And Serve it with Mustard, God Willing

The Joy of Cooking—Tenth Century Style.

We may live without poetry, music, and art;
We may live without conscience, and live without heart;
We may live without friends; we may live without books;
But civilized man cannot live without cooks.
He may live without books,—what is knowledge but grieving?
He may live without hope,—what is hope but deceiving?
He may live without love,—what is passion but pining?
But where is the man that can live without dining?

          ― Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton, The Dinner Hour

One of the things that struck me during my research into the medieval Muslim world is the many ways in which that society, though separated from ours by a thousand years, is nonetheless familiar. And one of the most significant areas of similarity is food. Food was not merely a means of subsistence in the apartments, houses, and palaces of tenth century Islam. It was cuisine. An art form where as much craftsmanship went into the presentation as into the spices. There were multi-course feasts, food fads, take-out meals, celebrity chefs, utensils given as wedding gifts, advice about diet and health, guides to table manners—and cookbooks.

One such cookbook that has come down to us went by the rather ponderous title The Book of Cookery: Preparing Salubrious Foods and Delectable Dishes Extracted from Medical Books and Told by Proficient Cooks and the Wise, written by one Abu Muhammad al-Muzaffar ibn Nasr al-Warraq. It was translated into English by Nawal Nasrallah, and published in 2007 as Annals of the Caliphs’ Kitchens.

The Book of Cookery is a veritable encyclopedia of food, comparable to the comprehensive kitchen bibles like The Joy of Cooking or the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook that we all relied on before the Internet came along, and some of us still do. In addition to recipes, there are stories and poems—all about food of course. In God’s Banquet: Food in Classical Arabic Literature, Geert van Gelder calls the poems “the equivalent of the luscious color photographs of modern cookery-books.” The book therefore gives us an invaluable slice of life in the medieval Muslim world, which I'd like to share with you. It's a slice not to be found in the historical chronicles, which, to paraphrase Jean-Henri Fabre, are too busy recording the names of all the royal bastards to bother with a recipe for wheat.

There are plenty recipes for wheat to be found in the Book of Cookery. Harissa, a porridge of grains and shredded meat was a particular favorite (and obviously something different than the North African chili paste we associate with the term today). But porridge is just the beginning. There are stews, roasts, omelets, puddings, kebabs, sausages, trail mixes, sweet syrups for beverages, tapas-like small plates to enjoy with wine, desserts very much like modern baklava, and meat-filled pastries of the sort that every culture on the planet thinks makes its own cuisine unique and special (and which was also called harissa in some places).

The book begins with a complete guide to food and health, based on the ancient Greek theory of the four humors: blood, phlegm, green bile, and black bile. According to this theory, illness was the result of the humors getting out of balance, and the cure was to eat foods with opposite properties of temperature and moisture in order to compensate. Green bile, for instance, was thought to be hot and dry and therefore an excess of it caused fevers. Thus, to cure fever, it needed to be balanced by foods that were cool and moist. Gourds and pomegranates feature prominently.

Still, not all the cures are quite so, well, medieval. I'm sure this recipe for homemade cough drops was every bit as effective as Robitussin AC (the one with codeine in it):

Take 5 mithqals sugar-candy, 5 mithqals excellent-quality frankincense, 1 mithqal opium. Pound the ingredients separately. Knead them into paste by adding some cold water to them. Set mixture aside for a short while then form it into small balls, the size of the stone of the fruit of the medlar-tree each. Put one piece under the tongue once a day.

The final chapters contain a lengthy guide to table etiquette. Contrary to what you may have seen from stereotyped Arabs in mid-twentieth century movies, belching at the table was not considered good manners.

Virtually nothing is known about al-Warraq himself, but we nevertheless have a few clues as to how The Book of Cookery came about. In Arabic, “warraq” means paper. Thus, he would have been in the publishing business. He wrote in the book’s preface, “You asked of me, may God bestow longevity upon you, to write a book on dishes cooked for kings, caliphs, lords, and dignitaries, and here it is, may God bestow longevity upon you, an illustrious and fine collection.” Clearly some anonymous person, who was particularly interested in the cuisine of the royal palaces, had commissioned this work. From there we can speculate as to why. Just like us, the people of the tenth century were fascinated by the lifestyles of the rich and famous. The nouveau riche and the upper middle classes not only wanted to know what their rulers ate—they wanted to be able to duplicate the dishes in their own kitchens (more about that later).

Indeed the rulers took dining seriously. The translator explains that mastering a few dishes was an essential part of the courtier’s art, and a few rulers held cooking contests or were even cooks themselves. Harun ar-Rashid was perhaps the most famous of the caliphs, thanks to the accounts in the The Thousand and One Nights of his nocturnal, incognito prowls about Baghdad. I’ve written previously about his fondness for drinking parties. Apparently he was equally fond of food; he used to beat the cooks if meals weren't to his satisfaction. But his half-brother, Ibrahim, was the real gourmet in the family—an accomplished chef in his own right, and author of a widely read cookbook. It was smart, too. In an era when the brothers of the caliph often spent their lives chained up, because of the threat they posed as potential claimants the throne, a brother who had no apparent interests other than gracious living (Ibrahim's other passions were poetry and music) would be viewed as no threat at all. Al-Warraq apparently had access to his cookbook; some of the recipes and poems are included in The Book of Cookery.

Ibrahim figures in a story that illustrates both how lavish the royal table could be, as well as the rewards that were showered on the top chefs. He had a slave named Bid’a, who “was an exceptionally skillful cook and was the most-gifted expert in making cold dishes and desserts. She was the best, ever.”

During the reign of al-Amin, son of Harun ar-Rashid (so Ibrahim’s nephew), the caliph, hearing what an excellent cook Bid’a was, asked Ibrahim to have her make him some sikbaj—beef stewed in vinegar with eggplant, carrots, and onion, and seasoned with salt, cilantro, coriander, and saffron. And although that may sound like a rather homespun meal to serve in a palace, it’s clear from the recipe—which is included in The Book of Cookery—that it is much fancier than it sounds. In addition to chunks of beef and kid, there are thirteen whole chickens, an entire lamb, and as many quails and sparrows as fit in the pot. The recipe gives very detailed instructions for the presentation:

Take the deepest, largest, and widest bowl available. Put in it pieces of bread cut like triangles and ladle enough broth onto the bread to saturate it. Now take out the kneeling lamb and place it in the middle of the bowl, as it is—kneeling. Place the chickens and chicks all around it. Arrange the beef chunks into sections around them, and use the kid meat portions as dividers between beef sections. Take out the innards, cut them into triangles, and spread them on top of the meat. [Before you do this,] spread the eggplant, onion, and carrots on the meat, interspersed with portions of the pullets, sparrows and small birds. Decorate the dish with slices of rolled sandwiches, thin meat patties, [four different kinds of sausages], and pieces of cheese. Arrange these as dividers between sections. Whatever empty spaces you see in the dish, fill them in with some nice-looking green herb. Scatter chopped parsley and rue all over the dish, and serve it with mustard, God willing.

