The Ahdnama is a treaty between Sultan Mehmet II (Al-Fatih) and the Bosnian Franciscan Christians of the Catholic Church in 1463.

The Ahdnama is a clear and definitive historical record of the rights Islam gave to Christians living under its rule. The original Ahdnama is still kept to this day in the Franciscan Monastery in the vicinity of Fojnica, Bosnia-Hercegovina.

Sultan Mehmet al-Fatih’s great-great grandfather was Sultan Murad I who began the conquests to open up the Balkans to Islam. He is famous for defeating the Serbs at Kosovo field in 1389 and establishing the authority of Islam over Kosovo. Allah blessed Sultan Murad I with martyrdom (shahadah) in this battle.

Sultan Mehmet’s father Murad II fought the second battle of Kosovo and began the conquests to open Bosnia to Islam. Following in the footsteps of his father and great-great grandfather, Sultan Mehmet completed their good work and opened up the entire region to Islam.

Islam, as the final message for mankind established clear and detailed rules relating to the rights of all non-Muslims living under its rule.

The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: “He who harms a person under covenant, or charged him more than he can, I will argue against him on the Day of Judgement.”[1]

The classical scholars of Islam also detailed the rights of Muslims towards the non-Muslim citizens known as dhimmi. The famous Maliki jurist, Shaha al-Deen al-Qarafi says, “The covenant of protection imposes upon us certain obligations toward the ahl al-dhimmah. They are our neighbours, under our shelter and protection upon the guarantee of Allah, His Messenger ﷺ, and the religion of Islam. Whoever violates these obligations against any one of them by so much as an abusive word, by slandering his reputation, or by doing him some injury or assisting in it, has breached the guarantee of Allah, His Messenger ﷺ, and the religion of Islam.”

A translation of the Ahdnama is below.

Ahdnama of the Fatih sultan Mehmet

Mehmet the son of Murat khan, always victorious!

The command of the honorable, sublime sultan’s sign and shining seal of the conqueror of the world is as follows:

I, the Sultan Mehmet – Khan inform all the world that the ones who possess this imperial edict, the Bosnian Franciscans, have got into my good graces, so i command:

let nobody bother or disturb those who are mentioned, not their churches. Let them dwell in peace in my empire. And let those who have become refugees be and safe. Let them return and let them settle down their monasteries without fear in all the countries of my empire.

Neither my royal highness, nor my viziers or employees, nor my servants, nor any of the citizens of my empire shall insult or disturb them. Let nobody attack insult or endanger neither their life or their property or the property of their church. Even if they bring somebody from abroad into my country, they are allowed to do so.

As, thus, I have graciously issued this imperial edict, hereby take my great oath.

In the name of the creator of the earth and heaven, the one who feeds all creatures, and in the name of the seven mustafas and our great messenger, and in the name of the sword I put, nobody shall do contrary to what has been written, as long as they are obedient and faithful to my command.

May 28th 1463

Notes

[1] Narrated by Yahya b. Adam in the book of Al-Kharaaj

For centuries private households in Timbuktu have been preserving manuscripts detailing art, medicine, philosophy, and science, as well as copies of the Qur’an from the 13th century. These Timbuktu Manuscripts as they are officially known are said to number 700,000 and are the subject of many research projects by western universities and the UN.[1]

Africa under Islam

Timbuktu is in Mali. Today Mali is one of the poorest countries in the world but under Islam the Mali Sultanate was one of the richest countries on earth. Its wealth came from gold, copper and salt mines and the 14th century ruler of Mali was Mansa Musa who was one of the wealthiest people to ever live. When he performed hajj it is reported he give away 30 tonnes (£1.3billion) of gold causing a ten year gold recession in the cities of Cairo, Madinah, and Makkah.[2] [3]

Mali was also a centre of Islamic learning. In the early 1400s, ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Tamimi, travelled to Timbuktu only to realize that the level of scholarship was so high, that he would have to go to Fez first to take prerequisite courses before he could study there.[4]

This shows that before the colonial era, the parts of Africa under Islamic rule were rich and its people highly educated. This is a far cry from the impoverished continent we see today and the claims of the colonial powers that they were ‘civilising the natives’.

