map shows, both Iran and Iraq are much closer to the targets.

In a tweet on Saturday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called out Iran explicitly for the “unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply,” adding, “There is no evidence the attacks came from Yemen.”

Iran’s Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, in turn, accused Pompeo of lying. “Having failed at ‘max pressure,’” he tweeted, “@SecPompeo's turning to ‘max deceit.’”

In my mind, the bottom line as to whether the Abqaiq and Khurais attacks came from the Houthis or the Iranians is: I don’t care. The Houthis are Iranian clients. We know this because of the various Iranian arms shipments to the Houthis, sometimes accompanied by trainers, that have been observed over the years, and sometimes intercepted, most notably the capture of the Jihan One by the Yemeni government in 2013. As far as I’m concerned, Iran is responsible, regardless of where the drones took off from.

What was their motive?

Iran’s defenders insist that the Islamic Republic has no motive for carrying out such an attack. I disagree. When it comes to motive, there are numerous possibilities; an embarrassment of riches. Any one of them could fill a blog post by itself. In the interest of space (and not boring you), I will merely list some here, without going into their details and relative merits:

Start with Iran’s domestic politics. We often talk about the country as if it’s a single entity with a single motive. But Iran and its government are deeply fractured. In particular, there is conflict between the religious hardliners on the one hand, led by Ayatollah Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guard, and the civilian government on the other, led by President Rouhani. The biggest area of disagreement is engagement with the West. Rouhani got re-elected promising that such engagement would grow the country’s economy, while the hardliners still view the West as the Great Satan. By stirring up conflict with the West, the Revolutionary Guard is causing Rouhani’s policies to fail, thereby undermining him. An all out war would give them a pretext to remove Rouhani from power all together.

Iran has other domestic problems. Contrary to Rouhani’s plans, the economy is tanking, thanks to President Trump’s decision to pull out of the 2015 nuclear deal and re-impose economic sanctions. Iran is desperate to get the sanctions lifted, and by threatening the world’s oil supplies, it hopes to pressure the US to give in.

In addition to economic disaster, the government of Iran faces a population that is sick and tired of living under shari’ah, and is fighting back. An unending series of foreign policy crises can distract the population from these issues (I actually did fill a blog post about this. From last July: “Rouhani Wags the Dog: Behind the Trump/Rouhani war of words”).

Then there’s US domestic politics. The 2020 election, unfortunately, will touch on every major event for the next 14 months (An aside: when the presidential election touches every major event, the presidency has too much damn power). Even if Trump doesn’t lift the sanctions, by dragging him into an unpopular Middle Eastern quagmire, Iran hopes to cost him enough votes for him to lose what promises to be a close election. A Democrat in the White House will be far easier for them to hoodwink, as they learned from their experience with Mr. Obama.

As for regional politics, Iran is locked in a battle with Saudi Arabia to dominate the Middle East. Shutting down half of Saudi oil production harms its rival substantially.

Finally, the Iranian government is run by Islamists, who are inspired by the Quran and the Hadith--which say that Allah has commanded them to wage jihad against the unbeliever (the West) and bring death to the apostate (Saudi Arabia).

What should the United States do?

First of all, here’s what I don’t think we should do just now: attack Iran militarily. Abqaiq and Khurais were not directed against the United States and none of our citizens were hurt. A military response would be disproportionate. Not to mention, as I noted above, the Revolutionary Guard wants a confrontation with the US, so we shouldn’t give them one.

But just because I don't want a military confrontation with Iran doesn't mean I think we should sit on our collective ass and do nothing. That’s what we’ve been doing and it’s not working.

A lot of the discussion about Iran revolves around the false alternative, "Go to war" or "Do nothing." In fact, there are numerous lesser measures we could take. Indeed, if history teaches us anything, it's that the best way to create a situation where we have to go to war someday is to do nothing, rather than take those lesser measures while we still can.

