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MUSLIM SOCIAL & RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS, 1200-1400.
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Examines how organizations contributed to stability and/or change in Islamic society, militarization, role of elites, schisms & sects, role of Sufis & Ottomans.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Examines how organizations contributed to stability and/or change in Islamic society, militarization, role of elites, schisms & sects, role of Sufis & Ottomans.

Paper Introduction:
IMPACT OF MUSLIM SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS: 1200-1400 This essay discusses how Muslim social and religious organizations contributed to stability and/or change during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. A variety of such institutions played an important role in promoting the Islamicization of society which in general had a stabilizing effect by filling vacuums created by the turnover and militarization of political leadership and the destruction of traditional political, economic and cultural elites which occurred during these centuries. Some of the schismatic movements within Islam accelerated its fragmentation with different Muslim organizations contributing to the ascendancy of some Islamic sects over others and in some areas to a weakening of central authority.

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Unique Contributions of the Sufis Holt says that the Sufi movement "was to be found on both sides ofthe schism between the Sunnis and the Shi'is," east and west (8 ).According to Lapidus, "from the tenth century to the fourteenth centurySufism reached maturity as a social movement, and completed the developmentof a Sufi metaphysics and the integration of Sufi thought and practice withother forms of Islamic belief and worship" (168). Various millennarian Sufimovements flourished in modern Iran such as the Sunni-Shia Hibrawi mysticalorder founded by al-Simnani (1261-1336) and the movement founded by Safi al-Din (1252-1334) which eventually formed the basis in the sixteenth centuryfor the Shiite Safavid dynasty in Persia. During thereign of the Kurdish-Seljuk warrior kings Nur al-Din and Salah al-Din inthe 12th century and their Ayyubid and Mamluk successors in Egypt and Syriain the 13th and 14th centuries, the dominance of Sunni Islam was re-established over other Muslim sects as well as over the Christian crusaderswho were ousted from the Levant by the early 13 s. Conclusion In the period between the disintegration of the Abbasid Caliphate andthe fuller expansion of the Ottoman Empire, various Muslim socio-religiousorganizations contributed in the 13th and 14th centuries to atransformation of Middle Eastern society which included: (i) therestoration of Sunni Islamic authority in the western Mediterranean and thesuppression of dissident sects; (ii) the deepening of Islamic influence atall levels of Middle Eastern society as the ulama, other scholars andreligious leaders and brotherhoods, prominent among them the Sufis, soughtto mediate the cross-currents and chaotic conditions which existed duringthat period; and (iii) helping to consolidate Ottoman rule in its initialphases. London: Longman, 1986.Lapidus, Ira M. Old political, economic and socialelites were destroyed. Their central tenet wasrenunciation of worldly things "in the quest for an ecstatic self-realization [purification of the soul] through the direct visionaryexperience of God's being" (Lapidus 195). Various social and religious institutions,which were supported and subsidized by the aforesaid rulers, helped bringabout the Sunni Revival in the West. The Sufi brotherhoods co-existed with the new Ottoman state,sometimes supporting it and at other times inspiring resistance to thegovernment in rural eastern Anatolia. A variety of such institutions played an important role inpromoting the Islamicization of society which in general had a stabilizingeffect by filling vacuums created by the turnover and militarization ofpolitical leadership and the destruction of traditional political, economicand cultural elites which occurred during these centuries. IMPACT OF MUSLIM SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS: 12 -14 This essay discusses how Muslim social and religious organizationscontributed to stability and/or change during the thirteenth and fourteenthcenturies. A History of Islamic Societies. They claimed overlordship over the Holy Cities in Arabia andshowed their piety by great acts of munificence such as the construction ofthe great hospital in Cairo in 1284. According to Lapidus, "with the widespread destruction of townsand the decline of state protection, Islamic leadership in westernAnatolia, northeastern Iran and northern Mesopotamia passed into the handsof Sufi preachers, shamans and sorcerers" (279). Role of Muslim Institutions in the Revival of Sunni Islam According to Lapidus, despite the political fragmentation of the Arabempire during the last three hundred years of the Abbasid Caliphate (95 -1258), "a new form of Islamic state, community and religion came intobeing" (139). Early converts to Sunni Islam, the Ottoman Turks adapted thereligious institutions of Islam to suit their purposes. Their message was inculcated in the young bymasters (shaykhs) to their disciples and spread by wandering holy men.Various Sufi brotherhoods were founded, such as the Rifaiyya in Iraq in the12th century, the Suhrawardiyya in Baghdad in the 13th century and the al-Shadhili order which began in Morocco and took root in Egypt in the 13thcentury. The ulama were co-opted to help the Turkish sultans consolidate their rule over Muslimpopulations. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1988.----------------------- 6 Under the Sultan Bayazid I (1398-14 1) they won the battles which yielded them a firm foothold in theBalkans. According to Lapidus, "in the course of the tenth to the thirteenthcenturies Islamic communal groups and religious leaders were able to takecharge of Middle Eastern communities and infuse them with Islamicidentifications" (175). They performed a variety of social as well asreligious functions in villages and in rural areas. According to Lapidus, "as servants of the state, the 'ulama'could no longer represent the communal and religious interests of the massof Muslim believers, and protect the people from abuses of political power"(327). During the 1 th and 11th centuries various forms of Shiism,Ismailism in Fatimid Egypt and the Druze and Nusayri sects among others,had made inroads on Sunni Islam in the west Mediterranean area. The repeated invasions of the Golden Horde, the Mongols, which beganin 1219, and later depredations of Tamerlane (137 -14 5) were a holocaustfor the principal areas involved, Iran, Mesopotamia and parts of Syria andAnatolia. M. Great centers of religious learning were constructed.The leading sultans of the 13th and 14th centuries, such as the MamlukBaybars (in 1269) and al-Nasir Muhammad (in 132 and 1332) made pilgrimagesto Mecca. Lapidus says that the new nomadic and slave militaryelites "needed the collaboration of the 'ulama' in order to govern" (235).The various Muslim institutions mentioned above helped fill theinstitutional vacuum in people's lives. Whereas the ulama taughtthe sharia as a way of coping with everyday life, the Sufis were asceticswho taught the tariqa or way of mystical life. Lapidus says that such movements"represented a resurgence of popular Islam in opposition to chaotic andexploitative military domination" (284). They also helpedpromote the stability of alien regimes which converted themselves to Islamby leading the cry for jihad or holy war against infidels on its bordersand , as missionaries, by converting non-Muslims in border areas of CentralAsia, North Africa and elsewhere. The Sufis taught in ribats or community meeting houses and in ruralareas and outlying provinces. Lapidus says that "by the end of the fourteenth century, the Sufitariqat was well established throughout the Middle East" (171). In the Islamic umma or community of believers, the teachings of theQuran, the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, the hadith, and the Holy Law orsharia established social norms. The Age of the Crusades The Near East From the Eleventh Century to 1517. The intellectualleadership and ultimate interpreters of the sharia were the religiousscholars or ulama. These Muslim institutions contributed to change, the restoration ofSunni Islam, and stability, political unification in the West. Lapidus says that "as states became militarized and secularized,Islamic religious associations became the almost universal basis of MiddleEastern communal organization" (232). Muslim Religious Institutions under the Ottomans After being twice defeated decisively in Anatolia by the Mongols, theTurks under the leadership of Ottoman chieftains began after 128 to expandthe areas under their control in Anatolia. Lapidus says that the Sufis "exerted a profound influence upon thecommon people" (171). These included the madrasas, orcolleges of religious law, the dar al-hadith, teachers of the Traditions ofthe Prophets, the mazalims or reorganized royal courts, qadis, or Muslimjudges, and the mahtasibs or local religious officials. By beingdrawn into sectarian religious struggles and what Lapidus calls "bitterrivalries among" Muslim sectarian communities, they contributed to thedivisions in Islam (162). Works CitedHolt, P. Some of theschismatic movements within Islam accelerated its fragmentation withdifferent Muslim organizations contributing to the ascendancy of someIslamic sects over others and in some areas to a weakening of centralauthority. The intellectual basis for this newrole of the ulama was provided by the Sunni scholar Ahmad Taymiya (1263-1328) who "embodied a new concept of state and society in which the 'ulama'rather than the Caliph became the principal actors and laid claim for arole for local peoples in otherwise foreign military regimes" (Lapidus184).

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