Samuel Huntington says, “The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”[5]

Notes

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/28/timbuktu-library-centuries-african-history

[2] A. J .H. Goodwin, “The Medieval Empire of Ghana”, South African Archaeological Bulletin, 1957, JSTOR, p.110 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3886971

[3] Firas alKhateeb, ‘Lost Islamic History,’ p.135

[4] Firas alKhateeb, ‘Lost Islamic History,’ p.136

[5] Samuel Huntington, ‘The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order,’ p.51

Ibn Sina, known as Avicenna in the West was a Persian polymath who is regarded as one of the most significant physicians, astronomers, thinkers and writers of the Islamic Golden Age, and the father of early modern medicine. His monumental work Al-Qanun fi’l-tibb (The Canon of Medicine) is an encyclopedia of medicine in five volumes which he completed in 1025CE, and was still in use throughout 18^th century in Europe, 700 years later.

Islam and science

Islam never had the same conflict with science that Christianity did. This is because Islam clearly defines the role of the mind, and the areas where free thinking is permitted – rational sciences – and the areas where it was restricted to the text – the religious sciences and legislation.

Ibn Khaldun says, “It should be known that the sciences with which people concern themselves in cities and which they acquire and pass on through instruction, are of two kinds: one that is natural to man and to which he is guided by his own ability to think, and a traditional kind that he learns from those who invented it.

The first kind comprises the philosophical sciences. They are the ones with which man can become acquainted through the very nature of his ability to think and to whose objects, problems, arguments, and methods of instruction he is guided by his human perceptions, so that he is made aware of the distinction between what is correct and what is wrong in them by his own speculation and research, in as much as he is a thinking human being.

The second kind comprises the traditional, conventional sciences. All of them depend upon information based on the authority of the given religious law. There is no place for the intellect in them, save that the intellect may be used in connection with them to relate problems of detail with basic principles.”[1]

This is why Bruno Guiderdoni, Director of the Observatory of Lyon who is a specialist in galaxy formation and evolution, says, “The Qur’an is the only religious book I can believe in as a scientist.”[2]

It was common in Islamic history for scholars of Islam to also be scientists. This harmony between Islam and science allowed the Islamic world to be the centre of scientific development. A huge number of inventions were created along with advancements in medicine which benefited the whole world.

Muhammad Asad says, “The Renaissance, that revival of European arts and sciences with its extensive borrowing from Islamic, mainly Arabic, sources, was largely due to the material contacts between East and West. Europe gained by it, in the domain of culture, far more than the world of Islam ever did; but it did not acknowledge this eternal indebtedness to the Muslims by a diminution of its old hatred of Islam.”[3]

Ibn Sina was not held back by Islam, in fact he was motivated by the Islamic texts which encouraged the seeking of cures to diseases. The Prophet ﷺ said, “There is no disease that Allah has created, except that He also has created its treatment.”[4]

Notes

[1] Ibn Khaldun, ‘The Muqaddimah,’ translated by Franz Rosenthal, Chapter VI, p.562

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5Xyt3xRJr8

[3] Muhammad Asad, ‘Islam at the Crossroads,’ 1934, p.55

[4] Sahih al-Bukhari 5678, https://sunnah.com/bukhari:5678

1. The Problem of Disunity
2. Disunity will destroy Islam
3. Jewish Immigration to the Islamic State
4. Notes

If you paid a visit to the Cathedral of Córdoba in Spain today you would notice a number of features which are out of place in a church. Most notably there is a mihrab covered in Qur’anic verses which points to the Cathedral’s origins as a mosque.

Construction of the mosque began in 785 (169 AH) and finished in 786 (170 AH). It was commissioned by Abd al-Rahman I who was the first Emir of the Emirate of Córdoba.