It would be irresponsible to do nothing. The Iranians have threatened to shut down shipping in the Straits of Hormuz and have taken numerous steps to make good on that threat. Yes, they deny mining the MT Front Altair and the Kokuka Courageous oil tankers and the evidence against them is sketchy. But there's no doubt they shot down a US drone and seized the Stena Impero oil tanker and its crew (which they’re still holding). Furthermore, they delivered the cargo of the Grace One tanker to Assad’s Syria, in violation of EU sanctions and their own promises, and they’ve imprisoned some dozen or so western citizens, mostly on dubious spying accusations. No responsible government can sit idly by in the face of this many attacks on the liberty and property of its citizens.

And yet, the response of the US and its allies has been virtually non-existent. President Trump posted some threatening tweets and added Ayatollah Khamanei and Foreign Minister Zarif to the list of sanctioned individuals, thereby freezing any assets they have in the United States. This did nothing but prompt mockery from Mr. Zarif who tweeted, “It has no effect on me or my family, as I have no property or interests outside of Iran. Thank you for considering me such a huge threat to your agenda.”

Clearly, Iran is not impressed, and, like all bullies, it has merely been emboldened by the weak response to engage in ever more aggressive provocation. It will continue destroying property and kidnapping people until the West puts some measures with real teeth in place, on top of the US sanctions already in existence.

As I’ve argued previously, US policy should not be based on knee-jerk reactions to the latest event. Rather, the US should act according to an overarching strategy for Saudi Arabia and Iran, neither of whom is a friend to the US or US values. Specifically the US should learn from the successes of the Nixon Administration during the Cold War and follow a two-prong strategy based on (1) linkage—tying the things Iran and Saudi Arabia want to their good behavior, and (2) triangular diplomacy—playing them off against each other.

There is not much we can do right now by way of triangular diplomacy. Ideally we would expand military and diplomatic aid to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and thereby show the Iranians that this kind of attack only benefits its rival. But there’s not much opportunity, given that President Trump—despite Congressional opposition—is already giving them everything they want. Might want to rethink that policy.

There’s a clear path on the linkage side, however. We already know the US sanctions are hurting. If President Trump persuaded our European allies to join the US, it would make a big difference in showing Iran that aggression will not get the sanctions lifted, but instead will have the opposite effect. We've heard about President Trump's spectacular negotiating skills often enough. It’s time for him to put them to work.

UPDATE 9/18--Since I posted this, there have been reports that US officials claim the reason Saudi air defenses were ineffective is that the radars were all pointed to the south, toward Yemen, where an attack was expected from, rather than the north, toward Iran. If true, then this is evidence that the attack actually was launched from Iran. It also suggests that there's something we can do for the Saudis at this point, and thereby send the message to Iran that bad behavior will only benefit its rival: sell them some more Patriot missile batteries for their northern perimeter.

Michael Isenberg drinks bourbon and writes novels. His latest book, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092, and tells the story of the conflict between science and shari’ah in medieval Islam. It is available on Amazon.com Photo credit(s): BBC, WhatsNew2Day.com, twitter

The Source of Incalculable Danger in Respect of Hereafter

Did Muslims drink wine in the Middle Ages?
Part III—The Islamists Strike Back.
by Michael Isenberg.

As I wrote in Parts I and II of this series on Islam and drinking, readers of my historical murder mystery, The Thread of Reason are often surprised at how much wine the Muslim characters in the book guzzle down. “Isn’t alcohol forbidden is Islam?” they ask.

In no uncertain terms. But despite the ban, plenty of drinking went on. We know that from the historical chronicles of the time, which tells us of some wild parties in the royal palaces. Perhaps even more significantly, we know that from literature like the Maqamat of Qasim Hariri and The Thousand and One Nights, often a better source on daily life than the histories. The histories give us portraits of sultans and caliphs, and idealized portraits at that. The storybooks tell us about the lives of ordinary people.

