Marshall Hodgson. Rethinking World History: Essays on Europe, Islam and World History
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8 Cultural patterning in Islamdom and the Occident 127
about 1600, the basic conditions of agrarianate historical life itself began
to be altered in the Occident, and comparisons after that date therefore
introduce considerations alien to any direct comparison between two
cultures as such.
Islamdom and the Occident in the thirteenth-century world
Since the rise of the confessional traditions in late Roman and Sasanian
times,
the Afro-Eurasian Oikoumene had not changed in the most
fundamental conditions of its social life. Civilized culture was every-
where still carried primarily by privileged classes in cities, living ulti-
mately from the labor of a great majority of chiefly illiterate peasants in
the countryside. Cultural and intellectual innovation was everywhere
still a secondary aspect of cultural life; the prime object of all in-
stitutions was the preservation of what had been attained rather than
the development of anything new. Not only arts and crafts, but life-
orientational and scientific thought, while not (as in pre-citied times) a
matter of oral tribal lore, and no longer (as in citied times before the
great Axial Age flowerings) the initiatory privilege of special priestly
orders, nevertheless remained primarily a matter of personal appren-
ticeship from generation to generation on the basis of a limited number
of classical texts among a small minority. Any possible historical action
in any such fields could still not escape the presuppositions of society
of the agrarianate level.
Yet within these limits, much that was only slightly less fundamental
had changed by the thirteenth century. In these changes Muslims had
played a primary role. Much change was the direct outcome of the force
of Islam
itself,
which had had major consequences not only from Nile to
Oxus but throughout the Indo-Mediterranean regions. Much change
was the result of cumulative processes in which Islam and the culture
associated with it were only one force among many. But even here the
presence of the Muslims had often been of determinant importance. The
most evident changes had been those that followed from the cumulative
further development of the overall Oikoumenic complex of citied life. As
compared with a thousand years before, by the year 1300 the area of
civilized interaction had expanded in all directions. Cities had arisen in
the Sudanic lands, in northern Europe, in the lands south of the older
China, in Malaysia, and they not only traded at long distances but added
their own products to the trade, and sometimes even their own ideas. In
the heart of the steppe, the Mongols themselves were becoming Bud-
dhists and were well launched on the path to abject dependence on
128 II Islam in a global context
Chinese merchants
and
princes
to
which they
had
sunk
by a few
centu-
ries later.
In the
Indian Ocean basin, trade
no
longer depended simply
on
a few
northerly markets,
but
was active along
all the
shores.
In
the
same thousand years
the
technical competence
of
human being
in
the
Afro-Eurasian civilized zone
had
markedly increased. "Greek fire"
had been invented
and
then gunpowder;
the
compass
had
been
put to
work
on all the
seas; paper
had
spread from China
to all
regions,
and
printing was
in
use
in the Far
East
and at
least some
of
its elements were
known elsewhere. Innumerable lesser inventions
and
discoveries
had
been made
in the
field
of
practical
and of
artistic technique,
in
the cultiva-
tion
of
plants
and
animals,
in
abstract scientific knowledge; some were
of local application
and
some
of
general use; some
of the
most spectacu-
lar originated
in
China,
but
every region could
be
credited with some;
and all (whether taken
up
elsewhere
or
merely adding to a local complex-
ity) cumulatively contributed
to a
heightened level
of
availability
of hu-
man resources everywhere
in the
Oikoumene.
It was
indeed,
in
part,
some
of the new
discoveries that helped make possible, directly
and
indirectly,
the
expansion that
had
taken place
in the
area
of
civilized
interaction;
and
this expansion,
in
turn, added
to the
potential sources
of
new
discoveries.
As in
each millennium that
had
preceded, cumula-
tively the pace of history had quickened. (Whether mankind was
progress-
ing
is a
different question.) Here again, Islamdom shared
at
least
as
much
as any
other society
in the
overall development.
There was
a
third field
of
change during the previous millennium, less
tangible than the geographical
and
technical
accretions.
This was
a
broad-
ened
and
deepened experience with philosophical
and
religious life.