The finished dish, we are told,

looked like a flower orchard embellished and ornamented with all kinds of adornments, like an illustrious bride or a decorated sword. When the dish was presented, al-Amin was with the exclusive company of Ibrahim, Ishaq al-Mawsili [a famous singer], and just one of his attendants—he was his favorite. Al-Amin was all admiration when he looked at it and its aromas hit his nose. When he tasted it, he found it quite delicious and started sampling all the varieties that were in it. He then said, “Uncle, this dish contains thirty kinds of food, which makes any other dishes unnecessary.”

All that food for four people. I imagine there must have been some leftovers.

In any case, al-Amin was so delighted that he showered his uncle with gifts: “three cases of top quality perfumes, three boats that belonged to [Harun ar-]Rashid, and three bags of money.” Sadly Bid’a, who had done all the work after all, was not quite so well rewarded in that slaveholding society. Still, she was not forgotten. The caliph gave her a necklace that was worth 30,000 silver dirhems. To put that in perspective, it would take a skilled craftsman about fifteen years to earn that much.

A spectacular meal, to be sure. And yet, the cuisine of the caliphs’ kitchens wasn’t that far removed from the food that graced the tables of the middle classes. They ate sikbaj as well. But, as the following anecdote shows, they were definitely interested in how it was done in the palaces. And, as you’ll see, they discovered one important difference:

It is told that a group of men used to get together for a game of chess until midday. For the rest of the day they would socialize at the house of whoever was the host at the time. It happened once that one of the sultan’s chefs stopped by and was invited to join the group, which he did. From then on he started coming on the days when he was free of duty. Once, the chess-group host asked him to prepare for them a meal similar to what he usually did for the sultan and his choice fell on sikbaj. The sultan’s chef asked the host, “Who is your cook?” The host said his boy servant does the cooking and called for him. The chef asked the servant, “How do you cook sikbaj?” So the boy described the procedure to him and the chef said, “Go and bring me the pot you use in cooking the dish.” The boy did, and the chef asked him to wash it with clay [i.e. smear the pot with clay and then rinse it off with water], which he did repeatedly. Each time he washed the pot, the chef would sniff at it and demand the boy to wash it one more time. He then told him to wash it with parsley, which he did. The chef sniffed at it again and said, “Yes, it is clean now, go and cook sikbaj in it the way you usually do every day.” Having said that, the chef resumed his chess game. The host was under the impression the chef would at some point add his own spices to the dish but he never budged. When the table was spread and sikbaj was served, they all marveled at its beauty and excellent aroma. It was noticeably different from what they had been served before and they were curious to know the reason. The chef said, “Do you think that dishes cooked in the sultan’s kitchen are any different from the familiar ones? The ingredients used there are none other than vinegar, greens, meat, eggplant, gourd, saffron, and the like. Indeed, meticulous cleanliness of the ingredients and the pots is all that it takes.”

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 Please follow Mike on Facebook and Twitter. Subscribe to Islam: the Good, the Bad, and the Everyday Photo credit(s): The Feast Podcast

Another Fine Mess

An end to America’s longest war is in sight. But don’t trust the Taliban.

By Michael Isenberg.

My sincere wishes that everyone is staying healthy and in good spirits during the coronavirus outbreak.

The crisis has overshadowed many other news stories, including a potentially huge one: On February 29, at a ceremony in Doha, Qatar, the US Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban co-founder Mullah Baradar signed an “Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan.” In case you missed it, here is a brief primer on how we got to this point, what the provisions of the agreement are, and where we go from here.

People forget that the war in Afghanistan wasn’t like the war in Iraq. They’re both lumped together now, both “forever wars.” But Iraq was something we chose to do—foolishly, as it turns out. Afghanistan was something we had to do.

The Taliban, which ruled that country, allowed al-Qaeda to use it as a base of operations for terrorist attacks against the West, including the September 11 attacks in the United States. Three thousand people were killed. No responsible government can allow a threat against its own people like that to continue. And so we invaded and have been trying to figure out a way to get out of the mess ever since. But there didn't seem to be one, until now.

In an appearance on Fox and Friends, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo talked about how the new agreement came about: “One of the reasons the Taliban entered into this agreement is because President Trump let us unleash on them. So over the last two and a half years we have been taking it to the Taliban under President Trump. It’s why they came to us and said we want to have a chance for a different course in Afghanistan.”

The negotiations, facilitated by the Qatari government, took place amid a general feeling among all parties that the military situation in Afghanistan had reached a stalemate, and that any progress required a negotiated settlement.

The negotiations haven't been a straight line. Concerned that the ongoing violence raging in the country was excessive, President Trump ordered US negotiators to walk away from the table last September, demanding that the Taliban reduce the level of violence before negotiations continue. Which they did, coming back in December. Indeed, in the week prior to the signing of the agreement, attacks in Afghanistan were reduced sixty to seventy percent, the lowest level in four years. Afghans took advantage of the respite to, among other things, hold bicycle races and dance in the streets.

The agreement itself is startlingly brief, only four pages. And it feels like half of those are filled up with the rather long-winded name the US uses for its opposite number: “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban.” I can't help wondering how many hours of negotiation went into that.

The verbiage appears sixteen times, but still, there is some substance buried among the epithets. The main provisions are:

US Military Withdrawal: Within 135 days, the 13,000 troops currently in Afghanistan will be drawn down to 8,600, with the remainder to be withdrawn within fourteen months.

End to Taliban Support for Terrorist Operations Against the West: “The Taliban will not allow any of its members, other individuals or groups, including al-Qa’ida, to use the soil of Afghanistan to threaten the security of the United States and its allies…[and] will prevent any group or individual in Afghanistan from threatening the security of the United States and its allies, and will prevent them from recruiting, training, and fundraising and will not host them in accordance with the commitments in this agreement.”

In the view of Secretary Pompeo, this provision is the most significant accomplishment of the negotiations. “We did what President Obama had tried to do, which was to get the Taliban to make a public break with al-Qaeda.”

End to Sanctions: All US Sanctions against Taliban to be lifted by August 27.