Although drinking was widespread, there were plenty of orthodox Muslims, True Believers, who were unhappy about the situation. And they struck back. In 1092, when my book takes place, their undisputed leader was Abu Hamid Ghazali, head of the school of shari’ah (Muslim law) in Baghdad known as the Nizamiyya. Three years later, he suffered a nervous breakdown, left the Nizamiyya and wandered around Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Arabia as a pilgrim and student of mysticism. When he returned to his native land of Persia, ten years later, he seems to have become a bit of crank. He spent a great deal of time writing books and letters of helpful advice to the rulers of the land, some solicited, some not. He was especially big on nagging them to repent their sins. And high on his list of sins requiring repentance was drinking.

Drinking comes up, for example, in Ghazali’s Book of Counsel for Kings (Nassihat al-Muluk), which was written at the request of the Sultan Sanjar, son of the great Malk-shah. In it, Ghazali condemns “continual backgammon-playing, chess-playing, wine-drinking, ball games and hunting,” as they “do not befit the king because they distract.”

A letter to one Mu’in al-Mulk was even more explicit. I haven’t found out anything about this individual elsewhere, but the title ending in “al-Mulk” indicates that he was a vizier—prime minister to a ruler. “May Mu’inul Mulk be warned against what one of his friends has told me these days,” Ghazali wrote.

The things reported to me against him are the source of incalculable danger in respect of Hereafter. So far as he is concerned, I have become extremely worried… You amuse yourself with drinking wine that blinds your eyes and heart to your duties towards your people and an understanding of the laws of human nature. I advise you to renounce drinking wine, even if it is so hard for you to sever your ties with the cruel and corrupt Government officials, for when personal sin is associated with cruelty, it is beyond human power to get them separated from each other, particularly in one’s old age drinking wine is one of the worst crimes… I sincerely hope you would despise wine and make up your mind to hate it for the rest of your days. (Letters of al-Ghazzali [Fada'il al-anam], Abdul Qayyum, tr., 1992)

I’m not sure how much influence Ghazali had on the vizier Mu’in al-Mulk or the sultan Sanjar (albeit I can’t help noticing that in this picture of Sanjar, from a 14th century illuminated manuscript, he's holding what appears to be a wine goblet).

But there is no doubt that Ghazali’s influence on succeeding generations, both on the subject of drinking and in many other areas, was immense. In the century that followed, the Muslim world saw a crackdown on the enforcement of shari’ah, as a new generation of rulers came to power who not only didn’t drink themselves, but were determined that there would be no drinking in their domains.

For example, the chronicle of ibn al-Athir tell us that a year into the reign of the caliph an-Nasir, who ascended to the throne in 1180, “there was much sinful behavior in Baghdad. The palace chamberlain set up a group to pour away intoxicating drinks and to arrest loose women.” (The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir for the Crusading Period from al-Kamil fi’l-ta’rikh, D.S. Richards, tr., 2006-2008).

An-Nasir got along very badly with Saladin, the sultan known to us in the west as the gentlemen who treated his enemy Richard the Lion-Hearted so chivalrously. But Saladin was also a dyed-in-the-wool jihadist and there was one thing at least that he and an-Nasir agreed on. Two years after an-Nasir’s crackdown on alcohol in Baghdad, Saladin’s government issued a diploma appointing a market official, called a muhtasib, in Aleppo. The diploma enjoined the muhtasib to enforce regulations on weights and measures and hygiene, prohibit usury, evict magicians and fortune tellers, prevent nudity in the public baths, and “as regards intoxicating beverages, let him seek them out and spill them on the ground, and let him apply the legal punishment to anyone who has drunk of them, as soon as the guilty party has regained his sobriety.” (Anne-Marie Edde, Saladin, 2011) The legal punishment was eighty lashes with a palm switch.

Not coincidentally, both an-Nasir and Saladin had right hand men who were students of students of students of Ghazali. Clearly Ghazali and the hardliners got their way in the end.

In the final installment of this series, I will take a look at a sometime friend of Ghazali, Omar Khayyam. In his collection of poems known as the Rubaiyat, there are numerous verses about wine, which begs a question that has been a source of debate among historians and biographers since he drew his final breath: did Omar drink it himself.