In 711CE / 92H the Umayyad general Tariq bin Ziyad crossed the Mediterranean from the province of Maghreb (modern day Morocco) and landed his army on a mountain in the Iberian Peninsula. This mountain became known as Tariq’s Mountain (Jabal Tariq) which is anglicised as Gibraltar. This was the beginning of the Islamic conquests in to modern-day Spain and which established Islamic rule over the region for nearly 800 years.[1]

The Problem of Disunity

After the Abbasids defeated the Umayyads in 750CE, Abd al-Rahman I (Abd al-Rahman ibn Mu’awiya ibn Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik) managed to escape to Al-Andalus after spending a number of years in exile. It is there he became an independent governor or Emir who ruled by Islam, but who was not under the authority of the Abbasid Khilafah. The Emirate of Córdoba continued as an independent province until the 11^th century before splitting in to a number of independent Muslim principalities known as Ta’ifas.

Infighting between the Ta’ifas allowed the Christian states in the North to exploit this disunity and they pushed south managing to conquer in turn each of the Ta’ifas including Cordoba in 1236 by King Ferdinand III of Castile as part of the Reconquista (a series of battles by Christian states to expel the Muslim Moors). Upon the city’s conquest the mosque was converted into a Catholic cathedral dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

Granada was the only Ta’ifa left and was conquered in 1492 by King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella leading to the end of 800 years of Islamic rule in Spain. Ferdinand and Isabella established the Spanish inquisition in 1478 led to rid Spain of all non-Christians. This led to the expulsion of Muslims and Jews and the forced conversion of those who couldn’t escape.

Disunity will destroy Islam

Disunity is something we are very familiar with. Despite our huge population, abundant natural resources and most importantly believers in the correct deen, Muslim blood is split throughout the world, with no aspect of Islam safe whether hijab, mosques or even the Qur’an itself. This was prophesised by the Messenger of Allah ﷺ when he said, “The knots of Islam will be undone one by one, each time a knot is undone the next one will be grasped, the first to be undone will be the Ruling and the last will be Prayer.”[2]

The dynastic rule which plagued the Islamic State and provinces through the centuries was a principle factor in causing disunity and halting the conquests. This is because rulers became more concerned with the dunya – preserving their own ruling families – than the wider objective which is to spread Islam to the world. Without a shura based system of bay’a the only option for those seeking to come to power was by military force. This occurred in Spain with the Ta’ifas.

The was again prophesised where the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, ‘The nations will soon summon one another to attack you as people when eating invite others to share their dish.’ Someone asked: ‘Will that be because of our small numbers at that time?’ He said: ‘No, you will be numerous at that time, but you will be scum and rubbish like that carried down by a torrent, and Allah will take fear of you from the breasts of your enemy and cast Al-Wahn into your hearts.’ Someone asked: ‘Oh Messenger of Allah, what is Al-Wahn?’ He said: ‘Love of the world and dislike of death.’[3]

Jewish Immigration to the Islamic State

It wasn’t only Muslims targeted in the Inquisition; Jews were also targeted. When the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II heard about the expulsion of Jews from Spain by King Ferdinand, he said: “You venture to call Ferdinand a wise ruler,” he said to his courtiers, “he who has impoverished his own country and enriched mine!”[4]

Jews not only found sanctuary in the Ottoman domains but prospered a great deal. Hans Dernschwam, a travelling agent of the Fugger banking house, describes the Jews in Turkey in his travel diary:

“In Turkey you will find in every town innumerable Jews of all countries and languages. And every Jewish group sticks together in accordance with its language. Wherever Jews have been expelled in any land they all come together in Turkey, as thick as vermin; speak German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Czechish, Polish, Greek, Turkish, Syriac, Chaldean and other languages besides these. As is their custom, everyone wears clothes in accordance with the language he speaks.