Prisoner Exchange: “As a confidence building measure,” up to 5,000 prisoners of the Taliban and 1,000 prisoners “of the other side” are to be released by March 10. A “senior administration official” described these numbers as “aspirational.”

Negotiations on the Future of Afghanistan: Even with this agreement in place, and US forces withdrawn, Afghanistan remains a divided, unstable, and violent country. The agreement calls for talks on a political settlement to begin on March 10. A senior administration official explained, “The United States will be present, but this will be an intra-Afghan negotiation,” which will include not only the Afghan government and the Taliban, but also tribal representatives and women’s rights advocates.

The prospect of an end to America’s longest war—US troops have been in Afghanistan over 18 years—is certainly something to hope for. As Secretary Pompeo said at the signing ceremony, “I am determined to ensure that there are fewer young men and women sitting at Walter Reed and there are fewer young men and women that never return home to their families. And that I am equally determined to make sure that there is never again a terror attack from Afghanistan.”

And yet there are grounds to be concerned.

The implementation of the agreement is off to a rocky start due to a number of problems:

First, the government of Afghanistan is in disarray. A presidential election last fall pitted incumbent Ashraf Ghani against Abdullah Abdullah, chief executive of the unity government and former foreign minister. It ended in recriminations and accusations of fraud. After nearly six months, Mr. Ghani was finally declared the winner and took the oath of office on March 9. Mr. Abdullah simultaneously held his own inauguration in the next room.

Amid the chaos, further aggravated by the coronavirus crisis, the government hasn’t got its team organized for the intra-Afghan negotiations—they were to have been in Oslo—and two weeks after the March 10 scheduled start, talks have yet to begin.

Second, the agreement is between the United States and the Taliban; the Afghan government has not bought into all its provisions. The prisoner exchange is a particular sticking point. “The release of prisoners [is] not in the United States' authority,” Mr. Ghani said. “It is the authority of the Government of Afghanistan.” The New York Times reports that Mr. Ghani “would not release the prisoners without concessions from the Taliban, who have refused.”

Finally, and most tragically, the reduction in violence during the hopeful days leading up to the agreement was short-lived. Attacks have surged since February 29. In fact, just on Friday, a Taliban raid on a government outpost in Zabul Province killed twenty-four Afghani security forces. Significantly, President Trump discussed his concerns about this with Mullah Baradar, the first contact ever between a US president and a Taliban leader.

But even if these initial hurdles are overcome, this agreement is still deeply flawed.

The issue is enforcement. We can trust the Taliban as we would adders fanged. And there is no enforcement mechanism spelled out in the four-page agreement to ensure they uphold their end of the agreement. In a letter to Secretary Pompeo, Liz Cheney and twenty-one other Republican members of Congress expressed their concern:

The Taliban is a terrorist group that celebrates suicide attacks. Haibatullah Akhundzada, the overall leader of the Taliban, sacrificed his own son in a suicide bombing in 2017. Akhundzada’s top deputy, Sirajuddin Haqqani, runs a network that specializes in devastating suicide bombings, including some of the most heinous attacks in the history of the war. The American people cannot rely on these terrorists to safeguard their security. The Taliban also has a history of extracting concessions in exchange for false assurances. They will accept nothing less than a full-scale U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan as they seek to establish their totalitarian “Islamic Emirate.” Our withdrawal would then allow terrorist groups in Afghanistan to grow stronger and establish safe havens from which to plot attacks against us. Any promises the Taliban may have made to the U.S. related to counterterrorism cannot be trusted, not least because the group is a long-time ally of al-Qaeda.

Secretary Pompeo is aware of the issues. “Look, we’re not naïve,” he said, “We all know who the Taliban are and what they have done to America.”

To ensure enforcement, there are two additional parts to the agreement which aren’t going to be released to the public. State Department officials assure us that they contain “some confidential procedures for implementation and verification of the agreement itself,” but officials are uncomfortably vague and even contradictory as to what these procedures are or what would trigger them.

The situation is not unlike the one in Vietnam almost half a century ago. The Nixon Administration negotiated a treaty to end what was then America’s longest war. The treaty was the best one they could have gotten under the circumstances—the administration's hand was considerably weakened by Democrats in Congress, who were on the verge of cutting off funding for the war. The resulting treaty was far from ideal: it allowed 160,000 North Vietnamese troops to remain in South Vietnam. President Nguyen Van Thieu of South Vietnam objected strenuously to this, but President Nixon brought him around with assurances that the US “will react strongly in the event the agreement is violated.”

Trouble was, when North Vietnam violated the treaty two years later, Nixon was no longer president, and the US not only did not return to Vietnam, but Congress wouldn’t even approve funds for badly needed military supplies to enable the South Vietnamese to fight off the North themselves. Indeed, one freshman senator, a certain Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., wouldn’t even agree to fund the evacuation of Vietnamese refugees.

The US decision to cut and run from Southeast Asia, and the resulting fall of South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, had far-reaching consequences. The governments that filled the vacuum were vengeful, cruel, and bloody. Globally, the Soviet Union concluded that the US was a paper tiger which didn’t have the stomach to stand by its allies. The Soviets launced a worldwide campaign of wars of “liberation.” With the US paralyzed by fear of "another Vietnam", a 100 million people lost their freedom and at least 5 million lost their lives as one country after another was taken over by the Marxists: Ethiopia (1974), Angola (1975), Benin (1975), Mozambique (1975), Nicaragua (1979), Grenada (1979), and, to bring the discussion full circle, Afghanistan (1978)—the Soviet invasion of that country set in motion the events that led to the September 11 attacks and the US invasion there.

The agreement with the Taliban is good news. As in Vietnam, it’s probably the best agreement we could have gotten. Our troops—all volunteers—have traveled to one of the worst hellholes on earth and sacrificed more than anyone should have to in order to contain terrorism in Afghanistan. It’s time to bring them home to their families.

But we need to avoid the mistakes of Vietnam. We need to keep a close eye on the Taliban and be prepared to go back if they violate the agreement. A tall order, but if we don’t, we’ll be in the same position again fifty years from now, trying to figure out how to extricate ourselves from another fine mess.

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 Please follow Mike on Facebook and Twitter. Subscribe to Islam: the Good, the Bad, and the Everyday

Without a Friend

by Michael Isenberg.

CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE THREAD OF REASON.

In my novel The Thread of Reason, I describe an altercation in a Baghdad marketplace between a Jewish official and a rug seller. The incident is a true story, and it offers us a view into the highest level politics among the Muslims of the time, and the lot of Jews and Christians living among them.