Michael Isenberg drinks bourbon and writes novels. His latest book, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092, and tells the story of the conflict between science and shari’ah in medieval Islam. It is available on Amazon.com Photo credit(s): Public domain

I’ll Have Grounds More Relative than This

The Gulf of Oman Tanker Attacks: Avoid a rush to judgment.
By Michael Isenberg.

America awoke this morning to horrifying images of a funnel of black smoke billowing from a tanker ship. The news was not good. Two ships—the MT Front Altair and the Kokuka Courageous—had been attacked in the Gulf of Oman, just outside the Straits of Hormuz. The only good news was that the crews had been safely evacuated.

The seriousness of the attacks was obvious to anyone who pays attention to what goes on in the world. 20% of world oil trade—35% of oil shipped by sea—passes through the Straits. The attacks caused the price of oil to jump 4% almost immediately. They come in the wake of similar attacks against four ships last month, which left far less damage, and in an environment of tension between Iran and the United States, due to the Trump Administration’s withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear agreement and the subsequent sanctions re-imposed on Iran. As I wrote last July, just the prospect of sanctions had done considerable damage to the Iranian economy: “The Iranian rial has collapsed against the dollar. Prices of foreign goods have skyrocketed. In Teheran last month, shopkeepers in the Grand Bazaar closed their doors in protest, and thousands of demonstrators attempted to march to Parliament until they were dispersed by riot police.” Things have only gone downhill since then.

The Trump Administration has been quick to blame Iran for the Gulf of Oman attacks. In a press briefing this afternoon, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said,

The assessment of the United States government is that the Islamic Republic of Iran is responsible for the attacks that occurred in the gulf of Oman today. This assessment is based on intelligence, the weapons used, the level of expertise needed to execute the operation, recent similar Iranian attacks on shipping and the fact that no proxy group operating in the area has the resources and proficiency to act with such a high degree of sophistication…Iran is lashing out, because the regime wants our successful, maximum pressure campaign lifted.

Secretary Pompeo spoke mainly in terms of a diplomatic response. “Today I’ve instructed our UN Ambassador Jonathan Cohen to raise Iran’s attacks in the UN Security Council meeting, later this afternoon. Our policy remains an economic and diplomatic effort to bring Iran back to the negotiating table.”

But there were also these ominous words: “The United States will defend its forces, interests, and stand with our partners and allies to safeguard global commerce and regional stability.” Whether that refers to a US military strike against Iran is unclear, but military action would certainly be consistent with some of President Trump’s threats on the subject, such as last year’s all-caps “Mother of all Tweets,” “NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE.”

I hope my fellow citizens will have less of a knee-jerk reaction to the attacks than the Trump Administration did, and will urge their elected officials to put off any military response until the case against Iran is considerably stronger than it stands now.

Twice in my lifetime, the US became entangled in foreign wars, at considerable financial expense to American taxpayers, and tragic loss of life to American soldiers, based on accusations from our government which turned out afterward to be not quite true: the escalation of the Vietnam War after the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, and the launch of the Iraq War amid accusations of Iraqi chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs in 2003. In light of those experiences, it behooves all of us as citizens to treat any such claims by government officials with extreme skepticism.

Indeed there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of the current accusations against Iran. Contrary to what Secretary Pompeo said in his statement, there is no shortage of suspects in the area with “the level of expertise needed to execute the operation.” Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Israel all have considerable capabilities, and would benefit from escalating conflict between Iran and the United States.

Nor should we rule out non-state actors like ISIS and al-Qaeda. Because also contrary to Secretary Pompeo’s statement, the attacks were not particularly sophisticated. Although the details are still forthcoming, and there has been one claim of a torpedo involved, most reports are that limpet mines were used, World War II technology which requires little more than a man with SCUBA equipment to attach them to the ships. Limpet mines have been used in other attacks by non-state actors. Radical conservationists were believed to have used them to sink the whaling vessel Sierra in 1980, after it survived being rammed by the Sea Shepherd. They were also used by the Mujahidin in Afghanistan during their war to expel the Soviets.