Not
only from Nile
to
Oxus
but in all the
major citied regions
the
rich
cre-
ations
of the
classical Axial
Age had
been deeply assimilated, marve-
lously differentiated,
a
thousand
and one of
their possible implications
worked out minutely. The labors
of
Ghazali
and
Ibn al-Arabi in appreciat-
ing
and
integrating
the
Irano-Semitic life-orientational traditions,
as
they
had developed
by
their time, were matched
in
differing ways
in the
other regions
by
figures like Shankara
and
Ramanuja
in
India,
Chu Hsi
in China, Michael Psellus
and
Thomas Aquinas
in
Europe,
all
roughly
(as world history goes) contemporaries.
At
least
as
important
as any
intellectual formulations was the maturing
of
traditions
of
personal expe-
rience with various aspects
of the
mystical life,
and of
institutions
(usu-
ally monastic) which embodied these traditions,
a
maturing which
had
taken place likewise
in all the
great Oikoumenic regions.
Within this wider
and
more sophisticated world, Islamdom occupied
an increasingly central
and
already almost
a
dominant position.
The
8 Cultural patterning in Islamdom and the Occident 129
nature of this dominance has been misunderstood. The peculiar notion
of some modern Western writers, that before the sixteenth century other
societies, such as the Islamicate, were "isolated" and were brought into
the "mainstream" of history only by such events as the Portuguese inva-
sion of the Indian Ocean, is of course ridiculous: if there was a "main-
stream," it was the Portuguese who were coming into it, not the Mus-
lims;
the Muslims were already there. But the contrary notion, also
found among Western writers, that in the High Caliphal Period Arab or
Islamicate culture was the greatest in the world, that Cordova or Bagh-
dad were incomparable centers of wealth and learning, is almost as
poorly founded. It springs equally from the unconsidered assumption
that the Occident was the "mainstream" of world history and culture.
Compared with the Occident, in the High Caliphal Period, when the
Occident was still rather a backwater, Islamdom looks magnificent; but
such a comparison says nothing about its relative position in the world;
the Baghdad of the caliphs was merely on a plane of relative equality
with Constantinople in eastern Europe and with the metropolises of
India or China. (In the Earlier Middle Period, when the Occident was
more developed, Islamdom looks less strikingly glorious in comparison;
but most of the change in appearances is due to a change in the level of
the Occident, not in that of Islamdom.) The well-known cultural superi-
ority of Islamdom, then, was not absolute in the world at large (in the
Earlier Middle Period, surely it was in China, if anywhere, that would be
found the maximum economic and cultural prosperity); it was relative to
the developing Occident.
Yet in certain respects, Islamdom was indeed pre-eminent in the
Oikoumene. For the configuration of regional lettered traditions in the
Oikoumene had, in the course of the other changes, itself subtly
changed. In the Axial Age three great lettered traditions had been
launched in the Indo-Mediterranean zone, the Sanskritic, the Irano-
Semitic, and the Hellenic, in relatively close relations with each other but
in rather tenuous relations with the fourth lettered tradition, the Chi-
nese.
The same four traditions still formed the matrix of all high culture;
but their pattern had been altered now in three ways. First, the Irano-
Semitic traditions had loomed much larger under Islam. In the early
post-Axial centuries, the Irano-Semitic lettered traditions seemed almost
ready to be submerged under waves of Hellenization and even of
Indicization. By late Sasanian times, these traditions were asserting full
autonomy, and under Islam the Irano-Semitic heritage was clearly estab-
lished on an equal level with the others - or more than an equal level;
for by 1300 already the other two heritages were being submerged, at
130 II Islam in a global context
least
in
their original core areas,
by the
Irano-Semitic
in
Islamicate form.
Already
by
then
the
whole core area
of
Sanskritic culture
was
ruled
by
Muslims,
and in the
following centuries even independent Hindu states
in
the
region learned more
and
more
to
live
in an
Islamicate world, even
adopting some Islamicate patterns
at
least
on
superficial levels.
By 1300
also
the
Anatolian peninsula was Muslim-ruled,
and
within
a
century
so
was
the
Balkan peninsula;
of the
homelands
of
Hellenic culture, only
southern Italy
and
Sicily were
not
regained
for
Islam
- and at
this point,
at
any
rate, Sicily even under
its
northern conquerors still retained
strong traces
of its
earlier Muslim past
and of its
Islamicate surround-
ings.
