Originally posted by Al Jassas
Hello Aksum
Your history is so distorted that I really don't know where to begin. Division began early in Islam because the Caliph Uthman was not doing things some people wanted him to do.
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I was simply asking what major rifts occured in the Islamic Empire but
I didn't mean each major rift necessarily came in chronological order.I was reading on a few articles,and found more information about why different rifts occured in Islam .
the Abbasids and took over their former territories
Originally posted by azimuth
Muaweyah survived the assassination and considered
himself a caliph and the start of Ummayads dynasty, Makkah
became independent under another companion of the prophet
rule.... the death of Al Husain, Ali's son and grandson of the prophet
in a battle with Muaweyah's son's army.... |
[quote]
http://wps.ablongman.com/long_stearns_wcap_4/18/4647/1189757.cw/index.htm
There was also a dispute between Seljuk Turks and Abbasids in which case the Seljuks won Loss of Power
Mahmud of Ghazni proclaimed the title of
Sultan vs. the Emir that been in more common usage prior, signifying the
Ghaznavid Empire's
independence from Caliphial authority even as a matter of form. By the
11th century, this was demonstrated by no longer mentioning the caliphs
name in the Friday
Khutba, or by striking it off from their coinage by the
Seljuks,
Sultanate of Rum,
Khwarezmshahs,
Almoravids etc.
[2] The
Fatimids
contested the Abbassids for even the titluar authority. The Buwayhids
were then defeated in the mid-11th century by enlisting the aid of the
Seljuks under
Toghril Beg.
The Seljuks however then themselves took over defacto lordship of the
empire, and their leader bestowed the title by the caliph of the Sultan
of the East and the West, reflecting his power, and exerted influence
power over the Abbasids as a matter of form by publicly pledging
allegiance to them leaving the Caliph in control of little actual
territory beyond Baghdad.
[2]Nomadic Incursions and the Eclipse of Caliphal Power.
By the mid-tenth century, breakaway former provinces began to challenge
Abbasid rule. The Buyids of Persia captured Baghdad in 945. The caliphs
henceforth became powerless puppets controlled by sultans, the actual
rulers. The Seljuk Turks defeated the Buyids in 1055 and ruled the
remnants of the Abbasid Empire for two centuries. The Seljuks were
staunch Sunni who purged the Shi’a. For a time, Seljuk military power
restored the diminished caliphate. Egyptians and Byzantines were
defeated, the latter success opening Anatolia, the nucleus of the later
Ottoman Empire, to settlement by Turkic nomads. So an emir of Ghazni named Mahmud and other emirs such as the sultanate of Rum, Khwarezmashamas, decided he wanted full autonmous control of Fatmids. They were aided by the Seljuk Turks and were victorious but the Seljuk Turks outwitted their allies and decided to take full authority over former fatmids .
Then the Ottomans and The Saffavid dynasty were in conflict.
http://www.fsmitha.com/h3/h17isl.html
The Safavids and War between Shia
While under the rule of the Mongols, in the 1200s, the Persians
had given up on politics and militarism and had submerged themselves in Islamic
devotion, Sufism and religious eclecticism. During these times, Iran had Mongol
and Turkish immigrants who adopted the Persian language and Persian customs.
In the 1300s, a dynasty founded by a grandson of Genghis Khan, Hulagu,
ruled in Iran. It wavered between Christianity and Islam and chose Islam.
Meanwhile a militant Islamic Sufi order,
the Safavids, appeared among Turkish speaking people, their home base at
Ardebil, west of the
Caspian Sea. And the Safavid order
survived the coming of Timur (Tamerlane) in the 1300s.
By 1500 the Safavids had adopted the Shia branch of Islam. Safavid males
wore red headgear for identification, and they were eager to advance Shi'ism
by military means. They viewed their religious leader as a perfect guide as
well as an able military chieftain, and they viewed their leader's position
as rightly passed from father to son - in the Shia tradition.
In the year 1500, the thirteen-year-old son of a recently deceased Safavid
leader set out to conquer territory. In 1501 the Safavids seized
Tabriz and made it their capital. And
they conquered in Armenia,
Azerbaijan and
Khurasan. The Safavids became the strongest
force in Iran, and their leader, Isma'il, now fifteen, was declared Shah (king).
The area of the world thought of as Iran was mountainous and it had a variety
of nomadic tribes with egalitarian traditions not yet completely erased.
In addition to Persians, Iran had Kurds, Arabs, Turkomans and Baluchis to name
a few. At Isma'il's court a Turkish language was spoken, but having adopted
much of Persian culture the Safavids were thought by outsiders to be Persian.
To help organize the state the Safavids used Persian bureaucrats with a tradition
in administration and tax collecting, and they tried to create religious unity.
Isma'il described himself as a descendant, on their father's side, of the Prophet
Muhammad. Shi'ism became the state religion, Isma'il denigrating the Sunni branch
of Islam and trying to force people to become Shia - a difficult task as his
authority with a variety of tribes had been little accepted.