Then there is Iran’s motive for the attack. Secretary Pompeo says that it is to scare the Trump Administration into backing off on sanctions. I find it hard to believe that the government of Iran would think that could possibly work. If anything, it would harden the Administration’s—and America’s—resolve. The leaders of Iran are evil. Not stupid. Also, they denied their involvement. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tweeted “Suspicious doesn't begin to describe what likely transpired this morning.” I don’t for one minute think that the Islamic Republic of Iran is truthful. But it will tell the truth when it perceives that’s in its own interest to do so. And if its goal really is to put the fear of Allah into the United States, then it would want the US to know, in no uncertain terms, that it had committed these atrocities. In the immortal words of Dr. Strangelove, the whole point is lost if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world, eh?!

So something doesn't add up. If, after further investigation, the US government is forthcoming with solid evidence against Iran, I’ll be the first to say bomb the f—kers back into the Stone Age. But so far all we have is assertions from Secretary Pompeo which don’t quite ring true, and have nothing to back them up. As Hamlet said, “I’ll have grounds more relative than this.” Until then, I urge restraint.

UPDATE 6/14/19: Since my original post, the US released grainy video of an unmarked boat of the type used by Iran removing an unexploded mine from the Kokuka Courageous. The Trump Administration alleges that it proves Iran put it there, although that doesn't necessarily follow. So I still advise skepticism. Remember the Gulf of Tonkin. Remember Iraq.

Michael Isenberg drinks bourbon and writes novels. His latest book, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Iran and Iraq in the year 1092, and tells the story of the conflict between science and shari’ah in medieval Islam. It is available on Amazon.com Photo credit(s): CBS News

Sayyid Qutb: The Ultimate Incel

The “Baby it’s Cold Outside” Jihadi—in his own words.
by Michael Isenberg.

Many of you have seen the article making the rounds of cyberspace last week which added yet another twist to the “Baby it’s Cold Outside” controversy. According to the article, written by Adam Pasick, the classic holiday tune has not only “come under scrutiny in the #MeToo era for its light-hearted portrayal of sexual coercion—though a close reading suggests the song could just as easily be a sly homage to female empowerment.” It also “played a small but crucial role in the rise of modern Islamic fundamentalism:”

Back in 1950, the Egyptian author and religious theorist Sayyid Qutb spent two years as an exchange student at a teacher’s college in Greeley, Colorado. He was infuriated by many things about American life—people spent too much time taking care of their lawns, and it was impossible to get a decent haircut—but especially by a church dance where a pastor played Frank Loesser’s Grammy-winning song on a gramophone: “The dance hall convulsed to the tunes on the gramophone and was full of bounding feet and seductive legs,” Qutb wrote later. “Arms circled waists, lips met lips, chests met chests, and the atmosphere was full of passion...” When Qutb returned to Egypt, he was a changed man, determined to reject the West and embrace a purified version of Islam.

(A more detailed account of Qutb’s years in Greeley may be found in David von Drehle’s 2006 article, “A Lesson in Hate.”)

When I read Qutb’s complaints about America, he did not sound like a culture warrior to me. He sounded like a man who can’t get a date. His obsession with “seductive legs,” not to mention waists, lips, and chests, is a dead giveaway. What motivation other than sex would get the male of the species so spun up over a bad haircut? Granted, the Hitler mustache that he sported during those years, when the wounds of losing loved ones during World War II were still fresh, probably didn't help him any. I concede that this is pure speculation on my part, but it seems to me that Sayyid Qutb was the ultimate incel—involuntary celibate. Women didn’t want to go out with him, so to protect his ego, he blew his personal problems up to literally cosmic proportions, and invented the modern theory of jihad. In his own mind he was, in the words of the Psalm, the stone which the builders rejected, but which, with God’s help, would become the chief cornerstone.

Anyway, Qutb’s entanglement in the “Baby it’s Cold Outside” controversy gives us an excellent opportunity to shine the disinfectant of sunlight on his writings, in particular his signature work, 1964’s Milestones, and glean from it some insight into the modern jihadi movement.