In
short,
by way of
Islam almost
the
entire Indo-Mediterranean
citied zone
of
Axial times, together with
a
wide hinterland,
was
already
or
was
about
to be
united under
the
aegis
of a
single society; even
though locally
the
Hellenic
and the
Sanskritic traditions maintained
a
certain limited vitality
- a
vitality visible especially
in
religion
(and not
too different from that maintained locally
by the
Irano-Semitic traditions
at
the
height
of the
less extensive Hellenic dominance).
But there were two other events complementing this rise toward hege-
mony
of the
Irano-Semitic traditions:
the
potent burgeoning
of
China
and
the
independent maturing
of the
Occident. Even
at the
height
of
Islamicate power,
in the
sixteenth century, when
the
greater part
of the
Oikoumene seemed
to
have become,
if not
Muslim, then
at
least
a
series
of enclaved societies surrounded
by
Islamdom, still even then
two
citied
societies stood
out
relatively impermeable
to
Islam:
the
Far East
of
China
and
its
neighbors,
and the
Occident
of
Europe, part
of the
region
grounded
in
Hellenic traditions. But neither
of
these societies played
the
same role
as it had in
Axial times. The
Far
East,
of
course, like
the
other
societies
had
been doing
its own
expanding,
and
from
a
relatively small
area along
the
Hoang-ho
and the
Yang-tze
its
lettered traditions
had
come
to
dominate
a
wide zone from Japan
to
Annam.
But
more impor-
tant,
in the
Tang-Sung period (from
the
seventh century) impulses from
the
Far
Eastern region
had
impinged increasingly
on the
other parts
of
the Oikoumene;
we
have already noted, from
the
very moment
of the
advent
of
Islam down
to the
Mongol conquests,
the
relative ascendancy
of Chinese
art and
trade between Nile
and
Oxus (and latterly, even some
political impact);
an
ascendancy only limitedly attested
for
Sasanian
times.
The Occident
was at
first
far
less wealthy
or
cultivated,
and im-
pressed
the
imagination
of the
Indo-Mediterranean peoples generally
less than
did the
Chinese.
But its
rise represented
an
even greater shift
in
the old
Oikoumenic configuration.
If one can
think
of the
Occident
8 Cultural patterning in Islamdom and the Occident 131
proper as a complex of independent Latin-using and papacy-owning
peoples set off from those under Byzantine leadership, one will see that
the Occidental traditions arose on essentially new ground, in lands
northwest of Rome rather than southeast of it in the terrain of the old
Hellenic traditions. This in itself was nothing new - throughout the
hemisphere, new areas were modifying in some measure the culture of
the core area from which their lettered traditions were derived; thus in
further India the Indie traditions maintained in independence, in a
different form, after the Ganges plain was overrun by Muslims, just as
the Hellenic traditions did in northern and western Europe. But the
Occident developed a much more vigorous cultural life than any other
such outlying region - indeed, it came to function almost like a fifth
core-area, a fifth center of persistent and comprehensive cultural inno-
vation and radiation. After establishing its explicit independence in the
eighth and ninth centuries (of course, always within the overall cultural
commitments of the Christianized Hellenic tradition), by the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries it was imposing its influence, economically,
politically, and even culturally, on eastern Christendom, both north
among the Slavs and south among the Greeks.
The Far Eastern and the Occidental traditions equally resisted the
Muslim expansion - though both learned something from Islamdom as
well; but the Occident was much closer to home and even, in a few
isolated cases, proved strong enough to roll back Islam from territories
where it had long prevailed. One may thus say that, in contrast to the
situation a thousand years before, when four more or less equal core-
areas had coexisted, now there was developing a three-cornered con-
flict among the most active cultural traditions: the Islamicate in the
whole of the old Indo-Mediterranean zone; the Far Eastern, newly
making itself felt abroad; and the new Occidental variant of the Hel-
lenic tradition. The conflict rarely became explicit. The Occident made
at best sporadic attempts to act together (as in the Crusades) as a joint
political power in its relations with outsiders. The Chinese empire was
resisted by Japanese and Annamese. In the vast middle, Muslims, for
all their emotional solidarity, acted even less often in concert. But the
effective course of the conflict can nonetheless be traced. At the Mongo-
lian capital, Karakorum, representatives of all three blocs had been
present and intrigued against one another; if the Tibetans or the Rus-
sians seemed for a time to form secondary but independent sources of
social power or cultural influence, this soon proved to be transitory or
at least closely limited in scope. The Occidental cultural complex was
certainly, at first, much the weakest of the three; but it grew steadily
132 II Islam in a global context
stronger, till
in the
sixteenth century
it was
competing
on a
level
of
full
equality with both
the
others.