The imbroglio came amid deep-seated political tension between the caliph and his vizier (prime minister) Abu Shuja on the one hand, and the sultan and his vizier Nizam al-Mulk, on the other. Technically, the caliph is head of the Muslim religion, the “Commander of the Faithful,” and the sultan is merely his servant. But as we see in this account by the historian ibn al-Athir (1160-1233), the incident in the market not only led to dire consequences, but revealed where the true power lay:

In Rabi’ I of this year [Apr 23 to May 22 1091], the vizier Abu Shuja was dismissed from the post of caliph’s vizier. His dismissal came in this manner. A Jew in Baghdad, called Abu Sa’d ibn Samha, acted as the steward of the sultan and Nizam al-Mulk. A man selling carpets met him and gave him a blow which knocked the turban from his head. The man was seized, carried off to the Diwan [ministry] and questioned as to the reason for his action. He replied, “He treated me as inferior to himself.” Gohara’in [the sultan's governor in Baghdad], accompanied by Ibn Samha the Jew, went to the Sultan’s camp to complain, and both were unanimous in their complaints against the vizier Abu Shuja. After they had gone, the caliph’s warrant was issued [Apr 7 or 12, 1091], that the Dhimmis should be compelled to wear their distinctive dress, to wear what the Commander of the Faithful Umar ibn al-Khattab (God be pleased with him) had stipulated for them. They fled to various hide-aways. Some converted to Islam, among them Abu S’ad al-Ala’ ibn al-Hasan ibn Wahb ibn Musilaya, the secretary, and his nephew, Abu Nasr Hibat Allah ibn al-Hasan ibn Ali, the chief intelligence officer, who both made their conversion at the hands of the caliph. It was also reported to the sultan and Nizam al-Mulk that the vizier was frustrating their purposes and disparaging their achievements, so much so that, when news of the sultan’s conquest of Samarqand came, he said, “This is nothing to send victory communiques about, as though he had conquered the [Christian] Byzantine lands. Is not all he has done to march against true believing Muslims, allowing them to be subjected to treatment that is unacceptable for polytheists?” When Gohara’in and ibn Samha came to the camp and complained of the vizier to the sultan and Nizam al-Mulk, telling them of all that he was saying about them and of his frustrating their purposes, they sent to the caliph asking that he be dismissed, and it was done. He was ordered to confine himself to his residence. He was dismissed on a Thursday, and when the order was given he recited: He took the office without an enemy, He gave it up without a friend. On the following day, a Friday [10 Ramadan/24 October—note that this conflicts with the April/May date given previously], he left his house on foot to go to the mosque. A vast crowd (of his supporters) gathered around him, and he was order to stay at home.

In addition to the visibility it gives us into the politics of the sultan and the caliph—and the attempts by the sultan to control the caliph by controlling his vizier—the incident illustrates the precarious position occupied by dhimmis—Jews and Christians—living in the medieval Muslim world. They could reach quite high stations in society—as ibn Samha had. But, as the passage shows, this fostered resentment in ordinary Muslims, and further the Jews and Christians were subject to “what the Commander of the Faithful Umar ibn al-Khattab had stipulated for them” centuries before, often called the “Ordinance of Omar.” The requirement to wear “distinctive dress”—typically a red or yellow cord worn on the shoulder by Jews and a special belt and a cross around the neck for Christians—was just the tip of the iceberg. Jews and Christians could not build their homes or houses of worship higher than the Muslim buildings. They were prohibited from riding horses, and they could ride a donkey only if they used a wooden saddle. They were required to make way for a Muslim if they were to meet him on the road, and were banned from ringing church bells or otherwise making noise during their religious ceremonies.

Further, they were subject to the jizyah—an annual head tax of three to five gold dinars, not a huge sum, but out of reach of the poorest members of society. According to the law, the jizyah had to be paid in person and the official collecting it was supposed to hit the dhimmi below the ear; it wasn’t enough that the dhimmi was required to pay extra taxes—he had to be humiliated while he did so.

Paying the Jizyah

Although the jizyah was collected throughout this period, it is clear from the passage that other provisions of the Ordinance of Omar weren’t enforced prior to the incident in the marketplace. But the passage also shows that Jews and Christians lived under the threat of them being reimposed at any time—and that it was burdensome enough to drive some prominent Jews and Christians to turn their backs on the faiths of their ancestors.

With all the rigmarole over Abu Shuja, ibn Samha kind of gets lost in the shuffle. Nevertheless, a near-contemporary historian does give us a couple subsequent mentions of him, including one final one: in his chronicle for the year 485 AH (1092-1093 AD), the year after the altercation in the marketplace, 'Abd ar-Rahman ibn al-Jawzi gives us a single sentence:

And in Shawwal, Ibn Samha the Jew was killed.

Shawwal 485 was the month after Nizam al-Mulk was brutally assassinated, and the same month ِthe sultan died under suspicious circumstances. That ibn Samha should have been killed at just that time can't be a coincidence. As for what I think happened to him, see The Thread of Reason.

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 Please follow Mike on Facebook and Twitter. Subscribe to Islam: the Good, the Bad, and the Everyday

Convert or Die?

Islam prohibits forced conversions. Except when it doesn't.
by Michael Isenberg.

No claim about Islam is more likely to start an argument than the one that Muslims spread their religion by telling conquered peoples, “Convert or die.” It’s right up there with “Jihad is Holy War.”

As with most such debates, the truth is complicated.

Strictly speaking, forced conversion to Islam violates Muslim law, the Shari’ah. In the words of the Quran, “There is no compulsion in religion (2:256).”

Rather than force unbelievers to apostatize, scripture tells Muslims,

Fight those who believe not in Allah, nor in the Last Day, nor forbid that which Allah and His Messenger have forbidden, nor follow the Religion of Truth, or 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 (9:29).

In other words, Islam does not tell unbelievers, “Convert or die.” It tells them, “Convert, live under our rule as second class citizens, or die.” While technically that is not forced conversion, I submit it’s not any better.

In any case, just because a thing is prohibited by law doesn’t mean it never happens. Forced conversions were rare in Islamic history. But they did occur.

Sometimes they were at the hands of a rogue leader and eventually cooler heads prevailed. That was the case in 1198 when the ruler of Yemen, al-Malik al-Mu’izz Isma’il, declared himself the caliph—leader of all the Muslims—and ordered forced conversions of Jews and Christians. Those who refused were beheaded. Three years later, al-Malik was murdered by his own troops and the converts went back to their old religions.