In Constantinople, the Jews are thick as ants. The Jews themselves say that they are very numerous. They live in the lower part of the city near the sea. Those Jews that are old, who have a little money, travel to the Holy Land, to Jerusalem, and still hope that they will one day all come together, from all countries, into their own native land and their secure hold of the government. The well-to-do Jews send money to Jerusalem to support them, for one cannot make any money there …

Many Marranos – that is Jews who turned Christian, as in Spain or voluntarily became Christians in other places – all come to Turkey and become Jews again. The Jews of Constantinople also have a printing press and print many rare books. They have goldsmiths, lapidaries, painters, tailors, butchers, druggists, physicians, surgeons, cloth-weavers, wound-surgeons, barbers, mirror-makers, dyers, silk-workers, gold-washers, refiners of ores, assayers, engravers …

The Jews do not allow any of their own to go about begging. They have collectors who go from house to house and collect into a common chest for the poor. This is used to support the poor and the hospital.”[5]

In fact, this led one academic David Wasserstein to make the claim that “Islam saved Jewry”.[6]

Muhammad Asad sums up Europe’s view towards Islam which continues to this day with the new ‘mini-crusades’, banning hijab, closing mosques and criminalising Islamic thought. He says, “On the contrary, that hatred [of Islam] grew with the passing of time and hardened into a custom. It overshadowed the popular feeling whenever the word “Muslim” was mentioned; it entered the realm of popular proverbs, it was hammered into the heart of every European man and woman. And what was most remarkable, it outlived all cultural changes. The time of the Reformation came, when religious factions divided Europe and sect stood in arms against sect: but the hatred of Islam was common to all of them.

A time came when religious feeling began to wane in Europe: but the hatred of Islam remained. It is a most characteristic fact that the great French philosopher Voltaire, who was one of the most vigorous enemies of the Christian Church in the eighteenth century, was at the same time a fanatical hater of Islam and its Prophet. Some decades later there came a time when learned men in the West began to study foreign cultures and to approach them sympathetically: but in the case of Islam the traditional aversion almost always crept as an irrational bias into their scientific investigations, and the cultural gulf which history had unfortunately laid between Europe and the world of Islam remained unbridged, the contempt for Islam had become part and parcel of European thought.

It is true that the first orientalists in modern times were Christian missionaries working in Muslim countries, and the distorted pictures which they drew of the teachings and the history of Islam were calculated to influence the Europeans in their attitude towards the “heathen”; but this twist of mind perseveres even now, when the orientalist sciences have long since become emancipated from missionary influences, and have no longer a misguided religious zeal for an excuse. Their prejudice against Islam is simply an atavistic instinct, an idiosyncrasy based on the impression which the Crusades, with all their sequels, caused on the mind of early Europe.”[7]

This is the clear difference between when the Islamic State is in authority over non-Muslims, and when non-Muslims are in authority over Muslims.

Notes

[1] al-Tabari, ‘The History of Al-Tabari’, State University of New York Press, Volume XXIII, p.182

[2] Hakim/Ahmed

[3] Abu Dawud, 4297 https://sunnah.com/abudawud/39/7

[4] The Jewish Encyclopedia: a descriptive record of the history, religion, literature, and customs of the Jewish people from the earliest times to the present day, Vol.2 Isidore Singer, Cyrus Adler, Funk and Wagnalls, 1912 p.460

[5] Dean Phillip Bell, ‘Jews in the Early Modern World,’ p.471

[6] https://www.thejc.com/comment/opinion/so-what-did-the-muslims-do-for-the-jews-1.33597

[7] Muhammad Asad, ‘Islam at the Crossroads,’ 1934, p.56

1. Preservation of the Qur’an
2. Qadaa wal-Qadr
3. The State is the method to protect Islam
4. Notes

These are some of the oldest written manuscripts we have of the Holy Qur’an. They were discovered in 2015 not in Makkah or Madinah but in Birmingham University. How did they make their way to Birmingham?

After defeating the Ottomans in WW1, Britain occupied Iraq and then began ‘collecting’ its treasures as it did in Egypt and India. This Qur’an manuscript is part of the Mingana Collection of more than 3,000 Middle Eastern documents gathered in the 1920s by Alphonse Mingana, a Chaldean priest born near Mosul in modern-day Iraq. He was sponsored to take ‘collecting trips’ to the Middle East by Edward Cadbury, who was part of the chocolate-making dynasty.[1]

Radiocarbon dating found the Qur’an manuscript to be at least 1,370 years old, making it among the earliest in existence. Professor David Thomas of Oxford University says that some of the passages of the Qur’an were written down on parchment, stone, palm leaves and the shoulder blades of camels – and a final version, collected in book form, was completed in about 650.