In 1300,
the
Occident could be compared
to
the dark horse
in
a race
- if
it were
not
that there
was no
race,
or at
least
no
very conscious one:
for
world hegemony,
the
presumable goal
of any
such race,
was
rarely
pur-
sued consciously even
on the
level
of
religious allegiance;
nor is it
clear
that world hegemony
was a
necessary
or
even likely unintentional
out-
come
of the
cultural conflicts
I
have mentioned
- or of any
historical
forces
at
work before
the
seventeenth-
and
eighteenth-century transfor-
mations changed the basis
of
all
such conflicts. The Occident, comprising
the lands of Latin expression in the western part of the European peninsu-
las,
had a
very limited territory and,
by
its remoteness, was limited
in its
contacts with other cultures:
it had
close contacts only with
its
former
mentors
of
Eastern Christendom
and
with the Muslims.
It
had done very
well
by
itself within these limits. From
the
viewpoint
of
urban life, much
of
it was
newly opened frontier land; much
of its
intellectual resources
consisted
of
material adapted
or
translated from the Greek (and Hebrew)
or, latterly, from
the
Arabic. Yet
in
High Medieval times high culture,
as
well
as all
aspects
of
economic life, came
to a
great flowering
in the
Occident:
a
flowering comparable
to
that
of
contemporary Islamdom
in
the Earlier Middle Period,
and
even more striking because
of the
much
lower point from which
the
Occidental cultural development started.
For
the first time
in
Oikoumenic history, the culture
of
a
great new area, not
a
mere minor extension
of
one
of the
older cultural core areas,
had
drawn
abreast of the old core areas in independent fullness of cultural sophistica-
tion
and
originality.
Yet even
so, the
Occidental cultural horizons remained more limited
than those
of
Islamdom,
if
only geographically. After
the
final defeat
of
the Crusades, despite occasional merchants
and
missionaries
who
trav-
eled great distances
in
Mongol time
(as did men
from most other
re-
gions),
Occidental culture
was
confined
to its own
little peninsulas.
Thomas Aquinas
was
read from Spain
to
Hungary
and
from Sicily
to
Norway.
Ibn
al-Arabi
was
read from Spain
to
Sumatra
and
from
the
Swahili coast
to
Kazan
on the
Volga. Even
so
late
as the
sixteenth
cen-
tury,
the
central position
and
vast extension
of
Islamdom still assured
it
at least
the
apparent pre-eminence which
it
was beginning
to
acquire
by
1300.
In
contrast
to any
other
of the
major cultural core areas, that
of
Islam
was in
direct
and
active contact with
all the
major Oikoumenic
regions;
and not
only
in the
neighboring core areas
but in
some more
outlying regions, Islam
was
becoming dominant politically
and
even
culturally.
If
less industrially developed than
the
Chinese,
the
Muslims
8 Cultural patterning in Islamdom and the Occident 133
yet were more widely influential than any other bloc in shaping the
cultural interchange and even the political life of the whole Oikoumene.
But it was not merely the geographical centrality of the Muslim heart-
lands that put them in a pre-eminent position. It was the cultural and
social mobility of the Muslims, their cosmopolitanism, that allowed
them to take full advantage of their central position. Within the setting
of agrarianate-level Oikoumenic society, the Islamicate culture was maxi-
mally adapted to an expansive and dominant role. It was to maintain
this role, becoming steadily more dominant in the Oikoumene, until the
Oikoumenic historical circumstances were totally altered - at the hands
of the Occidentals.
The sources of Occidental strength and growth are the object of one of
the most intriguing inquiries of world history. The sources of Islamicate
strength and persistent vitality pose almost as great a world-historical
problem, and one perhaps equally intriguing. To compare the two soci-
eties at their most nearly comparable stages can help to show to what
degree the strength of each can be ascribed to its particular cultural
composition, and to what degree to the overall circumstances in which
its peoples found themselves.
