Gamal Nkrumah explores entrancing pages from Islam's past and present After 9/11, the recriminations began along with the age- old spurious stereotypes concerning "Mohamedans" and Islam. Opinion in the West has turned so fiercely against Islam that the very notion of peaceful co-existence between the Muslim world and non-Muslim nations is in jeopardy. And, once every blue moon a book is published that attempts to narrow the cultural gulf that separates the West from the Muslim Heartlands. It is no surprise that such intercessory volumes invariably emerge out of Italy. The European country lies not only at the heart of European civilisation, being the scion of the Roman Empire and the birthplace of the Renaissance, but it is right across the Mediterranean and right in the middle of that most intermediary of waterways. And, of course, the Arabs -- Muslims if you will -- colonised Sicily for several centuries and left an indelible mark in that enchanting isle. Indeed, the author of this masterpiece devotes an entire chapter to the island and its Muslim legacy entitled "Arab Sicily: The Splendour of a Civilisation". However, as it must be, she begins her opus with the Arabian Peninsula, and rightly so. The work wondrously wanders to Turkey, Iran and Central Asia, South Asia and Africa south of the Sahara and back to Europe -- Muslim Spain via North Africa. It is essentially chronological, but not strictly so. Arabia, the name is synonymous with Islam. And, life in the Arabian Peninsula is an amalgam of the mediaeval and of the moment. It is critically important to stress that the very ancient is an abomination, a coterie of detestable taboos. "In pagan and tribal pre-Islamic Arabia, the desert-dwelling Bedouin were animistic and polytheistic. They worshipped the moon, stars, tree, and stones as gods and believed that the natural world was populated by jinn, spirits who rode lizards," extrapolates Francesca Romana Romani, author of Islamic Civilisation: History and Treasures. She is a specialist in the history of medicine at La Sapienza University, Rome, whose specialised interest is, curiously, in mediaeval medical culture and hygiene of the Middle East. Studded with over 260 full-colour illustrations, this fine work would never have seen the light of day except for the prudent foresight of the publisher, AUC Press, which solicited the approval of Al-Azhar, the highest authority of Sunni Islam. For it included representations of the Prophet Mohamed. Al-Azhar only consented to the book's publication after the offending illustrations, or rather graphic representations of the prophet, were excised. The incident is intriguing to non-Muslims, for in sharp contrast, mainstream Christianity thrives on depictions of Jesus and the saints. Islam is undoubtedly the most ascetic of the monotheistic religions. The author makes clear that Arabia was not always so iconoclastic. Arab culture was originally just as decadent as its polytheistic neighbours, even in its austere parched desert surroundings. Yet, traces of the pre-Islamic decadence remained, albeit subdued, and were transferred in hidden forms to other cultures that embraced Islam such as the Mesopotamian, Persian, Turkish and Indian versions of Islam. "Bedouin society is unpolished and even wild, and its only art is constituted by the words of the poet," Romani postulates. "Muruwwa (manliness, courage and loyalty) formed the basis of the ethical code of the desert. It was the sense of honour which replaced faith and encapsulated ideals." And, to distinguish the true Arab Islam from its simulacrums in the Fertile Crescent, Egypt, Anatolia, Andalusia, Persia and beyond, she pinpoints what differentiates the forbidding seat of passion of Arabian culture from its more flamboyant sister cultures that thrived in more bounteous surroundings. "The desert was, and still is, the reign of the nomad." The true flowering of Islamic art took place elsewhere, first on the fringes of Arabia and then towards the periphery of the then known world. "The Arabian Peninsula was inhabited by nomadic and sedentary tribes that had a close symbiotic relationship" with the barren nature of the region, the author extrapolates. However, she notes the seeds of sedition that was later to tear the Muslim umma apart. "Although the centralised urban power controlled the nomadic power (whose segmented nature made it weaker) on which it depended for access to the oases, at the same time it had to defend itself from the nomads' innate and anarchical inclination for looting." But the Islamic concept of conquest is looting with a difference: it is redistribution of wealth. "In a nomadic context, where poverty and shortage of resources made life very hard, the razzia (ghazw in Arabic) was an effective means of redistributing wealth, constituted by the spoils." Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia and India were far wealthier and bountiful for the desert conquerors than their puny oases. Democracy was a prerequisite feature for the spendthrift nomads in sharp contrast to the hierarchical feudal empires that they overran. "The sheikh was elected by the heads of the families, who swore allegiance (baya) -- subsequently adopted by Islam and transformed into a ceremony -- subject to ratification by the community." That was in the desert. In the opulent courts of Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad, the caliphs adopted the aristocratic ways of their new subjects. The new rulers had to forego tribalism and clannishness for the sophistication of urban civilisation. "'Asabiya (community solidarity) held the group together, making the clan a complete system, capable of absorbing the individual and even his responsibility. Indeed, the group defended him and was responsible for him in times of need, and the individual actually existed only in terms of genealogy (nasab)." Underlying all these changes, the old desert dynamic was still at work. "Tribal society constituted a segmentary system based on the equality and balanced opposition of the various parts: all the members of the tribe were equal and there was no absolute authority." However, as far as Islamic art was concerned, the hierarchical structures of the subjects were ingeniously blended with strictures of tribal lore. "Indeed, the tribe is by definition acephalous." The Prophet Mohamed is central to Islam. But Islam is not Mohamedism, in fact such a misnomer is profanity for Muslims. There is no God but God, and Mohamed is merely His messenger. The ancient clash between oasis and desert was played out in imperial fashion when the Kharijites (literally those who go out) insisted on the nomadic mores and ended up embroiled in a bloodbath that centred around Aisha, the prophet's wife in the Battle of the Camel. "The Kharijites represented the first schism in the young Muslim community. They believed that the caliph should be the worthiest Muslim of the entire community and could be from any family and not necessarily the clan of the Prophet." The clash was reflected in art. "They also demanded the right to rebel against the imam if he was not worthy, and to choose him freely." The authority was challenged and freedom of expression curtailed. "It is interesting to note how Islam uses spatial metaphors to refer to power relations, using images of near and far, inside and outside. The Kharijites are a good example: the rebels distance themselves and leave the confines of the order of Islam, and are thus described as 'Those Who Go Out,' marking a horizontal movement from the inside toward the outside." The intriguing chapter headings of Romani's sumptuous work tell the entire tale: "The Umayyad Caliphate: The Triumph of Arabism", "The Abbasid Caliphate: The Golden Age of Islam", "The Umayyad Emirate and Caliphate of Cordova", "The Fatimids of Egypt", "The Mamluk Sultanate", "The Mongolian Empire". Interestingly enough, she is careful to distinguish Arab from non-Arab, nomad from sedentary, and even nomad from nomad. "The Turkic-Mongolian nomadism of Central Asia was different. It was an open form of nomadism practiced on a cold steppe, which ignored agriculture and was characterised by the mingling of peoples and boundless areas of migration. The nomads of the Central Asian steppe used the solidly built two-humped Bactrian camel, with a long coat to protect it from the cold and sturdy legs suited to moving nimbly on stony ground." Romani weaves history and geography into fascinating cultural mosaic.