The Ottoman sultan, Bayezid II (ruled 1481-1512), a Sunni Muslim, congratulated
Isma'il on his military victories and suggested that he and his Shia followers
stop destroying the graves and mosques of Sunni Muslims. Convinced of the righteousness
of their cause and the evil of the Sunni branch of Islam, the Safavids ignored
Bayezid.
In 1512 the aged Bayezid was ill. His three sons fought each other for his
throne at the Ottoman capital, Constantinople.
Those special warriors, the Janissaries, were a power behind the throne and
chose as the new sultan the son that was most warlike: Selim. Bayezid
was dethroned, and Selim secured his rule by having his two brothers and their
sons executed by strangulation, Selim becoming Selim I.
Selim embarked on a war against what he saw as the heresy of Shi'ism. He
is reported to have exterminated thousands of Shia Muslims in Asia Minor. Then
he launched a war against the Shia king of Persia: Isma'il. Selim's armies
advanced through northern Mesopotamia, and in August 1514, just west of
Tabriz, Selim's army defeated the Safavid
army, which had cavalry with only spears, bows and swords against Ottoman artillery
and muskets.
Isma'il had been accustomed to victory, and he and his Safavid followers
had believed that Allah was on their side. They were bewildered by their defeat.
Isma'il found relief from psychological depression in wine. He died ten years
later at the age of thirty-seven.
The Ottoman Empire Expands
Next, Selim moved against the Mameluk rulers who had allied themselves with
the Persians. In 1516 his troops moved southward and captured
Damascus,
Beirut,
Gaza and
Jerusalem. In 1517 the Ottomans defeated
the Mameluk Sultan Tuman outside Cairo.
In Egypt, Selim's forces confronted the last of Abbasid authority, the Abbasid
caliph having moved to Egypt after the conquest of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258.
Under the Mameluks, the Abbasids had been making only a feeble show of authority
in religious matters. Now the head of the Abbasid family was taken to Constantinople
as prisoner. The Abbasids surrendered the title of caliph and the sword and
mantle of Muhammad the Prophet, to Selim, who declared himself caliph. The
Ottoman Empire now included all of Mesopotamia,
Armenia, lands to the Caspian Sea, Syria, Palestine and Egypt. In nine years,
Selim had almost doubled the size of the Ottoman Empire.
He became known as a great conqueror. He was also an accomplished poet in three
languages, but for the world it was his conquests, his use of violence, that
was most celebrated.
Selim became ill in 1520. He died and was succeeded by his only son, Suleiman
(Sulayman), who was twenty-six. Suleiman inherited a well organized nation,
a treasury filled with taxes drawn from far and wide, and a disciplined army.
In Europe he was to be called Suleiman the Magnificent because of wealth and
grandeur, although amid his wealth he was thought to be a man of discipline
and simplicity - in the tradition of Abu Bakr and Umar ibn-al-Khattab - aside
from the harem that he had inherited, filled with 300 women under the age of
twenty-five, almost all of them Christians, guarded by eunuchs. Suleiman was
commander of the faithful, a man of sincere religious convictions, with more
kindness and tolerance than his father. But he believed that he should conquer
as had his father. He believed that he should unite the peoples of the East
and West as had Alexander the Great.
During Suleiman's first year as sultan he moved against
Belgrade. Europeans were too distracted
by conflict amongst themselves to rally to Belgrade's defense. Suleiman surrounded
the city and bombarded it with heavy cannon, and Belgrade fell to the Ottomans
in August, 1521.
Next, Suleiman aimed at conquest of the Christian island of
Rhodes. The Ottomans viewed the knights
there as cutthroats and pirates and were annoyed with their attacks on Ottoman
ships taking goods to Egypt and pilgrims to Mecca. The conquest over Rhodes
was to eliminate all threats to Ottoman naval power in the Aegean and eastern
Mediterranean seas.
The assault on Rhodes began in 1522, Suleiman sending an armada of 400 ships
to Rhodes and leading 100,000 men over land to a point just opposite the island.
The Ottomans employed their artillery again - known to be the best in the world
- and they reinforced their bombardments with sappers and explosives. And after
a siege of 145 days, Rhodes capitulated. The island's inhabitants were allowed
to depart if they wished, and those who stayed were promised freedom of worship
and freedom from taxation for five years.
Four years after his victory over Rhodes, Suleiman aimed against at conquest
in Europe. In 1526 he overran Buda and Pest
on the Danube River in Hungary. He moved against
Vienna, but lacking enough soldiers
he returned to Constantinople and tried again in May,1529. His troops had to
endure much rain. At Vienna's walls the Ottomans applied their light cannon,
musketry and skilled archery. Suleiman's army made a gap 150 feet wide in Vienna's
wall, but with ferocious resistance the Christians stopped the Ottomans from
pouring through. Ottomans losses were heavy. Suleiman's army was essentially
a summer force, and with winter approaching Suleiman lifted his siege against
Vienna. The Ottomans set fire to their camps, massacred their prisoners except
for those young enough to qualify for their slave markets and returned home,
to be harassed by Christian cavalry and bad weather along the way. In Vienna,
the sight of the Ottoman withdrawal was followed by the ringing of bells and
great celebration. Suleiman had suffered his first defeat. Christian Europe
saw itself as having been delivered from Islam and the Ottomans.