Islam and Christianity
as frameworks
for
religious
life
The attractiveness of Islamicate culture and much of the potency of its
institutions stemmed largely from the distinctive structure of the Islamic
religious expectations as they had been developed by the Earlier Middle
Period. It will be clear by now that the romantic notion that has prevailed
in some circles, that Islam was the "monotheism of the desert," born of
the Bedouins' awed wonder at the vast openness of sky and land and
their overwhelming unpredictability, is unhistorical. Islam grew out of a
long tradition of urban religion and it was as city-oriented as any variant
of that tradition. Like the other confessions, Islam was practiced by
many unsophisticated people and among them it could appear very
unsophisticated. Even at its most sophisticated, it usually retained, like
the other pre-Modern religious traditions, a number of culturally primi-
tive traits in its cult and its myth. But it stands out among those tradi-
tions for its relative sophistication and its freedom from the age-old
compounded intricacies of the nature cults.
So far as any religious structure can be called "simple," that of Islam
can be. Its central formulations have been singularly stripped and di-
rect and its essential cult has been plain to the point of austerity; the
central challenge of its spiritual experience comes forth with almost
134 II Islam in a global context
blinding elemental immediacy. This is a simplicity not of naive "primi-
tiveness" (pre-literate and other parochially limited systems are rarely if
ever simple anyway) but of single-minded sophistication which inte-
grates all the diversity of experience through a few potent and compre-
hensive conceptions; and then discards all that is circuitous and irrele-
vant, all that hangs over from a time when perceptions were less
broadly generalizable. This relative urbanity of Islam can also be inter-
preted as a relative rootlessness, being cut loose from any particular
local setting and its local involvement with nature. It is traceable to the
mercantile orientation of Islam and in turn reinforced the cosmopolitan-
ism of the society which had produced that orientation. Along with the
advantages it afforded Islam in making for social and cultural strength,
it brought disadvantages too, of course. But both advantages and disad-
vantages, strengths and weaknesses, were proper to a highly advanced
stage of agrarianate social development.
The stark simplicity of the primary Islamic affirmations was but one
expression of its overall urbanity. This lay not so much in any one feature
of the tradition as in the whole structure of it: that is, the mutual interre-
lation of the various sub-traditions that went to make up Islam as a
whole. Almost every trait to be found in any one religious tradition will
be found somewhere in almost any other, if not in a mainstream then in
some persistent variant of it; especially where the traditions have re-
ceived high development among large populations. Thus may coexist
social conscience and inward cultivation, moralistic austerity and cultic
splendor, stress on transcendence and stress on immanence. But tradi-
tions differ as to what form these varying experiences and perceptions
are expected to take, and as to which will be granted the greatest pres-
tige;
as to what sorts of temperament will be encouraged by those who
stand relatively neutral in the community, and what sorts will be, at best,
tolerated. It is this, the interrelation and subordination of different ele-
ments, that forms the structure of a religious tradition and gives it its
distinctive effect as a body. Though such interrelations will change dur-
ing history in response to the new insights and possibilities developed in
the ongoing internal dialogue, yet to a large degree the common commit-
ment to the initial creative events and to the succeeding dialogue, as it
has unfolded, assures great continuity in such structuring under even
widely varying circumstances.
Since Christianity and Islam share common roots and even much
common symbolism, the striking contrast between the ways in which
such common elements are lined up in the two traditions can bring out
the diversity of their meaning in the two contexts. In particular, compar-
8
Cultural patterning in Islamdom and the Occident 135
ing such structuring in Islam and in Christianity can bring out the conse-
quences of the persistent primacy in Islam of a sense of personal moral
responsibility. But at best such a comparison is full of pitfalls.
To
evaluate
in any way a pattern of ultimate orientation seems to imply judging one
ultimate standard by another - or by a standard less than ultimate. In
our case, to see either religious tradition from the viewpoint of the other
(the commonest procedure) amounts inevitably to showing the one as
weak in the other's strong points. To judge them both by a standard
alien to either (sometimes attempted in reaction) is to risk missing just
those points that are most distinctive and for that reason incommensu-
rate with any more common human norms. Yet, fortunately, human life
is not divisible into watertight compartments. Apart from such explicit
physiological defects as color-blindness, the sorts of experience accessi-
ble to one human being are at least in some measure generally accessible
to other human beings, so that there are no ultimate barriers to mutual
comprehension between different cultural frames of reference - at least
so far as such frames of reference are open to diverse temperaments
within their own ranks. Hence what is called a phenomenological
approach - such as a comparison of the structuring of comparable ele-
ments in two traditions - allows at least an opportunity of genuine ap-
preciation, and will guard maximally against the effects of the inevitable
precommitments of the inquirer.