The title of the book refers to the milestones that Islam must follow in order to become “the leader of mankind.” Now that East and West have failed because of their decadence, according to Qutb, “the turn of Islam and the Muslim community has arrived.”

World leadership is the final milestone. The first is to reconstruct the original seventh century Muslim community of Muhammad and his Companions. They were the best generation because Islam for them was an all-encompassing way of life—not just one part of it, nor an academic discipline. And they were completely governed by the Quran, free of the influence of foreigners like the Greeks and the Jews. In this utopia, homosexuality and other sexual immorality will be prohibited. Women will be free to tend to their “basic responsibility of bringing up children,” relieved of the burden of choosing a career. Indeed, men will also be relieved of that burden since “the society automatically recognizes his capabilities” and will assign a job to him. Science will be permitted, as long as it stays in its proper bounds and doesn’t cross the line into metaphysics. Examples of science crossing that line, which presumably will be off limits going forward, include evolution and psychology.

Only after the Muslim heart has been prepared by the creation of such a totalitarian nightmare will it be ready for the next milestone: jihad [struggle] against the unbeliever. The chapter on jihad is the longest in the book, and certainly the most relevant for understanding modern Islamic fundamentalism, since it bears directly on a debate about its nature that we in the West have been conducting since September 11.

Our left-of-center friends tell us that Islam is a religion of peace. It has no desire to force itself on the West. Indeed to do so would violate the Quran, which says, “There is no compulsion in religion (2:256).” And although the Quran does talk about jihad, conventional warfare is the “Lesser Jihad.” The “Greater Jihad” is to war internally against one’s own individual weaknesses. The only reason Muslims have warred against the West, according to the Left, is to defend themselves from the West’s attacks on them (colonialism, overthrow of Mossadegh, Gulf Wars, etc.). As for their attacks on Israel, please be assured that they are merely anti-Zionist, not anti-Jew.

On every one of these points Qutb either disagrees in no uncertain terms, or he understands the terms in some way that is very different from the way those of us in the West do. For example, “The peace which Islam desires” according to Qutb, “[is] that the obedience of all people be for God alone.”

Compulsion, to Qutb, isn’t what we in the West understand it to be either. According to him, it is important for the individual to choose Islam freely—but Qutb has some peculiar notions about what constitutes compulsion and freedom. Living under any government that is not Islamic is, in his view, compulsion. “The real servitude is following laws devised by someone, and this is that servitude which in Islam is reserved for God alone.” Such laws are obstacles to free choice. Muslims have “no recourse but to remove them by force.” “Islam does not force people to accept its belief, but it wants to provide a free environment…in which they will have the choice of beliefs.” “It is the right of Islam to release mankind from servitude to human beings so that they may serve God alone…all men are free under Him.” That's really messed up. According to Qutb's logic, if you live under laws crafted by legislators that you elected, you’re in servitude. But if a Muslim army invades your country and imposes shari’ah on it, you’re free.

Qutb does believe in the so-called “greater” jihad, but only as preparation for the “lesser:” “Before a Muslim steps into the battlefield, he has already fought a great battle within himself against Satan.”

To war against the unbeliever is commanded by the Quran. Qutb cites verse 9:29, for example:

Fight those who believe not in Allah, nor in the Last Day, nor forbid what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden, nor follow the Religion of Truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax [jizyah] in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection [Maulana Muhammad Ali translation].

In case there’s any doubt from the text that the Quran is not talking about defensive war, but rather an unprovoked war of expansion, Qutb spells it out:

It may happen that the enemies of Islam may consider it expedient not to take any action against Islam, if Islam leaves them alone in their geographic boundaries to continue the lordship of some men over others and does not extend its message of universal freedom within its domain. But Islam cannot agree to this unless they submit to its authority by paying Jizyah, which will be a guarantee that they have opened their doors for the preaching of Islam and will not put any obstacle in its way through the power of the state…Islam takes the initiative.

Qutb ridicules those Muslims who believe that defense is the ultimate objective of jihad: they’re dupes of “shrewd orientalists.”