But in other cases, conversion was at the hands of rulers who to this day are among the most cherished and revered figures in Islam. Saladin (who incidentally was the uncle of al-Malik) is known in the West for his chivalry toward Richard the Lion-Hearted. But he wasn’t so chivalrous after the ass-whooping he inflicted on Crusader forces in the Battle of Hattin (1187). The Templars and Hospitallers taken prisoner were ordered to convert. Many refused. Saladin’s secretary Imad ad-Din, who was there, wrote what happened next:

Saladin ordered that they should be beheaded, choosing to have them dead rather than in prison. With him was a whole band of scholars and sufis and a certain number of devout men and ascetics, each begged to be allowed to kill one of them, and drew his sword and rolled back his sleeve. Saladin, his face joyful, was sitting on his dais, the unbelievers showed black despair.

Two hundred knights were massacred. Observe that the “devout men” and “scholars,” who were the authorities responsible for enforcing the Shari’ah in general and the laws against forced conversions in particular, enthusiastically participated.

My last example is from the year 1148, during the conquest of Morocco by the Almohads, a fanatical sect that rebelled against their rulers, the Almoravids. They thought the Almoravids were soft on the enforcement of Shari’ah. We have an unusually detailed and personal account, thanks to a letter found in the cache of documents known as the Cairo Geniza. As refugees streamed from Morocco into Egypt, one Jewish merchant, Solomon b. Abu Zikri Judah, recounted to his father the news they brought from the town of Sijilmasa, which was where their family was from:

You certainly wish to know the news from the Maghreb [Morocco], the ears who hear about it will tingle [Jeremiah 19:4]. The travelers have arrived, among them groups of Jews, who were present at the event. They reported that ‘Abd al-Mu’min the Susi attacked the [Almoravid] amir Tashfin in Wahran [Oran], besieged him, annihilated his army, killed him, and crucified his body. Then ‘Abd al-Mu’min conquered Tilmaan [Tlemcen] and killed everyone in the town, except those who apostatized. When the news arrived in Sijilmasa, the population revolted against the amir, declared themselves in public as opponents of the murabitun [Almoravids], drove them out of town, and sent messengers to ‘Abd al-Mu’min surrendering to him. After he entered Sijilmasa, he assembled the Jews and asked them to apostatize. Negotiations went on for seven months, during all of which they fasted and prayed. After this a new amir arrived and demanded their conversion. They refused, and a hundred and fifty Jews were killed, sanctifying the name of God:           The Rock—his deeds are without blemish and all his ways are justice [Deuteronomy 32:4].           Blessed be the true judge, whose judgments are just and true.           The King’s word has power; who may say to him, “What are you doing? [Ecclesiastes 8:4]. The others apostatized; the first of the apostates was Joseph b. ‘Imran, the judge of Sijilmasa. Because of this I lament and wail, etc. [Micah 1:8]. Before ‘Abd al-Mu’min entered Sijilmasa, when the population rose against the Almoravids, a number of Jews, about two hundred, took refuge in the city’s fortress. Among them were Mar Ya’qub and Abbud, my paternal uncles, Mar Judah b. Farhun and [???]. They are now in Der’a after everything they had was taken from them. What happened to them afterward we do not know. Of all the countries of the Almoravids there remained in the hands of the dissenters only Der’a and Miknasa (Meknes). As to the congregations of the West, because of our sins, they all perished; there has not remained a single one described as a Jew between Bijaya [Bougie] and the Gate [street] of Gibraltar, they either apostatized or were killed. And on the day I am writing this letter news has arrived that BIjaya has been taken… At ‘Abd al-Mu’min’s conquest of Fez 100,000 persons were killed and at that of Marrakesh 120,000. Take notice of this. This is not hearsay but a report of people who were present at the events. Take notice.

The translator, S.D. Goitein, comments that the last two numbers are probably exaggerated. A horrific series of events nevertheless.

As for ‘Abd al-Mu’min and the Almohads, they went on to complete their overthrow of the Almoravids and extend their bigoted, Islamist rule over much of Spain and half of North Africa. Their dynasty would last over a hundred years, and destroy the vibrant culture that once flourished in Muslim Spain. Take notice.

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 Please follow Mike on Facebook and Twitter.

Porn Stache

The Pensacola Shooter: Portrait of an Islamic Terrorist.
by Michael Isenberg.

Before I dive into the main topic of today’s blog, the motivation of Islamic terrorist Muhammad al-Shamrani, let’s take a moment to remember the three brave sailors he murdered during a shooting spree at Naval Air Station (NAS) Pensacola last Friday:

Airman Mohammed Sameh Haitham, 19, from St. Petersburg, FL, was looking forward to his birthday and graduation from flight school next week. “Unfortunately, none of that is gonna happen,” his cousin Ashley Williams said.

Airman Apprentice Cameron Scott Walters, 21, from Richmond Hill, GA was one of seven children. According to his father, “When Cameron graduated bootcamp, the grin on his face said it all. ‘Look at me, Dad, I’m going to be just like you…’ To have the opportunity to earn his wings as a Navy Airman made him proud. And we, too, were so incredibly proud.”

Ensign Joshua Kaleb Watson, 23, from Coffee, AL, escaped, wounded from the classroom building where the shooting took place and alerted first responders before expiring. In a Facebook post, his brother Adam Watson wrote, “He died a hero and we are beyond proud, but there is a hole in our hearts that can never be filled.”

In a statement, Capt. Tim Kinsella, commander NAS Pensacola said, “We feel the loss profoundly and grieve with the family and friends of the deceased. The Sailors that lost their lives in the line of duty and showed exceptional heroism and bravery in the face of evil. When confronted, they didn’t run from danger; they ran towards it and saved lives. If not for their actions, and the actions of the Naval Security Force that were the first responders on the scene, this incident could have been far worse.”

Another race hath been,
and other palms are won.

 

What would make a scumbag like Muhammad al-Shamrani destroy three such beloved individuals, cutting them down in their youth? Of course, such questions come up every time there’s an Islamic terror attack. One of the key points of contention is whether the terrorist was motivated by something inherent in Islam itself—Bernard Lewis’s “Clash of Civilizations” hypothesis—or whether it was a response to something that was done to the Muslim world by the West in general and the United States in particular.

In the case of al-Shamrani, we have an opportunity to see into the workings of his mind thanks to a Twitter account widely believed to be his. This is despite the best efforts of Twitter, which suspended the account shortly after it was identified. I wish they wouldn’t do that. The social media posts of terrorists and shooters are of great help to the public in coming to terms with tragic events, and a crucial tool for journalists and bloggers. Fortunately, in this case, some quick thinking individual archived the account to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine about twenty minutes before Twitter dropped the axe. Twenty or so tweets were saved.

