War

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Selection of images from the Qantara corpus

In Islam

Islam does not authorize war between Muslims. The only legal war is holy war (jihād) against the infidels. Its aim is religious, and includes the imposition of sharia law. Hence, each war must be preceded by a proposition to embrace Islam. Obviously, war can also be waged to defend the community of believers from external attacks. Muslim countries were habitually at war with non-Muslim countries, and that’s why the Muslims divide the earth into Islamic territories (dār al-islām) and warring territories (dār al-harb), which are in conflict. Thus, when war was waged between two Muslim princes or when a civil war broke out in a Muslim state, the jurists on each side legalized their combat by considering the enemy to be a false Muslim or an apostate. This type of war could only be legally suspended by decennial truces. Judicially, the jurists considered this war as a collective duty for the community as a whole. It therefore had to be proclaimed by the caliph, and it was every Muslim’s duty to support the war effort (either in combat or fiscally). The caliph himself had to lead the army or be represented by a general. Hārūn al-Rashīd, the image of the ideal caliph, carried out the jihād every other year (and made the pilgrimage the other year).

War was therefore waged to propagate or defend Islam. Conquered enemies could be killed or turned into slaves if they weren’t handed over in treaties. Pagans were given no choice but to convert to Islam while the ‘peoples of the Book’ (Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians) were allowed to submit to Muslim rule while keeping their religions. The victor then imposed the status of ‘dhimmī’ on them, which involved a number of discriminatory measures, especially a per capita tax payment, called jizya. Victory brought the victors a bounty in coins, goods, lands, and slaves, which were shared out between the warriors after having given a fifth to the sovereign. The bounty was either a tribute defined by a treaty with the vanquished people, or pillaged from a camp or the conquered city.

This juridical conception of war was based on several verses from the Qur’an and the life of the Prophet. Muhammad did himself wage a holy war on the polytheistic Meccans. His successors, the caliphs, conducted jihād against the polytheistic Arabian tribes, then outside Arabia, mainly against the Byzantine and Sassanid Empires. War was therefore the main driving force behind the great Islamic expansion in the first century of the Hegira. It also helped to establish the unity of the first Muslim community by unifying the divided Arab tribes under the banner of Islam against common and foreign enemies. From this period, razzias—which were seasonal raids into non-Muslim territory—were widely practised in order to accumulate bounty and acquire slaves.

During the first conquests, the army was composed of Arab freemen called muhājirūn or ansār, whose rank depended on how long they had been converts to Islam. To these were added the regiments of converts, the mawālī, who were gradually organized into ethnic groups. From 750, the Abbasid caliphs, progressively created a professional army composed of Arabs and Khorasan mawālī, slaves and freed Turks, or, failing this, from other ethnic groups; the Maghribian dynasties used many Berbers who had a free status. This system continued to be disseminated via the Mamluk phenomenon: slaves were bought and trained by the emirs and sultans to become soldiers. During the Mamluk sultanate, these freed slaves held political power, and the sultan was chosen from their ranks. Alongside  the Turkish cavalry, the Ottomans placed elite regiments composed of soldiers—the Janissaries. The latter notably held firearms, which along with the development of campaign artillery gave the Ottoman army a crushing military superiority, and enabled it to conquer the Mamluk sultanate and the majority of the Muslim Mediterranean states. The recruitment of new armies was also nourished by the religious propaganda of the sermon writers and jurists, which was intensified during the Crusades and the Mongol attacks in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which incited the holy war of recently converted combatants like the Turks in the East or the Almoravids in the West.

Very early on, military practices were enriched by the Byzantine and Sassanid military traditions, and became more complex, leading to a veritable military science and siege technology. The army was divided into various corps, generally five divisions (an avant-garde, a rear guard, two wings, and centre which was the army’s main corps), to which were added the irregular army. The army was preceded by scouts and in its wake came the baggage, i.e. all the goods, weapons, victuals, animals, and civilians who were necessary to or involved in the campaign. According to the treatises on military arts (which flourished from the end of the twelfth century), the army’s battle order was arranged in three rows: the first was composed of archers and soldiers with crossbows; the second row was infantry; and the third comprised heavy cavalry, as the light cavalry was reserved for the irregular forces. The battle itself mainly involved a series of cavalry charges designed to break through the enemy lines. The archers and infantry were used to stop the enemy charge. The main battle, therefore, was subdivided into as many battles as there were divisions. Indeed, the separate combats meant that while the army’s left wing might be overcoming the enemy’s right wing, its own right wing was being overrun by the enemy charges. The tactic of ambushes and harassment (al-karr wa-l-farr) was also frequently practised, especially by the armies of semi-nomadic cavaliers. Apart from military campaigns, the military arts developed siege warfare: the number of fortresses and citadels increased, and many machines were used, like siege towers, catapults and, from the fourteenth century onwards, canons.

In addition to this, marine warfare developed, which redeployed the Byzantine heritage after the first conquests—to such an extent that that sea raids were carried out from 649 and 655 (the Battle of the Masts), and increased during Umayyad rule; and enabled the Aghlabids (ninth century) to dominate the western Mediterranean and the Fatimids (tenth to twelfth century) to rule over the eastern Mediterranean. From the end of the tenth century, the Byzantines and the Italian merchant cities resumed the naval offensive. Thence, the various Muslim dynasties gradually abandoned marine warfare, except the Ottomans (from the fourteenth century). The Ottomans continued to develop a powerful fleet, despite the battle of Lepanto (1571), until the eighteenth century, when the Ottoman fleet was definitively outclassed by the European navies.

Although the judicial principles of war were established relatively quickly, the practice of war evolved both on land and sea, depending on the antique heritages and the confrontations with the invaders. From the end of the Middle Ages, only the Ottoman sultanate maintained any universalist pretensions, which were based on the jihād’s proselytization of war. The sultanate amassed the military might to achieve this and extended the Ottoman Empire throughout the eastern and southern Mediterranean.

C. O.