Under Suleiman, the Ottomans made further gains in empire along the coast
of North Africa west of Egypt. In the early 1500s, Islamic pirates there, the
most famous of which the Christians called Barbarossa, a Turk from Lesbos, had
been in conflict with the Portuguese and Spanish. The pirates held territory
along the coast of North Africa. Barbarossa's brother, Arüj, the ruling pirate,
was killed by the Spanish in 1518. Barbarossa took over, assuming title of Khayr
ad-Din, and fearing loss of territory to the Spanish he offered homage to Suleiman.
That same year, Suleiman sent Khayr ad-Din reinforcements. In 1529, Khayr
ad-Din took control of Algiers and made it the base for piracy. Suleiman made
Khaya ad-Din admiral-in-chief of his navy, and in 1534 Khayr ad-Din captured
Tunis. Charles V, the Habsburg emperor of Spain, sent a force that retook Tunis.
Then in 1538 Khayr ad-Din defeated Charles' navy at the Battle of Préveza. Twice
- in 1533 and 1544 - Khayr ad-Din defeated the Italian admiral Andrea Doria,
giving the Ottomans control over the Mediterranean Sea. Khayr enjoyed a great
presence at court until his death in 1546. Suleiman lived until 1566.
In 1570, the Ottoman Turks captured Cyprus from
the Venetians. Christian communities along the eastern Mediterranean coast shook
with fear. Pope Pius V allied the Church with Venice, and Philip II of Spain
entered the alliance. In 1571, a force of more than 300 ships, supplied by Venice,
Spain and a small squadron from the Papal states, met the Turks inside the Gulf
of Lepanto - the last great battle with oar propelled vessels. The Christian
alliance lost 12 galleys and around 8,000 men killed. The Ottomans lost an estimated
25,000 killed and 117 galleys. From the Ottoman ships the Christians seized
15,000 Christians said to have been slaves. It was the first defeat of an Ottoman
force - a victory that Pope Pius V attributed to the intercession of Saint Mary.
But it was not a totally effective intercession: the Ottomans immediately began
to rebuild their navy. Ottoman naval superiority in the Mediterranean was soon
restored, and Cyprus was not recovered.
The Safavids, Bloodletting and Shia Politics to the End
of the Century
Safavid confidence returned. Safavid shahs, Tahmasp, Isma'il II and Muhammad
Khadabandeh, ruling in succession to 1587, expanded in the direction opposite
from the Ottomans, as far as Transoxiana.
And the Safavids turned again against Ottoman power and fought for control over
Tabriz, Baghdad and Armenia.
These shahs tightened controls over their subjects, each district having
its own Safavid leader, a Qizilbash chief, answerable to the Shah.
In time of war the Qizilbash chiefs were responsible for providing soldiers
for the shah's army and for collecting revenues to pay for war. And the local
Qizilbash chiefs grew wealthy - Shia society not immune from the same
temptations that had plagued their enemy, centuries before - the Umayyads.
The shahs created an ideological and judicial order as a part of their theocracy.
Members of the order were scholar-priests known as ulama. The most learned
of the Ulama achieved the rank of mujtahid, similar to the position to
be known as ayatollah. In Safavid times, few reached this highest rank
level, and those who did were allowed to give authoritative interpretations
to questions of religious law.
With their self-esteem and power derived from their increased
wealth, some local Qizilbash chiefs wished to have
more freedom from the Shah's
authority. They tried to convince Shah Khadabandeh that he
should select a successor amenable to them. Some of these
chiefs tried to reduced the chances of another choice by
executing the heir, his mother and some other possible
heirs within the royal family. As often happens, politics
by murder was less than efficient. The younger brother of
the murdered heir was secretly whisked away to Khurasan, and Qizilbash chiefs
loyal to the royal family fought and defeated Qizilbash chiefs
who were not, and full power was returned to the old dynasty
of shahs. The younger brother of the murdered heir,
Abbas, succeeded Khadabandeh in 1587, and he was to rule
until 1629.
Overall the a dynasty called the Saffavids was founded in the Ottoman province by Ghengis Khans grandson called Hulagu. Isma'il a great leader conquered Armenia,Azerbaijan,and Khurasan.They Saffavids did keep the Otomans supervision in their court keeping, howveer Selim an Ottoman Commander decided to launch a war against the the Sufi order followers in the Saffavid provinces.This also helps to bring a further wedge in the Shi'a and Sufi Split
Edited by AksumVanguard - 29-May-2009 at 01:07