1
Despite the tremendous variety of religious orientation that has arisen
in different sects or orders within the Christian tradition, a central theme
has retained its hold on Christian imaginations under all sorts of circum-
stances, a theme ever presented to them anew especially in the writings
of Paul and of John: the demand for
personal responsiveness
to
redemptive
love
in a
corrupted
world.
An equally wide variety of religious orientation
has arisen among Muslims of different allegiances and tariqas, and
among them also a central theme has retained its power under the most
diverse circumstances whenever the Quran has been taken seriously:
the
demand for personal responsibility for the moral ordering of the natural
world.
These themes have been presented in contrasting cosmologies. Chris-
tians have seen the world as first corrupted with Adam, thenceforth to
be patiently redeemed by a loving God, tirelessly forgiving His people so
soon as they respond to His grace, and finally revealing Himself most
1
This is not to say that one can actually dispense with those precommitments. On the
inevitability and, indeed, the creative value of Christian, Westernistic, and other high-
level precommitments, particularly in Islamic studies, see "On scholarly precommit-
ments" in the section on historical method in Chapter
5,
above.
136 II Islam in a global context
fully among them
as a
perfect Life
of
suffering love,
to
which they need
only respond with love,
to be
saved from
the
corruption
and
made
whole. Muslims have seen
the
world
as the
proper sphere
of
Adam's
viceregency; when Adam strayed into error,
he
turned
to God for
guid-
ance
and
was guided; rather than
a
source
of
taint
in
his descendants,
he
is
a
model
to
them. Thenceforth, God continued
the
guidance through
a
series
of
prophetic summonses
to a
total pattern
of
living; finally
He
revealed
His
transcendent unity most clearly through
a
perfect Book;
if
people allow
it to
remind them
of
what they
are if
left
to
themselves,
they will turn
to
Him
and
His guidance will enable them to live right and
to rule
the
world
in
justice.
The
central event
of
history
for
Christians
was Christ's crucifixion
and
resurrection, which most decisively evoke
a
sense
of
God's love
in him who
opens himself
to
their impact,
and
lead
him
to
respond
to
others
in the
same spirit. The central event
of
history
for Muslims
was the
descent
and
preaching
of the
Quran, which most
decisively evokes
a
sense
of
God's majesty
and
his own condition
in
him
who opens himself
to its
impact,
and
leads
him to
reflect
and
submit
himself
to its
norms.
For Christians,
the Law, the
necessities imposed
by
social living,
is
transcended
as
people
are
liberated,
in
loving response,
to act
through
the inward power
of
God's free spirit;
the
Sermon
on the
Mount
pro-
vides
a
standard
of
true living.
For
Muslims,
the
laws
and
customs
of
humans are reoriented toward
a
universal justice; humans, stirred
out
of
their petty neglectfulness
by
confrontation with God's words,
are to act
as
the
viceregents
of God in the
whole creation;
the
jihad,
the
struggle
for social righteousness, provides
a
standard
of
true living.
For
Chris-
tians,
the
kind
of
religious experience most honored
is the
acceptance of
redemptive grace, which means
a
process
of
rebirth,
of
inward transfor-
mation.
For
Muslims,
the
kind
of
religious experience most honored
is
the acceptance
of
prophetic vision, which means
a
process
of
chasten-
ing,
of
concentrating
his
attention,
of
inward refocusing. Christians
share their experience
in a
redemptive fellowship,
a
special sacramental
society,
the
church, which
is to be in the
world, redeeming
the
world,
but
is not of the
world; within which, normally, some have been
or-
dained
to
offer again
the
tokens
of
God's love
to the
rest
in
recurring
reenactment
of
Christ's sacrifice. Muslims share their experience
in a
total society, comprehending
(in
principle)
the
whole
of
human life,
the
Ummah, built upon standards derived from
the
prophetic vision;
com-
prising a homogeneous brotherhood bearing a common witness brought
to mind daily
in the
salat worship
and
impressively reaffirmed
en
masse
each year
at
Mecca.