The century opened with the Crescenti family in the papacy and this office at itsnadir, with simony, marriage and concubinage in the secular clergy and sporadic incontinence among the monks. There were some light spots in the darkness, however, in that the Cluniac monastic movement was founded in 910 as an offshoot of the Benedictines and was important in monastic reform, particularly in southeastern France and Lorraine. The Cluny monks often sided with secular might and affiliated directly to Rome, rather than to local bishops. Christian art made the crucifixion into a moving symbol of the faith and by 1000 nearly all of Europe had been brought at least superficially within the circle of Christian culture and the church power was greater than any king or emperor. The first French pope, Sylvester II, took office in A.D. 999, as a scholar and a moderate reformer. (Ref. 8, 49, 213) In the Near East multiple Christian sects existed, with the Nestorians living chiefly north of the Euphrates, the Paulicans in a strip from the Tarsus mountains north-east across the base of Anatolia and the Monophysites in that narrow coastal part of Syria, now Lebanon, which was not occupied by the Arabs. (Ref. 8) The Greek Orthodox Society continued with its emperor in a small area about Greece and Constantinople, itself.

As with Christianity, Islam was initially divided by many sects and creeds. The most important heretical group was the Shi'ite (also Shia or Shiah), who won over Persian, Egyptian and Indian Islam and deeply affected literature and philosophy. The Shia believed that the only true apostles of Allah were direct descendants of Mohammed and made saints of Ali and Hussein^[146] and they considered the descendants of Ali to be Imans, that is, infallible incarnations of divine wisdom. It was this Shia sect which had been in control in Persia since the fall of the Omayyad line. The Isma'ilis were an extreme Shia group who permitted allegorical interpretations of the Koran. Several of their leaders rose to power in outlying regions.

Jewish commerce declined with the development of a native Christian commercial class and the rise of the merchant guilds, which excluded Jews. As a result, these people were forced more and more into the credit field. The Jews of North Africa, including Egypt, freed from Babylonian control, increased in local pride and accomplishment. (Ref. 8) Additional Notes

Forward to A.D. 1001 to 1100

The off-shore islands of Ethiopia thrived on the export of Abyssinian slaves. Some apparently escaped to settle in Danakil and Somali, there to intermarry and become converted to Islam. Inland royal power was assumed in the mountain region of Lasta sometime after A.D. 940 by a non-Semitic Zagwe Dynasty. While these people became Christianized, Semitic farmers expanded southward along the forested spine of Ethiopia to modern Addis Ababa. At the same time Sidama tribesmen invaded from south and east. (Ref. 83, 270)

In 905 the Turkish Tulunid Dynasty of Egypt gave way to the Ikhshidids who, in turn, were again subject to the Abbasid caliphate of Damascus although this domination was short lived as the empire began to split. At the end of the century the Fatimids moved in from northwestern Africa to take control of Egypt. They were a branch of the Isma'ilites, claiming descent from Mohammed's daughter, Fatima. Sugar cane was now grown in Egypt, with the sugar produced by an advanced process. (Ref. 137, 260)

We noted in the last chapter that the Aghlabid Dynasty had fallen to the Berbers. In this century these victors welcomed Ubaid Allah, a Shi'ite "Mahdi" ^[147] from Syria, who used the Berber armies to establish a new north African, Fatimid Dynasty. They destroyed Tahert and dominated Fez, eventually establishing their capital in Cairo as they assumed control in Egypt. (Ref. 83) The Moroccan Idrisids resisted for some time, but with the Spanish Omayyids attacking also from the north, the Moroccans finally fell to the Fatimids. (Ref. 137) As the Berbers expanded northward in Morocco and the Arabs came westward along the coast, there was a shift in the balance between the sedentary cultivators and the nomadic pastoralists. Nevertheless, Morocco, Algiers and Tunisia had a renewed prosperity with the establishment of great trade routes across the Sahara and increased commerce with Spain. In the desert, itself, however, cruel famines were suffered by small towns and warfare contributed further to their demise. (Ref. 8, 176)

By the end of this century most of Africa was out of the Stone Age. (Ref. 83) It was the time of the apogee of the Kingdom of Ghana with its capital at Kumbi and extending from near the Atlantic coast almost to Timbuktu. It was essentially Negro, consisting of a group of federated tribes with a fairly well developed culture. Writing of the wealth and wisdom of this African kingdom, the Moslem Ibn Hawqal said that Ghana boasted that its people had hoards of gold and "the wealthiest of all kings on the face of the earth"^[148]. The recently excavated city of Jenne-jeno reached the height of its development and by the end of the century may have had close to 20,000 people. This and satellite communities had penetrated the marketplace of North Africa. Goods, produce and gold flowed north via river and caravan while Saharan salt and Mediterranean glass beads came south. (Ref. 268)