He says that “the parts of the Koran that are written on this parchment can, with a degree of confidence, be dated to less than two decades after Muhammad’s death”.

“These portions must have been in a form that is very close to the form of the Koran read today, supporting the view that the text has undergone little or no alteration and that it can be dated to a point very close to the time it was believed to be revealed.”[2]

Preservation of the Qur’an

The majority of Muslims were indifferent to the discovery because they know with certainty that Allah (Most High) has preserved the Qur’an, and even to this day the tradition of hifz (preservation through memorization) continues throughout the world. Such a discovery does have value however, in that it complements the discussion when explaining the miracle of Qur’an to non-Muslims.

Taqiuddin an-Nabahani says, “It has been proven by decisive and definite evidence that when the Prophet ﷺ died the whole Qur’ān had been written on pieces of shoulder blades (of animals), palm risps and on lukhafs (a thin broad white stone). All of it was preserved in the hearts of the Sahabah (may Allah be pleased with them). When an ayah or ayāt would be revealed he ﷺ would order that they be written down before him at once. He did not prevent the Muslims from writing the Qur’ān in other than what he used to dictate to the scribes who wrote down the revelation.”[3]

The Qur’an was preserved through a combination of oral narration and writing. The narration was performed by thousands and thousands of independent narrators, making it impossible that they could have colluded together in corrupting the Qur’an. This method of successive narration is known as mutawatir.

An example of how the classical method of hifz preserves the Qur’an is the controversy caused by former Pakistan Interior Minister Rehman Malik when he faced a supreme court petition for failing to recite surah Ikhlaas correctly during a Cabinet meeting. He also failed to recite it again during a meeting of the Senate. Although his mistake was subtle, the rest of the Cabinet and Senate immediately noticed it and corrected him. This is because every Muslim is taught to memorise the final ten surahs of Qur’an when they are a child so they can perform their prayers. This is the same method of preservation which took place during the time of the Prophet ﷺ and Sahabah. The Qur’an was recited privately in every home, and aloud publicly in the mosques three times a day, and four times on a Friday.

Qadaa wal-Qadr

An important point to note is how the Sahabah understood the verse of Qur’an, where Allah (Most High) says,

إِنَّا نَحْنُ نَزَّلْنَا ٱلذِّكْرَ وَإِنَّا لَهُۥ لَحَـٰفِظُونَ

“It is We Who have sent down the Reminder (Qur’an) and We Who will preserve it.”[4]

After the Battle of Yamamah against the false prophet Musaylama the Liar, many Huffaz (memorisers of the Qur’an) were martyred. Due to this Umar ibn Al-Khattab feared the loss of some parts of the Qur’an and so had an idea to bring all the written sheets in to one book. He presented his idea to the Khaleefah Abu Bakr, and Abu Bakr tasked Zayd ibn Thabit, the scribe of the Prophet ﷺ who wrote down the revelation to begin the task of compiling the Qur’an.[5]

This shows that the Sahabah understood their responsibility in the sphere of actions which human beings have control over. They didn’t simply say Allah will preserve the Qur’an so we don’t have to do anything. They took the burden on themselves and utilized the state to do this.

The State is the method to protect Islam

The Islamic State implements, protects and propagates Islam. When Abu Bakr was Khaleefah, Umar ibn Al-Khattab was his Wazir. They both used the mechanisms and resources of state to compile and preserve the Qur’an. This along with Abu Bakr’s strong stance against the rebels during the Ridda Wars led Abu Hurairah to say, “By the One Whom there is no god but him, if Abu Bakr had not been appointed as Khaleefah then Allah would not have been worshipped.”[6]

During the time of Uthman bin Affan, a major fitna (discord) occurred due to the differences in recitation between the people of Ash-Sham and the people of Iraq. The people of Ash-Sham recited according to the recitation of Ubay ibn Ka’b and the people of Iraq according to Abdullah ibn Mas’ud. Since each side hadn’t heard the dialect of the other, they started accusing each other of disbelief. In order to avert this fitna, Uthman established an agency for compiling the Qur’an based on the master copy compiled by Abu Bakr, and fixing it on the dialect of Quraish. Seven copies were produced and then dispatched with a teacher to the various provinces of the state.[7]

