When the Huns invaded Italy in 452, Aetius was powerless to stop them. Mobile and rapacious, Attila’s armies sacked and burned yet more towns and cities, including Aquileia, Patavium (Padua), Verona, Brixia (Brescia), Bergomum (Bergamo) and Mediolanum (Milan). Only an outbreak of illness among Attila’s troops slowed his campaign, but by the spring he was on the verge of taking Rome itself, in which the western Roman emperor, Valentinian III, had taken refuge. It took a direct appeal from Pope Leo I to dissuade him from sacking the city, Attila agreeing to go no further south.
Attila’s death came in 453 after a night of heavy drinking following his marriage to another young bride. He suffocated in a pool of blood after suffering a heavy nosebleed while asleep. The soldiers who buried him were killed afterward, so that none of his enemies would ever be able to find and desecrate his grave.
MUHAMMAD
570–632
I have perfected your religion for you, and I have completed My blessing upon you and I have approved Islam for your religion.
Koran, sura 5
Muhammad was the founder of the Islamic faith. Muslims believe that he was the messenger of God and the last of his prophets and that he transmitted the word of God to his people in the form of the Koran. For Muslims, the Koran and the Hadith, collections of Muhammad’s deeds and sayings, together provide complete guidance on how to live a good and devout life.
While he founded Islam against a background of turbulent tribal feuding, Muhammad encouraged his followers to serve God with decency, humility and piety. But he was also clearly a gifted and ruthless soldier-statesman, founding a successful and expanding state by diplomacy and warfare—as well as a new world religion.
Muhammed ibn Abdullah was born in Mecca in AD 570. He spent his early years in the Arabian desert in the care of a Bedouin wet-nurse. Both his parents and his grandfather were dead by the time he was eight, and he grew up under the guardianship of his uncle Abu Talib. Muhammad grew into a handsome young man with a generous character and great skill at arbitrating in disputes.
This inspirational visionary was renowned as a devout and spiritual man. He would regularly retreat to the desert to meditate and pray. It was on one such retreat in 610 that he first claimed to have experienced the presence of the archangel Gabriel, who appeared to him with a command to begin his revelation of the word of God. Terrified, he told his first wife, Khadijah, of his experience. She and her blind Christian cousin Waraqah interpreted Muhammad’s experience as a sign that he was God’s prophet.
Over the next few years, Muhammad continued to receive the revelations that would become the Koran and which Muslims believe are the direct word of God. Soon he began to preach to the people of Mecca, converting small groups of his friends and family and various prominent Meccans. He taught them that there was one God, deserving of their complete submission (the meaning of the word Islam), and that he, Muhammad, was God’s true prophet. This was seen as disruptive by many of the polytheistic tribesmen of Mecca, and Muhammad’s supporters were threatened and persecuted. Muhammad sent one group of his followers to Abyssinia (modern-day Ethiopia) to seek refuge.
In 619, the “year of sorrows,” Khadijah and Abu Talib died. It was around this time that Muhammad experienced the most intense religious experience of his life. He felt the angel Gabriel transport him from Mecca to Jerusalem, and from the Temple Mount ascended to heaven. Witnessing the divine throne of God and meeting prophets such as Moses and Jesus, he learned of his own supreme state among them. The form of daily prayer was also revealed to him. This two-part journey is known as Isra (Night Journey) and Mi’raj (Ascension).
Still persecuted in Mecca, in 622 Muhammad led his supporters out of the city in the Hijra, a great flight to the city of Yathrib, now known as Medina. There he was recognized as the judge and arbiter, and his following grew. There he created a new state of tolerance under a constitution. But the Jewish tribes of Medina resisted his claim to be the last prophet with the final revelation. At first he had made Jerusalem the direction of prayer—qibla—but now he turned it back to Mecca. Nevertheless, tensions remained between Muhammad and the Meccans, and between 624 and 627 there was a series of battles between the two groups. In the first of these, the Battle of Badr, 313 Muslims defeated a force of 1000 Meccans. In 627 a truce was concluded following a great victory for the Muslims at the Battle of the Ditch. Muhammad was both religions visionary and military-political statesman. When some Jewish tribes backed the Meccans, Muhammad broke with them and had them judged. The result was the execution of male Jews. His Koran promised both tolerance to all those who recognized Islamic supremacy and paid a tax of submission, but also jihad, holy war, against those who resisted.
In 629 Muhammad carried out the first haj (pilgrimage) to Mecca, a tradition still followed by hundreds of thousands of Muslims each year. In 630, when the Meccans broke the truce, Muhammad led a force of 10,000 of his followers to the city, capturing it and destroying the idols of the polytheistic tribes. By the following year he had extended his influence to most of Arabia, so bringing to an end what he called the “age of ignorance.” After preaching his final sermon to 200,000 pilgrims in 632, Muhammad died, leaving Arabia stronger and united under the banner of Islam.
Muhammad’s promulgation and interpretation of God’s word were based on the virtues of humility, magnanimity, justice, meritocracy, nobility, dignity and sincerity. The concept of internal jihad—the inner struggle to live a better, more pious life—was as important to him as taking up arms against enemies—the jihad of holy war. Both ideas are powerful components of Islam. He enhanced the rights of women—compulsion to wear the veil did not arise until well after his death—and slaves. He condemned Arab practices such as female infanticide; reformed tribal custom in favor of a unifying divine law; and denounced corrupt hierarchies and privilege. His name is the inspiration for countless beautiful calligraphic works and much exquisite Islamic poetry. Christian contemporaries confirm that he existed but most of the details of his biography derive from histories written in Iraq and Iran, one or two centuries later. His life and words are indispensable to the Muslim world. Despite the excesses carried out in his name by extremists, he continues to provide spiritual direction to millions of ordinary people. On the basis of Muhammad’s achievements, it is little wonder that Muslims believe that he was the “perfect man”—not divine but “a ruby among stones.”
MUAWIYA & ABD AL-MALIK
The Caliphs and the Great Arab Conquests
Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan is one of the greatest Arab and Muslim Caliphs. He followed in the footsteps of Umar ibn al-Khattab, the Commander of the Believers, in regulating state affairs.
Ibn Khaldun, 14th century
After the death of the Prophet Muhammad, his new theocratic realm almost fell apart, but his successors, known as the Caliphs or the Commanders of the Believers, not only restored Islamic rule in Arabia but then embarked on an astonishing military campaign that, in a matter of a few decades, conquered a new empire that stretched from Spain in the west to the borders of India in the east. The first four of the successors were known as the Righteous Caliphs, but this epoch of triumphant success ended in two bursts of civil war, fought for political control of the new empire and religion. These wars remain relevant today because they created the schism in Islam between the Sunni and Shia. But in each case, the scars were healed by two remarkable rulers from the Ummayad dynasty.