Pressure from the Berbers now forced the city-states of Chad to unite into a kingdom called Kanem-Bornu, or the Kanuri Empire, founded by a desert people and having the longest surviving dynasty in history, not being overthrown until the 19th century. A trans-Saharan slave trade running from west Africa east to the Arabs began in this century and lasted for hundreds of years. (Ref. 175, 8, 213) The Arabs began to colonize the east coast as far south as Zanzibar but never reached or knew of Madagascar, in this century. (Ref. 137) Ancestors of present day Kikuyu tribes migrated into Kenya from the south. They were Bantu-speakers who were in the process of spreading out from the Congo in the transition period from Stone Age hunting to the Iron Age and agriculture. (Ref. 175, 8) Zimbabwe continued to be occupied by the Shona people who traded in copper and gold.

The actual center of the Arab administration and religion had shifted out of the Arabian peninsula. In the south a Shi'ite sect, the Qarmatians (Carmathians) had revolted against the Abbasids in 899 and then remained completely independent as the chief civilization center in that part of the Arab world. (Ref. 137)

It seems appropriate at this time to consider, for a moment, the world effect of the Arabian culture and particularly the Arabic language. Many Arabic words were widely used throughout civilization at that time and have come down to us in English. These include tariff, traffic, magazine, caravan, bazaar, check, cipher and zero. Algebra, an Arabic word, was a subject developed extensively, with both analytical and geometric solutions of equations. Chemistry was almost created by the Moslems.

These coastal areas, as well as much of western Syria, were now controlled by the Egyptian caliphate, even through the periods of changing administrations.

The Abbasid Dynasty at Baghdad became weaker and weaker, while the caliph, himself, was at the mercy of his Turkish "praetorians", whose chiefs came and went in rapid succession. One after another of the provinces was lost to the central government and finally, although the Abbasid Caliph persisted as the Moslem religious head (comparable to the pope in the Catholic world), the government of this near east area was taken over by the Buwayhid Emirate, a pro-Shi'ite, Turkish dynasty. (Ref. 137) These Seljuk (also Seljuq) Turks established themselves in Baghdad with a new kind of Muslim state based on a partnership between men of the sword (chiefly their own Turks) and bureaucrats and men of the law (Persians or Arabs), all under the name of the Abbasid Caliphate. (Ref. 8) As Toynbee (Ref. 221), has written, the Abbasid name continued to be used by the usurpers of its power, for seven centuries after the beginning of its decline, just by virtue of its long tenure.

In spite of political decay, science and art continued to advance. Hospitals and medical science were especially good and extensive, with 860 licensed physicians in Baghdad alone, in A.D. 931. The hospital at Damascus had elegant rooms and an extensive medical library. (Ref. 125) We mentioned on page 479 that al-Khwarizmi introduced "Arabic" numerals from India. In this century he used the decimal system and wrote standard treatises on al-jabr (algebra).

The Samanid Dynasty continued, ruling the adjacent part of Central Asia as well as most of Persia, proper. The Persian language was used with commercial activity at its height. Avicenna, of north Persia, was the greatest of the medieval philosophers and also an excellent physician, writing the "Canon of Medicine", which was used at Montpellier Medical School of southern France when it was established in 1650. Al Razi (or Rhazes), a Persian who wrote in Arabic, was considered the greatest of all medieval physicians. The medical Arabists (which included Nestorian Christians, Persians and Jews, who were not ethnic Arabs) relied both on writers of the past, such as Galen, and on developing new aspects of pharmacy and chemistry, including techniques of distillation, crystallization, solution, sublimation, reduction, and calcination. They were good clinicians and instructors, describing such things as scabies and mediastinal abscesses, previously unrecognized. Midwives did much of the obstetric and gynecological work, however. (Ref. 125)

The manufacture of astrolabes had already begun in Persia at Isfahan and certain stylistic features of the earliest of these remained typical of eastern Islamic astrolabes throughout their history. These were complicated observational and computing instruments for astronomers. (Ref. 173) The conversion to Islam of the old, heavy horse cavalrymen caused them to abandon their old military ethic and as a result of this decrease in protection, nomad raiding from the steppe began again with the appearance of Turkish invaders. Chief among these were the Ghaznawids, under commander-in-chief Subaktagin, formerly a slave in Khorasan. (Ref. 119) Additional Notes

Cotton reached the Mediterranean world via the Arabs, from India. (Ref. 160)