Among the unbelievers who must be forced into a state of subjection, Qutb singles out one group in particular to be reviled. He warns of the

tricks played by world Jewry, whose purpose is to eliminate all limitations, especially the limitations imposed by faith and religion, so that the Jews may penetrate into the body politic of the whole world and then may be free to perpetuate their evil designs. At the top of the list of these activities is usury, the aim of which is that all the wealth of mankind end up in the hands of Jewish financial institutions.

Try to argue that that’s not anti-Jew, just anti-Zionist.

The apologists for Islamic fundamentalism will no doubt argue at this point that Qutb was just one guy—we can’t judge a whole movement based on his insane opinions.

Yes, we can.

Qutb was not a fringe figure. It’s difficult to overestimate the extent of his influence, thanks to his role in the Muslim Brotherhood. As I wrote previously the Brotherhood lies at the center of the web of individuals and organizations, what Andrew McCarthy called the “Siamese connectedness,” that comprise the infrastructure of modern Sunni extremism. Abdullah Azzam, co-founder of al-Qaeda, was a Brotherhood alumnus, as were al-Qaeda Number Two Ayman al-Zawahiri and 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammad. Hamas is the Brotherhood's Palestinian branch.

If the Brotherhood lies at the center of extremism, Qutb lay at the center of the Brotherhood. He joined after his return to Egypt, and soon became one of its leaders. He was its chief propagandist and editor-in-chief of its weekly publication, Al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin. His influence even extended to Osama bin Laden, who, though not a Brotherhood member himself, studied under Qutb’s brother.

In the edifice of modern jihadism, Qutb, sadly, became a cornerstone after all. But I doubt that God had much to do with it.

Michael Isenberg drinks bourbon and writes novels. His latest book, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092, and tells the story of the conflict between science and shari’ah in medieval Islam. It is available on Amazon.com Photo credit(s): CNN

Joyous Assemblies

Did Muslims drink wine in the Middle Ages?
Part II—Caliph Harun ar-Rashid and Ja’far the Barmakid.
by Michael Isenberg.

As I said in Part I of this article, readers of my medieval murder mystery, The Thread of Reason, often tell me how surprised they are by how much wine the Muslim characters in the book drink. “Isn’t alcohol forbidden in Islam?” they ask.

It most definitely is, and in the first installment I provided some of the relevant citations in the Quran and the Hadith. But I also explained that the prohibition was often disobeyed during the Middle Ages. Wine shops and drinking parties were frequent settings in the literature of the time such as the Maqamat of Qasim Hariri of Basra or The Thousand and One Nights. Sometimes the stories featured pious characters who expressed their disapproval. Other times the drinking parties were portrayed as just a normal part of life, deserving of no special comment. Even the highest official in Islam, the caliph, got into the act. In one of the stories in the Nights, Caliph Harun ar-Rashid (d. 809 AD), whose reign is considered by many to be the pinnacle of Islamic history and achievement, attended a raucous party, accompanied by his vizier Ja’far of the House of Barmak, and his “Sworder of Vengeance” Masrur the Eunuch. And although neither Harun nor Ja’far imbibed, the caliph seemed to have no issue with those around them doing so.

Harun ar-Rashid and the Poet, by Eloise-Caroline Huitel (1827-1896). This Western depiction takes some artistic liberties. The real Harun would never allow the women of his household to appear in the presence of unrelated men.

The Thousand and One Nights and the other literature of the time are important historical documents. They reflect the attitudes of their authors and they give details about daily life which are often lacking in more staid sources. But the bottom line is that they’re works of fiction, often markedly different from real life. For example, unlike their fictional counterparts, in real life Harun ar-Rashid and Ja’far the Barmakid drank plenty. Their escapades beautifully illustrate the spirit of the times.

Where alcohol wasn’t involved, Harun and Ja’far were pillars of orthodoxy. Harun was well-known for his pre-dawn prayers in the chapel of his palace. The chronicles place him leading the obsequies at the funerals of his father and brother. In The Thread of Reason I wrote about how Harun's vast charitable enterprises—his giving extended into the millions of gold dinars—were inspired by a nightmare about the Day of Judgment.

