Jews and their support for Omayyad Dynasty

He added: The second change that took place in that period was the appearance of a much more criticizing perspective towards the traditions and narrations of the Muslims, which analysed the Omayyad actions with a positive outlook.

          In the works of ‘Wellhousen’, the Omayyad dynasty is highly acclaimed for creating an Empire and maintaining it with the help of a suitable bureaucratic mechanism, and this praise becomes more colorful in the writings of ‘Henry Lamenz Belgic’.   

          ‘Lamenz’ considers the Umayyads to be the founders of the Arab Nation in Syria, and regards it as a powerful and successful empire for not surrendering before the dominance of Islam. 

          An immigrant writer like him, with the love for his so called native country, exerted his knowledge and effort in the analysis of the Arabic sources in order to depict a much more positive picture of Omayyad dynasty (he spent the duration of his literary research in Lebanon, which was calculated as a part of the Great Levant or the Historical Syria). Actually, his work was to gather and display such details that could defend the Omayyad dynasty and fight against the common enmity that is present in the Islamic traditions and narrations.

          Collectively, almost till the last phase, the western research had its base and progress on these two perspectives and it has not exceeded ahead of the works of Goldziher, Wellhousen, Lamenz and a few scholars of this age like ‘K.H. Baker’.

          At the end of the 1940^th decade, an American scholar, D.S. Dent, a few moments before his death in the air accident, expressed that the analysis of Wellhousen can be questioned with respect to the monetary system of the Omayyad dynasty which can analytically be considered the reason behind the revolution of the Abbasids.

          Other scholars have criticised the inference of Wellhousen regarding the causes of the downfall of the Omayyad Dynasty, and are of the belief that he has laid extra emphasis on the role of the Iranian slaves in the Hashemite movement and this emphasis resulted in an antagonistic emphasis over the significance of the Arabs in the Islamic history. To support this argument, we can present the works of ‘M.A. Shaban’ as an example.

Irrespective of these criticisms, the perspective of the Omayyad History depicted by Wellhousen, is widely discussed even today. Although, at the same time, his analytical method has been declared unsuccessful and even sceptical and is widely criticized; the result being that some of the scholars are now doubtful about the possibility of writing down the detailed history of the Omayyad era.

          Prior to this, in the mid-1950, an objection was placed against the Muslim traditions and narrations regarding their credibility as a source of the Islamic history; the works of Goldziher can be seen as a final confirmation to these scepticisms and later, his student J. Schacht, walked on the footsteps of his teacher with much more sternness.

          After a historical analysis of the sources of Islamic jurisdiction, Schacht claimed to have enormous examples in favour of his teacher’s perspective and claimed to prove that the Islamic traditions and narrations came into being much after the death of Prophet (p.b.u.h.), and the legal arguments that took place at that time had a great influence on them.

          Thereafter, there came people who attacked the details provided by the narrations and traditions regarding the beginning of Islamic history, with the help of the researches of Schacht.

          In the year 1974, A. Knot published his book with the name Untersuchungen Quellenkritische and attacked the theories of Schacht which had resulted from his analysis of sources.

          He emphasised that the historical traditions and reports have been continuously reassessed and rewritten at the time of their collection and narration. Even the reporters of the beginning of Islamic history, the summary of whose writings is available in our sources, did not exist at the beginning of the traditional reports and narrations; they were also the compilers and collectors of those details before having access to them, which were being formed and brought into existence.

          He believed that it is not possible to have access to the point of emergence of the sources that have reached us. Moreover, it is also not possible to have access to the reporters and the thought schools of the 8^th century with specific and evident details, and to specify the methods and inclinations of each of them respectively. As a matter of fact, each of them have given details as per different perspectives.

Thereafter, ‘Knot’ began to verify the various forms of his sources and its inner content, so as to prove that these sources are much more extensive than merely a composition of ‘Topoi’ whose historical base maybe questionable.

