6
Introduction
Umayyads in the early years of the eighth
century accused the caliph
of ‘murdering’ the ritual prayer
(salat)
and called for vengeance for
it, although what this meant and what exactly was involved, if
anything specific, is not spelled out.
7
Even such tantalisingly
obscure hints are relatively scarce, and when we do sometimes have
more substantial information its significance seems often to be
limited in one of two ways.
First, the information may centre
on a point which seems to be
relatively minor. For instance, much play is made with the charge
that the Umayyads insisted on delivering the
khutba
(in the early
period a speech or sermon given usually in the mosque by the caliph
or his representative and often dealing with secular as well as more
purely religious affairs) while sitting, contrary
to what is alleged to
have been the practice established by the Prophet and his immediate
successors. This is supposed to be a sign of the haughtiness of the
Umayyads, refusing to stand before their subjects and preferring,
like kings, to remain seated. Even though the detail may have lost
some of its significance because of the later decline in importance of
the
khutba
and its associated institutions and ceremonies, however,
it is difficult to see arguments about the correct posture for the
khutba
as of fundamental importance for the development of Islam.
In the way in which the practice is
presented by Muslim tradition, it
does not provide grounds for arguing that the outward forms of
Islam underwent great and radical changes under the Umayyads.
8
Secondly, even when the information is apparently more weighty,
the impression is usually given that the Umayyads were perverting
some orthodox practice or belief which already existed and was
widely accepted by Muslims. There is no suggestion that basic
religious ideas were still in a state of flux and that ‘orthodoxy’ (an
ambiguous term in Islam since there is no central authority to say
what is and what is not orthodox) was only slowly developing. We
are told, for instance, that some of
the Umayyads tried to make
Jerusalem a centre of pilgrimage, but the sources imply that this was
against the background of an already generally accepted practice of
annual pilgrimage to Mecca which had been established as the cultic
centre of Islam from the time of the Prophet. The reader should be
aware of such preconceptions in the sources and consider the
possibility that there may not have been, as yet,
any firmly
established cultic centre in Islam.
9
Any attempt to argue that there were during the Umayyad period
more fundamental religious developments than the sources allow