Through the ages, Muslims have been perceived as a militant people. They are ready to die and kill at the slightest provocation. And their religion, Islam, is held to blame for such a collective trait. It is thought to stem from the promise of eternal bliss for both the Ghazi, who offers to fight for a sacred cause and the Shaheed, the martyr who dies fighting for the cause.
But the history of the Muslims, from Prophet Muhammad’s (Peace be upon him) time till the waning of Islam’s political power, shows that the Arabs, who were the torch bearers of the Faith, did the least ‘collateral damage’ in the course of their conquests. They caused few civilian casualties and abstained religiously from pillage and plunder of any kind. However, they themselves suffered at the hands of the Mongols and the Tartars, in the thirteenth century of the Christian era. And the European Crusaders in the two centuries preceding the Mongol tempest.
Islam’s march to victory, outside Arabia, started during the reign of Hazrat Abu Bakr. He first diverted his attention towards the Persian (or Sassanid) Empire, before turning to the Romans. It proved to be an easy victory for his troops, who were led jointly by Muthanna bin Harith and Khalid bin Waleed. Their Persian opponent was the last Persian emperor, Yezdegard. The campaign against Persia was launched in AD635. After the defeat of the Persian army, led by Field Marshal Rustam, in the Battle of Qadissiya, south of Najaf, the thousand year old Persian empire, founded by Darius (Dara Shikoh), lay at the feet of the Arabs. Persia was conquered without stiff resistance and with little bloodshed.
By AD640, during Hazrat Umar’s reign, the entire Persian Empire, stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Caspian Sea, and northward upto Babylon (modern Iraq and Syria) had been brought under the Caliph’s rule. All this had been done without any general massacre, arson and wanton destruction. Yezdegard was not captured, tortured or humiliated, as was customary in those days for the victor to deal with the vanquished. Instead, he was left to go from place to place in search of a sanctuary. Eventually, he was assassinated by one of his own satraps.
Thereafter, the liquidation of the Roman Empire in Byzantium, or the near East and North Africa, was accomplished. In this case as well, the religiously motivated Arabs romped to victory, with comparative ease. After the conquest of Babylon, Byzantine, lying in between, fell easily as well. Here too the transfer of power came without any civilian bloodshed, destruction of cities and churches or centres of learning. Jerusalem was surrendered without a fight and the city came under Hazrat Umar’s rule in AD637. The whole process was peaceful affair, a rare example of bloodless change of masters belonging to contending Faiths.
Emboldened by quick and easy conquests, the Arabs marched on, across the Nile and annexed Egypt in AD646. They conquered all Byzantine possessions in North Africa with the efforts of two army commanders, Amir bin Al-Aas and Uqba bin Nafi, remembered in history not as plunderers and destroyers but as military strategists and fearless fighters. Uqba bin Nafi, who conquered the whole of Maghreb (modern Tunisia and Morocco), is remembered in history as a kind-hearted and God-fearing General. After he reached the Atlantic coast in AD675, he led his horse, chest-deep into the turbulent waves. At that moment, he raised his arms and prayed in all humility: “Almighty Allah! But for the ocean, I would have gone on to spread the glory of Thy name. My Lord! I have performed my duty, now take my soul.”
When the Umayyads (or Banu Umayya) landed in Spain, they were outnumbered by the local adversary. Nevertheless, their courage and unflinching faith helped them to success. History does not accuse them of any barbarous act. But when, after ruling benevolently for centuries and making Andalusia their permanent home, they were forced to quit. They were chased and hunted or killed to the last man or expelled. There is no parallel in history where an entire race, that had lived for eight centuries in a country and given the indigenous people a benign and progressive administration, was exterminated completely by an enemy professing a different faith.
Lane Poole, an objective historian, has observed in his book, Moors in Spain that, “For nearly eight centuries under the Muhammedan rulers, Spain set to all Europe, a shining example of a civilized, enlightened state ..... and she should have been even to this day and we should never have heard of the persecutions of the Jews and the Moors, of the terrible work of the Inquisition.”
Arabs, in their heyday did not convert other nations by the sword. Rather they did so through a peaceful penetration. By displaying exemplary character as sea-faring traders and merchants. Otherwise, how can one explain the astonishingly huge Muslim population in South East Asia and East Africa, where Arab armies never set their feet and only their tradesmen and missionaries went and settled.