          He has an extremely negative opinion about the utility of these sources with the purpose of the replenishment of the initial phase of Islamic History. It appears that “Knot” wanted to derive his desired inference from the initial phase of Islamic History by writing down this book, but his intention did not turn successful, practically. More or less, all the historians have chosen the method of ‘Wellhousen’ for writing down the Umayyad History, and by beginning to criticise the sources, they believed that they could appropriately utilise them for the purpose of replenishing the Umayyad History, provided that the criticisms were correct.

          In Germany, Scholars such as ‘Rizwan Saeed’ and ‘Grant Roder’ can be named as those who tried to utilise the methods of ‘Wellhousen’; although, they mostly pertained to the sources that were of social and economic nature.

          In the United States, F. Mc Grodner proposed a new method from the history of Arabian Achievements and promised to justify the recognition of this method in his work. Although, it is doubtless that such unprecedented researches are considered confined and constrained by most of the scholars, and they give preference to the analysis of the original sources and the writing down of history. ‘Wernerande’ and ‘A.L. Peterson’ are a few evident examples of such writings.

          Lately, in another important work of ‘Patricia Kron’ by the name ‘Slaves riding the horses’, an effort has been made to use new methods for utilizing the Islamic sources, alongside the approval of the works of ‘Goldhizer’, ‘Schacht’ and ‘Knot’. As per the belief of ‘Patricia Kron’, this method will be based on the biographical perceptions.  

He reminds that if the important details from the Islamic sources (names and the history of the Caliphs and Governors etc.) are analysed by going through the permanent sources (like coins, writings and non-Islamic sources), these two methods will be able to help us by their mutual correspondence.

          He also believes that it is not justified to portray all the hidden details of Islamic sources as fake, and that they have been hoaxed later on, or the excerpts of writings such as ‘Topoi’. 

          The implicit but evident aspects like the social opportunity for an individual, the relations between a tribe and a sect, one’s marital connection with a tribe along with the social and political attachments, can potentially be based on reality. Those details which are presumably trivial, like the individual opportunity and tribal and sectarian attachment, individual connection in the form of marriage, and one’s social and political enrolments, are much closer to the truth; and a historian should compulsorily concentrate on such details. Thereafter, he can site historical incidences with reference to the factors that led to the revolts, and the role played by the Caliphs in the significant historical incidents.

          From this perspective, the appealing effect in the book of ‘Kron’ is its fluent and the minutely descriptive nature of the discussions. The significant conclusions that can be derived from this research, which are also a result of other scholars who had a notable contribution in it or who have approached it earlier, is that it keeps itself away from insignificant and apparent narrations of political incidences and shows its inclination and preference towards the historical institutions and the social and religious history.

          Another book that has followed this method is of ‘M.J. Morni’. In the modern Islamic era, especially for the Arabs, the Umayyad history can reflect the current religious and political turnouts of a few incidents like a mirror.

It does not mean that all the latest Arabic and Islamic writings based on the Umayyad History can turn out to simplify the current issues, or if we come to know the religious or political perspective of a particular writer, we can predict what he is trying to convey, but the importance of the Umayyad Era is because of the Islamic and Arabian outlook of the Middle East.

          From this aspect, it is evident that the Arabs or the Muslims who are struggling to attain their personal identity in the modern world, will be able to find out many significant points in the history of the Umayyad dynasty, that are worth studying with the purpose of acquiring an identity for themselves. More importantly, all kinds of possible conflicts between Islam and the Arab Nationalism, can have a significant effect on the different viewpoints of the Umayyad History.

          From the Arabian Nationalist viewpoint, the Umayyad Dynasty can be considered as an epic culture because they have laid the foundation of the foremost Arabian Empire. Although, the Islamic narrative traditions, as discussed earlier, have portrayed an inimical picture of the Umayyad dynasty, and if Islamic aspect is given more importance than the Arabian one, in acquiring an identity, it can possibly cater to a few problems.

          It is a wholesome conflict and probably a hidden and unexposed one that if the Shias look at the Umayyad history with the typical Shiite viewpoint, which is a hostile one derived from their narrations and traditions, and if the Syrian nationalist picture overshadows the common Arabian Nationalism, in both these conditions, it is very likely that this conflict will reveal and unfold many realities.