Needless to say, piecing together someone’s psyche from less than two dozen tweets requires a certain amount of detective work, reading between the lines of what he’s tweeting, and making inferences based on who he’s tweeting. But I’ll share with you what I found, and as always, I encourage you to make up your own mind.

Shamrani’s “final testament”—his last tweet, posted shortly before the attack—has been widely reported in the media.

It clearly supports the “Resentment against the West” school of thought, with its mentions of Guantanamo, US bombings, and support for Israel. Many pundits consider the last line over on the right to be particularly significant because of the apparent influence of Osama bin Laden: “You will not be safe until we live it in reality pleastain [sic], and American troops get out of our lands.”

Other tweets back up the “Resentment against the West” theory, with particular emphasis on US policy regarding Israel. Al-Shamrani retweeted a post from Palestinian Activist Hanady Halwani purporting to show brutality by Israeli security forces against a Muslim boy on the Temple Mount (I ran it by an Israeli friend who didn’t see anything in the video to make him doubt its authenticity).

More significantly, al-Shamrani’s last tweet before his “final testament” was a link to a video of a speech by Donald Trump in which the US president officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. It’s highly significant that the Pensacola shooting occurred on the two-year anniversary of that speech.

Without a doubt, US policy in general, and Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem in particular, played a significant role in al-Shamrani’s motive.

Let me be clear: The US was right to give Israel the same right the world gives every other country: to choose its own capital. US policy should not be dictated by some dirtbag going on a shooting spree because he doesn’t like it. But at the same time, we bury our heads in the sand if we don’t confront the dirtbag’s motives objectively.

In any case, there is also a great deal in al-Shamrani’s Twitter account to suggest he is motivated by fundamentalist Islam as much as by the policies of the US. He is undoubtedly a dedicated Muslim, posting quotes from the Quran and a photo of the Mosque of the Prophet in Medina. Of course those are things any Muslim might post, and don’t necessarily mean that he had been radicalized. On that point, al-Shamrani’s profile quotation is enlightening:

The quotation is from the Hadith—the collected sayings of Muhammad and his Companions. My first reaction to it was that it was innocuous enough. Surely every religion teaches its followers to think of themselves as part of the “body” of worshippers. But then Stephen England, author of the Shadow Warriors series of terrorism thrillers, pointed out to me that this particular hadith is popular with recruiters for radical Islam. England researched radicalization for his novel Embrace the Fire. He explained to me that the message is “sure, your life isn't half bad, and your family has it decent. . .but what about everyone else? And if you don't care about what's happening to them, are you really a part of the body after all?” Indeed, Anwar al-Awlaki, who had ties to three of the 9/11 terrorists, as well as the Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan, cited the hadith in a sermon he preached on this theme.

Also notable in al-Shamrani’s Twitter feed is who he chooses to retweet and quote, individuals who may have had some influence on him. Abd’ul-Aziz al-Tarefe and Hakim al-Mutairi in particular stand out in this regard. Both are prominent Islamists—believers in Muslim supremacy and the replacement of secular law with shari’ah.

According to Islam21C.com, Al-Tarefe is a graduate of the college of Sharīʿah at Imaam Muḥammad b. Sa`ud University in Riyadh. He served as a researcher in the Saudi Ministry of Islam until he fell afoul of the authorities. The Washington Examiner reported that his name surfaced in the bin Laden files captured at Abottabad as one of a “younger generation” of Saudi clerics who “proved to be more amenable to al Qaeda’s cause” than their predecessors.

To give you an idea of what kind of guy al-Tarefe is, here’s a video of him arguing that it is permissible to steal from nations that do not have a “treaties” with Islam [i.e., they haven’t submitted]. It is therefore okay to make purchases using stolen Israeli credit card numbers.

Al-Tarefe is the author of a number of books, including Words of Wisdom which is available in English on archive.org. The first page contains the ominous words, “Islam only increases, it does not decrease,” and this is followed by numerous calls for jihad throughout the book. From context, it is clear he is referring to armed conflict with the unbeliever, and not the “internal struggle” we so often hear about from apologists for Islam.

The Jerusalem Post reported that al-Tarefe was arrested in 2016 over his opposition to the Saudi government’s move to eliminate the authority of the shari’ah police, the so-called Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. The shari’ah police were one of the worst and most hated excesses of Saudi Arabia’s medieval-style theocracy. I wrote previously about some of their powers: “to enforce hours of prayer, smash bottles of alcohol, eject men from malls where women are shopping, shame women for wearing make-up, and break up gatherings of public lute playing.” These powers were stripped in recent reforms, and it was these reforms that al-Tarefe opposed. Al-Tarefe was subsequently acquitted of the charges against him, according to Islam21C.com.

Like Abd’ul-Aziz al-Tarefe, Hakim al-Mutairi has vast influence on Twitter, with 1.1 million followers. According to a report from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “Al-Mutairi is often described as an unusually charismatic person who is able to gain admirers and friends quickly.” During the 1990 Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, he escaped to Saudi Arabia with a group of other Kuwaiti Salafists. Energized by contact with their Saudi counterparts, they returned to Kuwait after The First Gulf War and launched a more politically active form of Salafism. Al-Mutairi eventually started the Umma Party whose goals, again according to the Carnegie Endowment are “to establish an Islamic society, remove foreign troops from the Gulf region, implement Islamic law, and support political pluralism.” Al-Mutairi has also been active in raising funds for jihadist rebel groups in Syria.

[Full disclosure: al-Shamrani’s retweet of al-Mutairi came from here, so unlike the Wayback archive tweets, I cannot verify its origin.]

So what's the bottom line? Was al-Shamrani motivated by anger at US policy, or by a philosophy of Islamic supremacy and jihad? Clearly the evidence of his Twitter feed shows that both were in play.

But there was also one more factor in the mix, one that didn't come from al-Shamrani's Twitter account. From The New York Times:

As the F.B.I. continues to conduct interviews with everyone at the Pensacola Naval Air Station who may have had contact with the gunman, identified as Second Lt. Mohammed Alshamrani, a new report emerged that the Saudi trainee filed a formal complaint earlier this year against one of his instructors, who left him “infuriated” in class by tagging him with a derogatory nickname. The complaint, quoted in a communication circulated among people connected to the flight training, said that the instructor referred to Lieutenant Alshamrani as “Porn Stash” in front of about 10 other aviation students, embarrassing and angering him. “I was infuriated as to why he would say that in front of the class,” the Saudi trainee wrote in his complaint, as quoted in the summary… Lieutenant Alshamrani reported that the confrontation came at the end of a meteorology class, when the instructor, James Day, asked whether students had any questions before he dismissed them. The instructor then turned to Lieutenant Alshamrani and asked whether he had any questions, addressing him as “Porn Stash” — spelled that way in the complaint — in an apparent reference to the mustache of a porn actor. “Laughing, he continued to ask, ‘What? Have you not seen a porn star before?’” the lieutenant wrote in his complaint, according to the summary.