Notes

[1] Sean Coughlan, ‘Oldest’ Koran fragments found in Birmingham University, BBC News, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33436021

[2] Ibid

[3] Taqiuddin an-Nabahani, ‘Shakhsiya Islamiyya,’ Vol.1, 6^th edition, p.118

[4] Holy Qur’an, Surah Al-Hijr, ayah 9

[5] Sahih Bukhari, 4986 https://sunnah.com/bukhari:4986

[6] Jalal ad-Din as-Suyuti, ‘The history of the Khalifahs who took the right way’, translation of Tareekh ul-Khulufaa, Ta Ha Publishers, p.60

[7] Dr Ali Muhammad As-Sallaabee, ‘The Biography of Uthman bin Affan,’ Dar us-Salam Publishers, p.333

Historical objects such as artefacts, manuscripts and buildings are one of the primary sources in the study of history. Their presence or absence in a society can offer a unique insight in to the past, especially when combined with other sources such as oral narrations. They can offer a more holistic view towards society, and easily dispel the sweeping generalisations we see among those who attempt to distort Islamic history for their own nefarious purposes.

If we look to alcohol consumption in Britain, we know it’s a nation of drinkers and has a history of drinking simply from observing the huge number of pubs, bars and off licenses in the country. In 2019, according to the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) there were 47,200 public houses in the UK. Bus stops are named after pubs, and they are the centre of social activity in some places. The Old Ferry Boat Inn in Holywell, England is over 1500 years old!

Do we see the same in the ancient Muslim cities? In Istanbul as an example, despite decades of secularization we find mosques everywhere not pubs. There are 3,113 mosques in the city and some date back to the time of conquest in 1453. There are 304 bars today, but these date back to the start of secularization by the Young Turks and the final abolition of the Ottoman Khilafah.

The absence of pubs itself easily dispels ludicrous claims made by some that the Muslim world has a history of drinking! An article by Khaled Diab appeared in the Guardian newspaper in 2011 titled ‘A drinker’s guide to Islam’. Although his article was on a ‘beerfest’ taking place in a Christian village called Taybeh in Palestine, he used it to infer that Muslims also drink and have a history of drinking!

Diab says, “This is not just a recent ‘innovation’, as conservative Muslims might believe. The prominent 19th-century orientalist Edward William Lane – famous for his incredibly observant if somewhat condescending book, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians – provides, in one of his lesser-known works, some fascinating details about the drinking habits of Egyptians.

‘From the conversations and writings of Arabs,’ he notes, ‘drinking wine in private and by select parties is far from being uncommon among modern Muslims.’ Lane also alludes to the fact that boozing was even more common in earlier centuries, before the introduction of tobacco and coffee as substitutes.[1]

There is plenty of historical evidence to back Lane’s assertion. Numerous prominent Muslims throughout the ages drank alcohol. Even caliphs, such as the Abbasid ruler Haroun al-Rashid of One Thousand and One Nights fame, were reputed to indulge, despite their title of ‘commanders of the faithful’.”[2]

Taqiuddin an-Nabahani says, “Archaeological objects would provide historical facts if studied honestly. Although they by themselves do not provide a historical timeline, they however denote occurrence of some events. If one examines the Islamic antiquities found in their countries, be they buildings, instruments, or any other thing, one can conclude that nothing was present in the Islamic world except Islam, the system of Islam and rules of Islam. Additionally, the Muslims way of life and actions conducted were Islamic.”[3]

Notes

[1] Edward William Lane, ‘Arab Society in the Time of The Thousand and One Nights,’ p.150

[2] Khaled Diab, ‘A drinker’s guide to Islam,’ The Guardian Newspaper, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2011/oct/08/drinkers-islam-palestinian-beerfest-alcohol

[3] Taqiuddin an-Nabahani, ‘Nidham ul Islam,’ p.70