The Era of Civilization

Syllabus

01. Muawiya, Yazid, and Tragedy at Karbala

Reflect with Hamza Karamali on the significance of the strange fact that the son of Abu Sufyan (once the arch-enemy of Islam) should successfully govern a deeply religious Islamic civilization for almost four decades. Then examine the circumstances surrounding the tragic murder of our master Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), and use that to study what scholars have said about the permissibility of cursing Yazid.

02. Did Hajjaj’s Tyranny End Civil War?

The murder of our master Husayn sparked civil war. Abd al-Malik b. Marwan and his notorious governor Hajjaj b. Yusuf imposed their authority with unprecedented harshness and ferocity (not even hesitating to fire at the Ka‘ba with catapults!). Examine how “stability” was restored and explore whether their iron-fisted rule really ended the rebellions or whether it sowed the seeds for the eventual downfall of the Umayyads some decades later.

03. The First Muslim Dynasty (And Why It Wasn’t a Kingdom or an Empire)

‘Abd al-Malik was succeeded as caliph by three of his sons. Examine the institutions of jihad, jizya, and slavery during this time; learn why this dynasty was protected from the injustices that characterized European dynasties; and grasp why dynastic succession in that might have been the best political solution in that historical context.

04. The Second Umar and the Preservation of Hadith

The scrupulous piety of Umar b. Abd al-Aziz proves that beneath the veneer of Umayyad worldliness lay a deeply religious Muslim culture. Peek into that religious culture through the lives and careers of the scholars of hadith, whose unprecedented, painstaking, and public invention of the isnad system is one of the great miracles of Muslim scholarship.

05. Shiism and the Abbasid Revolution

Explore the mysterious and fascinating story of the intrigues, betrayals, and secret societies that culminated in the Abbasid overthrow of the Umayyads. Then imagine the religious and political culture that enabled the revolution and use that to understand the Shiite concepts of the imamate and of the imam’s occultation, and their relation to historical and contemporary politics.

06. Abu Hanifa, Scholars, and the State

Learn why Abu Hanifa’s refusal to be a judge landed him in prison. Then digress to examine the inescapably political role of avowedly apolitical religious scholars and how that created a genuinely democratic and representative government in the cultural context of a genuinely religious society.

07. Where the Schools of Law Came From (And Why There are Only Four)

Why Islamic law is neither harsh nor cruel can only be appreciated in the context of its historical application in a genuinely religious culture. Learn how it brought peace, prosperity, and happiness as you examine the concepts of ijtihad, taqlid, and the development of an Islamic legal vocabulary during the lifetimes of the four famous Imams (Abu Hanifa, Malik, al-Shafi‘i, and Ahmad b. Hanbal).

08. Harun al-Rashid Led a Religious Government (Not the World of the Thousand and One Nights)

The “Thousand and One Nights”, his legendary “House of Wisdom” (Bayt al-Hikma) which translated the great works of ancient Greece into Arabic, and the political and economic prosperity of the Abbasids during his reign have made Harun al-Rashid a part of Western culture. But he was a religious man who listened to religious scholars, made many pilgrimages, and personally fought against the Byzantines. Reflect with Hamza Karamali on the differences between the two historical narratives and what that means for Muslims today.

09. Early Muslim Sects and the Mutazilite Inquisition

Learn about the historical circumstances that led to the emergence of the early non-political Muslim sects - the anthroporphists, the Jahmiyya, the Murji’ah, the Jabriyya, and the Qadariyya. Then study the Mu‘tazilites, the debate over the createdness of the Quran, the apparent anti-rationalism of some of the traditionalists, and the emergence of the science of rational theology (kalam).

10. A Culture of Spirituality, Science, and Philosophy

Prosperity under the Abbasids led to the rise of science, the pursuit of philosophy, and the founding of the science of Islamic spirituality. Learn about the Islamic culture that gave birth to these disciplines and compare it to the modern culture that spawned the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Reason.

11. Ghazali, the Ismailis, and the Birth of the Madrasa

Divisions in the Abbasid realms led to the emergence of smaller principalities that only gave nominal allegiance to the central caliph, to the rise of a competing Shiite caliphate in Egypt, and to the weakening of religious citizenship. Learn how Nizam al-Mulk invented the state-endowed madrasa to solve this problem and how Ghazali brought intellectual and spiritual unity to the Muslim world.

12. The Mongols and the Sacking of Baghdad

Within the span of a few days, the Mongol Hordes (led by Hulagu) mercilessly massacred one million inhabitants of the most magnificent city on earth. The wealth and pomp of Baghdad were looted, its unrivalled repositories of books were discarded into the Tigris, and the culture, the knowledge, and the civilization of the capital of the Muslim world was utterly eradicated. Explore why this happened with Hamza Karamali.

Addendum on the Sciences of the Madrasa

Supplementary lessons on the purpose, content, and historical development of the traditional Islamic sciences and the Muslim scholarly tradition through a reading of “The Madrasa Curriculum in Context” by Hamza Karamali. (https://www.kalamresearch.com/pdf/MadrasaCurriculumMonograph_lowresweb.pdf)

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