That a grown man would be so “infuriated” by a joke about his mustache (and one with some truth in it!), and that he would find himself helpless to stand up for himself, so that he would file a formal complaint, indicates a serious inferiority complex. And this too is a motive for terror. As Eric Hoffer wrote in The True Believer, “Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves.”

Michael Isenberg writes about the Muslim World. Please follow Mike on Facebook and Twitter. Photo credit(s): New York Times

A Thousand Years of Aptitude

Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age by S. Frederick Starr.
Book Review by Michael Isenberg.

The title of S. Frederick Starr’s 2013 book, Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age incorporates two controversial ideas: first, that Central Asia ever had a Golden Age, and second, that it was lost. Granted, these are controversial with two distinct group of people. More about that in a moment.

In his sprawling tour de force, Starr, the founding chairman of John Hopkins’s Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and Silk Road Studies Program, covers some thousand years of the history of Central Asia, a region roughly corresponding to modern Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and eastern Iran (Khorasan). Starr argues that for the first five hundred years or so, starting with the time of the Muslim conquests (although the roots go back further), the region experienced a cultural flowering that led the world in astronomy, medicine, philosophy, poetry, architecture, craftsmanship, and a host of other fields. But around the year 1100, the Muslim world turned its back on the sciences, and Central Asia went into a long decline.

My Right-of-Center friends find controversy in the claim that there ever was a Golden Age in Central Asia or any other part of the Muslim world (For a discussion of whether there was a Golden Age in Muslim Spain, see my series Did the Islamic Golden Age in Spain really happen? A Debate). On this point, Starr presents abundant evidence that they’re wrong. We meet a colorful cast of thinkers, writers, builders, and experimenters. They were far too numerous to do justice to here, but a few names stand out, Renaissance men centuries before the European Renaissance.

Of course, first and foremost is my personal favorite, Omar Khayyam (1048-1131)—astronomer, mathematician, poet, scholar of shari'ah, and lover of wine. But since I’ve already written a few words about him elsewhere, I’ll use this space to talk about some of the other lamps of the Central Asian Enlightenment instead.

Muhammad ar-Razi (854-925), for example, known in the West as Rhazes. A dedicated physician, his influence extended far beyond the Muslim world—his book on measles and smallpox (he was the first ever to distinguish the two) saw forty European editions from 1475 to 1866. I previously shared an amusing story about his ingenious but risky cure for an emir’s arthritis.

Rhazes also indulged in some theological speculations, and my Right-of-Center friends will find some vindication in the fact that he wasn’t a very good Muslim in this department. The Quran, in a number of places (e.g. 11:13, 17:88), challenges anyone who is skeptical that it is really the word of Allah to write a book like it. Rhazes went on a tirade about that. “By God, what you say astonishes us! You are talking about a work which recounts ancient myths, and which at the same time is full of contradictions and does not contain any useful information or explanations. Then you say: ‘Produce something like it?’”

Then there was Abu Rayhan Biruni (973-1050), who during a less than stellar career as a diplomat managed to become the leading astronomer of his time. He invented specific gravity, wrote an encyclopedia of India, and calculated the circumference of the earth to within eleven miles of the modern value. Given its size, and that only two-fifths of it had been accounted for, he didn’t believe that all the rest could be ocean. He hypothesized that there must be another continent somewhere in the Western Hemisphere. Granted, Starr probably went too far in subtitling that discussion “Biruni Discovers America.”

At a time when most scientists believed that the earth was the immovable center of the universe, Biruni made considerable strides in developing a theory of a sun-centered solar system with a rotating earth. On that point, he engaged in a heated and occasionally insulting correspondence with the granddaddy of the Central Asian Enlightenment, Abu Ali ibn Sina (980-1037), better known in the West as Avicenna.

Avicenna spent his days as a physician and a government official, and his nights writing books and drinking wine (another not very good Muslim). His encyclopedic Canon of Medicine was the handbook of the physician’s art in both Europe and Asia for centuries. But his life wasn’t all bureaucracy and scholarship. He had declined the invitation of the thuggish Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna to join his court, and therefore had to spend some years on the lam, during which he had many narrow escapes.

While he kept his distance from Mahmud, Avicenna did accept the patronage of numerous other rulers. Indeed, all of these monster minds benefited from the generosity of sultans and viziers, who built glittering courts where they collected intellectuals and craftsmen the way squirrels collect nuts. They provided the instruments and books needed—some of their libraries stretched into the tens of thousands of volumes. Perhaps more important, they provided the company of like-minded people, to supply the back and forth that’s so crucial to scientific discovery.

If the Right is dubious that there was ever a Central Asian Enlightenment, the Left is dubious that it was ever “lost.” Indeed, some critics—Sonja Brentjes, for example, from the Max Planck Institute for the History of Sciences—drag out the tired old accusation that the claim is racist. Well, history is what it is, and it's not racist to establish the truth about it. Nevertheless, it is definitely much harder to establish the absence of something than its presence. Which is what Starr sets out to do in the last hundred pages or so of Lost Enlightenment.

The turning point, he argues (as have many others, including me), was the publication of The Incoherence of the Philosophers by the religious hardliner Abu Hamid Ghazali around 1095. In it, Ghazali argued that scientists and philosophers were at best useless—they couldn’t prove the great truths of the Muslim religion—and at worst heretical, deserving of execution. But then, how could it be otherwise? The whole scientific enterprise was based on the earlier ideas of Greeks and Indians—unbelievers in Islam.

Ghazali’s book was hugely influential. After it came out, kings still built glittering courts and stocked them with craftsmen, poets, and scholars of shari’ah (Muslim law). The buildings were more spectacular than ever. “No art surpasses architecture in its appeal to dictators.” But philosophers and scientists were noticeably absent. And when they did appear—the astronomers Nasir ad-Din Tusi and Ulugh Beg, for example—it just wasn’t the same. “Something important has been lost.” Starr hypothesizes it was the Greek and Indian ideas, the grains of sand that produced the pearls of culture, now anathema, thanks to Ghazali. Whatever the reason, the spark was gone. The Muslim world had so little interest in spreading new ideas that the first book printed by a Muslim using movable type would not be published until 300 years after Gutenberg.