One theory as to why he moved his capital from Baghdad to Raqqa in Syria was that it was convenient to the Byzantine frontier, the better to wage jihad on the unbelievers. In our own century, ISIS also picked Raqqa as their capital, in order to garb themselves in reflected piety from Harun ar-Rashid. Harun made the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, nine times in his life. Indeed he had the distinction of being the only caliph in history to personally lead both the hajj and the jihad in the same year (797). Indeed, he was so proud of these roles, he had a qalasuwa—a cap around which a turban is wrapped—made for himself, inscribed with the words Ghazi wa Hajj: warrior and pilgrim.

As for Ja’far, his reputation for mastery of the shari’ah was so great that the historian ibn Khallikan said, no doubt with some exaggeration, that he once, under Harun ar-Rashid’s supervision, issued a thousand legal opinions in a single night, and “not one of these decisions deviated in the least from what was warranted by the law.”

Harun and Ja’far were inseparable; so close that Harun had a robe made with two collars that they could wear together. Despite their reputation for orthodoxy, however, it seems there’s barely a story involving either of them that doesn’t involve some sort of drinking.

In The Thread of Reason, I describe the spectacular palaces that the caliphs built in Baghdad on the east bank of the Tigris River. The initial settlement in Baghdad was on the west bank, and in his book Baghdad under the Abbasid Caliphate, Guy LeStrange explains how the move across the river got started. It turns out it was thanks to Ja’far's drinking parties:

Yakut gives us the history of these palaces, and in the first place relates how Ja'far the Barmecide, being much given to wine-bibbing in the company of poets and singers, was frequently reproved by his father Yahya—at that time Wazir of Harun-ar-Rashid—for the scandal that he was creating. Ja'far professed inability to alter his ways, but in order to shun the observation of strict Moslems who abhorred wine and singing, he agreed to build himself a palace apart, for the celebration of his joyous assemblies, on the unoccupied lands to the south of the Mukharrim Quarter. Ja'far was at this time still the favourite boon companion of Harun-ar-Rashid, who showed much interest in the building, which was indeed so remarkable for its magnificence, that when all was completed an astute friend advised Ja'far to tell Harun that this palace was in reality built as a present for [Harun’s son] Mamun, and thus to avoid the well-known jealousy of the Caliph.

Ja’far was indispensable at the caliph’s own drinking parties—as was the caliph’s sister Abbasa. Alas, it was prohibited for Abbasa to be in the same room as Ja’far—a man to whom she was not related. Harun ar-Rashid solved that problem by means of marriage between the two, but he made it clear that it was to be a marriage in name only, never to be consummated.

In 803, Harun turned on the Barmakids. He ordered Masrur, his “Sworder of Vengeance,” who I mentioned previously for his role in The Thousand and One Nights, to execute the unfortunate Ja’far. Ja’far’s father Yahya and his brother Fadl were imprisoned for the rest of their lives. The reason for Harun’s betrayal of his once closest friend is one of the great mysteries of Islamic history. Even at the time, theories abounded. The most common is that Harun, who had become caliph at a very young age (probably twenty-one), and who therefore had to rely heavily on Yahya’s guidance, was chomping at the bit to get out from under Yahya’s shadow (shades of the relationship between the sultan Malik-shah and his vizier Nizam al-Mulk three centuries later). But there’s another theory: Harun lost it upon discovering that the sham marriage between Ja’far and Abbasa was not, in fact, a sham.

In any case, Ja’far’s reaction when Masrur came for his head gives us yet another bit of insight into Harun ar-Rashid’s habits. Ja’far was certain that when the order was issued, the caliph had to have been drunk.

Next installment: The hardliners strike back.

Michael Isenberg drinks bourbon and writes novels. His latest book, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092, and tells the story of the conflict between science and shari’ah in medieval Islam. It is available on Amazon.com