The Turks, who may have common ancestry with the Mongols, had converted to Islam as early as the middle of eighth century. Like the pagan Mongols, they too took to conquering lands far and wide. They even ruled over a part of India. This happened when the Turkish slave, Aluptagin’s son-in-law, Sabuktagin, defeated the Hindu Raja, Jaypal’s army in the tenth century. After the victory, he laid the foundation of the Slave Dynasty of rulers of the Delhi Sultanate.
On the heels of the Turks came the Afghans. Led by Mahmud of Ghazna who conquered Multan in AD1001 and Gujrat in AD1026. Victory came with relative ease. It is said that small parties of Turkish and Afghan troops, on horse back conquered vast areas of Northern India, without bloodshed or violence.
It was in the beginning of the 13th century that, according to Arab historian, Ibnul Athir, who compiled his chronicle in AD1220, “the greatest misfortune broke upon humanity” when pagan Mongol tribes, swept over the centres of Islamic civilization in Central Asia and the near East. Led personally by Genghis Khan, they devastated Samarqand, Kirghistan, Kashghar, Khotan, Balkh, Bokhara, Nishapur and Khorasan, much of the territory belonging to Khwarizm Shah who escaped to India in AD1210.
In 1256, two years before the sack of Baghdad, the Mongol horde turned its attention to liquidating the so-called ‘Assassins’ of the Ismaili sect, in Persia. They were flushed out of their strong fortresses and slain brutally throughout Persia. Thereafter, the realm of Abbasi Caliphate in Babylon (the region from modern Iraq-Syria to Palestine-Lebanon) lay at Halaqu’s feet. Baghdad fell on January 17, 1258. With the help of superior military equipment, they bombarded the city’s defensive walls for forty days. Caliph Mustassim Billah had to sue for peace and was given personal audience with Hulaqu. But when the Caliph, his brother and two sons were admitted to an audience with him, they were mercilessly beaten to death which was followed by a general massacre of the citizens. More than a million civilians were put to sword in four days of bloodshed. To quote Gibbon, “For three days, the streets ran with blood and the water of the Tigris was dyed red, for miles along its course.”
It were the Turkish Mamluks of Egypt, led by Sultan Baybars, who finally defeated Hulaqu’s army, near Nablus in 1260. An irony of history, it was Hulaqu’s great-grandson, Ghazan Khan who embraced Islam with his entire army in 1295. Thereon, he ruled over Iraq and Persia as a devoted Muslim ruler. He was succeeded in 1309 by his brother Ujlaitu, or Khuda Banda which was his Persian name after conversion.
It was at the time, when the Arab Caliphate was undermined by internal conflict and Persian rivalry, that Europe’s Christian powers launched the Crusades in 1096. With the aim of liberating the Holy Land, the Crusades lasted for three centuries till AD1270. The Muslim population of Palestine and Levant (coastal region of eastern Mediterranean) had to suffer an intermittent reign of terror and barbarism during the long and drawn-out cataclysmic conflict between Christian fanatics and Muslim defenders of their homeland. Finally, the Osmanali (or Ottoman) Turks, took over the reins of Islamic Caliphate. They removed all vestiges of the Byzantine Empire by 1390, going on to occupy Greece and the Balkans, and threatening the southern flank of Christian Europe. In response, Pope Boniface IX, tried to muster up another Crusade against the Muslims. But Bayazaid, the Turkish ruler, punished the neo-Crusaders so thoroughly in 1394, that Europe decided to live with the Ottomans in peace till it was in a position to humble Turkey in the battlefield. Thereafter, the Ottoman Caliphate lived long, before its extinction at the close of World War I (1914-18).
However, there is another side to the tale of the suffering the Muslim world has had to endure. One that involves Muslims themselves who pillaged each other. For example, the Mongol Timur, who professed the same Islamic faith as the Turks. His campaign against Bayazid, his inhuman treatment of the vanquished Turkish hero who he put in an iron cage all through his conquests. His brutalities also touched India’s heart, including Delhi, where there was a general massacre. These are reminders of how Muslims suffered from terrorism, not only at the hands of pagan Mongols and Christian Crusaders. But also at the hands of their own co-religionists.