I did have one criticism of Lost Enlightenment. I noticed several errors in Starr’s discussion of the Seljuq period (1037-1153)—the period with which I’m most familiar because of my own writing. They were minor in nature—names and dates that were incorrect—and never detracted from the main points. But still.

To his credit, in addition to laying out his arguments that the Central Asian Enlightenment became lost after flourishing for so many centuries, and the reasons that happened, Starr systematically addresses the arguments against his hypothesis. But in the end, he admits it’s not worth spending too much time on. “We feel little need to discover the cause of a nonagenarian’s death.” We can learn far more that it useful for own times by discovering how it lasted so long.

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. Starring Omar Khayyam and Abu Hamid Ghazali, it is available on Amazon.com Please follow Mike on Facebook and Twitter. Photo credit(s): Princeton University Press

If I do not drink wine, God’s knowledge was ignorance

The humor of Omar Khayyam.

by Michael Isenberg.

When we think of the great figures of history, one trait that we tend not to think of is humor. After all, they were busy waging war, handing down laws, writing philosophical tomes, and making world-altering scientific discoveries. Surely these things are no laughing matter.

But of course that’s not true. They were human beings, and like all human beings, some are stiffs, others will have you rolling on the floor laughing. Abraham Lincoln was constantly telling jokes (There was a good one in the 2012 movie about him, starring Daniel Day Lewis, although I don't know if it's one of the jokes Lincoln told in real life. It involved Ethan Allen and a picture of George Washington in an English privy.). Churchill’s rejoinders against various antagonists, mostly female, are world-famous (“Winston, you’re drunk.” “Bessie, you’re ugly. And tomorrow morning, I’ll be sober.”) Ronald Reagan made the age issue in his re-election campaign completely go away with a well-timed zinger (“I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience”). Even his opponent was laughing.

Certainly humor is not the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of Omar Khayyam (1048-1131). For westerners, that would be his poetry, The Rubaiyat. Omar was a scientist at a time when the Muslim world was in the throes of turning its back on science. So it’s no surprise that The Rubaiyat is a world-weary collection of verses. Among the themes are the futility of knowledge and the inevitability of death:

Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument
          About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same door as in I went.

With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with my own hand wrought to make it grow:
          And this was all the Harvest that I reap'd—
“I came like Water, and like Wind I go.” (1)

And yet, amid these grim sentiments, there are flashes of humor, no doubt Omar's way of dealing. Omar generally marshalled it in the service of rationalizing his wine-drinking, another way of dealing. Wine, of course, is prohibited in Islam.

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, though.” (2)

In another bit of twisted logic, Omar argues that God doesn’t mind, and anyway, if Omar doesn’t imbibe, God would be diminished:

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. (3)

Besides, how can wine be a sin? God created it. It’s blasphemous to say it’s sinful! And if it is a sin, well, it’s God’s fault if we drink. He put temptation in our path.

Why, be this Juice the growth of God, who dare
Blaspheme the twisted tendril as a Snare?
          A Blessing, we should use it, should we not?
And if a Curse—why, then, Who set it there? (4)

In any case, Omar has no intention of repenting:

They say to me, “May God give thee repentance!”
He himself will not give it; I will none of it; let it be far off! (5)

For more about Omar and wine, see my recent post, “A Loaf of Bread, a Jug of Wine, and Thou.”

Omar’s humor spilled over from his poetry into his real life. He perpetrated the only practical joke I’ve come across in my studies of the medieval Muslim world (which, as I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, are extensive). According to Zakariya Qazwini, who lived about a century and a half after Omar,

It was reported that a jurist went to him every day before sunrise, and he studied philosophy with him, but then if he mentioned Omar to other people, he spoke evil of him. Then Omar asked two drummers and the two trumpeters to come and he hid them in his house. Then when the jurist came as normal to read his lessons, Omar commanded them to beat the drums and blow the trumpets. Then the people came from every direction. Then Omar said, “O people of Nishapur, this scholar of yours comes to me every day at this time, and he takes lessons from me. He takes my knowledge when I’m there, and speaks of me as evil when I’m not.” (6)

In another, slightly earlier version of the story (7), the jurist was none other than Abu Hamid Ghazali, the era’s foremost scholar of shari’a, and a key figure in the eradication of science in the Muslim world. As we have other stories about Ghazali studying with Omar, and treating him dismissively, this is plausible. Ghazali’s sense of humor, BTW, tended toward insults.

This last story is from a somewhat later source, the Tarikh-i-Alfi, History of the Millennium, written in the 1580s to commemorate the year one thousand in the Muslim calendar.

It is related that there was in Nishapur an old College, for the repairing of which donkeys were bringing bricks. One day, while the Sage (i.e. Omar) was walking with a group of students, one of the donkeys would on no account enter the College. When Omar saw this, he smiled, went up to the donkey, and extemporized: “O lost and now returned ‘yet more astray,’ They name from men’s remembrance passed away,           Thy nails have now combined to form thy hoofs, Thy tail’s a beard turned round the other way!” The donkey then entered, and they asked Omar the reason of this. He replied, “The spirit which has now attached itself to the body of the ass formerly inhabited the body of a lecturer in this college, therefore it would not come in until now, when, perceiving that its colleagues had recognised it, it was obliged to step inside (8).

The author Tarikh-i-Alfi, Ahmad Tatavi, cited the story as evidence that Omar believed in reincarnation. This was a rather serious accusation, since most Muslims consider reincarnation to be heresy.

Sounds like Tatavi needed to get a sense of humor.

Michael Isenberg drinks bourbon 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 Please follow Mike on Facebook and Twitter. Photo credit(s): Pinterest

(1) Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, 2nd Edition, London: Bernard Quaritch (1868), translated by Edward Fitzgerald, verses xxx-xxxi.

(2) The Ruba’iyat of Omar Khayyam, Boston: L.C. Page and Company (1898), translated by Edward Heron-Allen, verse 38, adapted by me for rhyme and meter.

(3) Ibid, verse 75.

(4) Fitzgerald, op. cit., verse lxiii.

(5) Heron-Allen, op. cit., verse 64.

(6) Shams Tabrizi, Maqalat (Discourses), Tehran (1377 S.H.), 2nd ed., pp. 301-302.

(7) Qazwini, Zakariya ibn Muhammad, Athar al-bilad wa-akhbar al-‘ibad (Monument of Places and History of God’s Bondmen), Beirut:Dar Sadur, 1960, p. 475. Translation mine.

(8) Zhukovski, V., "Al-Musaffariyé: Containing a Recent Contribution to the Study of 'Omar Khayyām" (a translation of "Umar Khayyam and his 'Wandering' Quatrains"), Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 30 (April, 1898), pp. 349-366.