中世紀(jì)世界生活手冊(cè)(二十一)

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注:原文翻譯問(wèn)題見(jiàn)2023.11.4動(dòng)態(tài)

1.Shiite Islam
(1)In regions under Shiite rule the moral office of commanding right and forbidding wrong was undertaken first by the imams, second by their missionaries (dais), and third by the individual. The Zaydi Shiites (followers of Zayd ibn Ali [d. 740]) were enthusiastic proponents of commanding right and forbidding wrong both in the political realm, advocating rebellion against unjust rule, and in the sphere of public behavior. The Zaydi al-Muayyad Ahmad ibn al-Husayn (d. 1020) wrote a treatise on forbidding wrong that advocated the following actions: smashing offending objects such as musical instruments or wine goblets, pouring out wine or adding to it a substance that would make it unfit for human consumption, turning over a drunk to the authorities for castigation, censuring women whose voices carry outside their homes if reciting poetry or singing, entering someone’s home to put a stop to illicit activities such as listening to music or drinking wine, and engaging in conscientious objection by refusing to cooperate with an unjust ruler.

(2)Al-Tusi was a renowned exponent of commanding right and forbidding wrong in the Imami Shiite tradition. Forbidding wrong must be done in three modes: with the heart, with the tongue, and with the hand. The Muslim unable or unauthorized to censure wrongdoing by speaking out or using force could at least show disapproval by frowning. Nor could a person resort to wanton violence to forbid wrong—he should first obtain permission from the imam or his representative before doing so—and it was absolutely forbidden to kill someone since, obviously, the dead could not mend their ways.

2.Education and Learning Centers
(1)In the formative period of Islamic history, religious and legal training, based on the study of the Quran and the Hadith, was conducted within the precincts of the mosque. A class was called a majlis, literally, “a place where one sits,” because students would first perform the ritual prayer with the prayer-leading teacher, and from the position of prostration they would sit up and the lesson would begin. Education began with the detailed study of the Quran, including the art of recitation (qiraa) and exegesis (tafsir). Students would then begin the study of the Hadith following the method instituted by the prophet Muhammad himself: The instructor would recite a Hadith three times and then the pupils would recite it until they had learned it by heart. When the student had mastered the Quran and Hadith, he could embark upon the study of Islamic law. A noted scholar or doctor of the law would gather around him a circle (halqa) of students, whose learning consisted of listening to the teacher (mudarris) read and comment upon a text.

(2)Initially, education was organized and financed by the government, and instruction was conducted by government-appointed teachers known as qussas (storytellers), who were also trained judges and therefore experts in Islamic law. Head teachers offered classes and issued legal rulings from the mosque. Maintaining positive and constructive relations with the ulema professors was in the interest of the ruling power, for it was largely through them that the government nurtured its links with its subjects. Rulers could curry favor with the ulema and the people by generously endowing professorships, schools, and other learning institutions.

3.Madrasa
(1)In the 10th century a new learning institution called the madrasa (Ar. “place of study” = university; also madrassa) succeeded the mosque as the center of legal studies, theology, and secular learning. It was ostensibly founded in Seljuk Baghdad by the vizier Nizam al-Mulk (d. 1092), although its origins may be more remote. This madrasa, called the Nizamiyya in honor of its founder, became a bastion of Sunni theology and law in conscious opposition to Shiism. The madrasa was sometimes but not always attached to a mosque and included a residence (khan) for students. A madrasa might teach one, more than one, or even all four schools of law. The madrasa of Sultan Hassan in Cairo had four schools, one for each madhhab. Each of the four schools was accessible from a central court, and the teacher was a doctor of law who held an endowed chair. In the 11th to 14th centuries, the madrasa as an institution of learning spread well beyond Iraq into Iran, Afghanistan, the Balkans, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, North Africa, and Nasrid Granada. Madrasas were founded through charitable endowments (awqaf, s. waqf), and while dynastic rulers enthusiastically established them in order to gain legitimacy and popularity, just as many, if not more, were established by private individuals, men and women.

(2)A student who attended the madrasa usually would have already studied in a lower school called a maktab or kuttab, where he would have learned Arabic and memorized the Quran. At the madrasa the student would study Arabic grammar and the history of early Islam. The main study would include reading and interpreting the Quran, the Hadith, the fundamentals of religion (usul al-din), the principles of jurisprudence (usul al-fiqh), and law (fiqh) itself. The teacher (mudarris) would read aloud and interpret a text that the student then would memorize. In the first phase of study, lasting several years, the student would study one particular school of law. Unless training to become a faqih or a mufti, the student would stop after several years of education. The doctor of law (faqih) was expected to master the differences among the major schools of law and to undergo training in ijtihad as a formal logical disputation technique. The moment of truth occurred when the student had to defend his thesis in disputations (munazarat) against other faqihs who challenged him by putting forward antitheses. The successful candidate who convincingly defended his thesis with cogent objections and answers gained a license (ijaza) to teach law and earned the right to issue fatwas.

4.Shiite Learning Institutions
(1)Among the Shiites religious and legal instruction was at first conducted exclusively in the mosque, as had been the practice among Sunni Muslims. The oldest and one of the most prestigious universities (jamia) is the mosque of al-Azhar in Cairo, Egypt, which was founded as a center of Shiite learning in 972 by Jawhar al-Katib al-Saqilibi (“the Sicilian”), the commander of the Fatimid army that conquered Egypt in 969. The name chosen for the university, alAzhar, means “the most radiant” and alludes to the prophet Muhammad’s daughter Fatima, nicknamed “al-Zahra.” The Shiite leanings of the university are reflected not only in the university’s name but also in its curriculum, the staple of which was Shiite law. Al-Azhar University was also a bastion of secular learning, offering courses in the natural sciences, medicine, mathematics, astronomy, as well as geography and history. Women were offered courses in morality and ethics. Al-Azhar’s reputation for excellence remained intact after it was converted into a Sunni institution with the conquest of the Ayyubids and subsequently the Mamluk dynasties in the 12th and 13th centuries. Scholars from all over the Islamic world would visit al-Azhar University on their way to or from the pilgrimage to Mecca.

(2)Private institutions known as Dar al-Ilm (House of Knowledge) or Dar al-Hikma (House of Wisdom) began to emerge in the Shiite world in the late ninth to 10th centuries. These were essentially large libraries equipped with reading rooms and classrooms where courses were offered on all branches of the Shiite Islamic sciences and secular sciences (medicine, astronomy, mathematics, etc.). The Dar al-Hikma was open to scholars from all over, but its curriculum and administration reflected its Shiite leanings; it was administered by the head Shiite propagandist (dai al-dua), who also gave weekly seminars. Among the most renowned Dar al-Hikma was the institute inside the Fatimid palace in Cairo, where the books alone occupied some 40 rooms. The Fatimid caliph al-Hakim built his magnificent Dar al-Hikma in Cairo in 1005 and another shortly thereafter in the Egyptian city of Fustat. Whereas the great al-Azhar University survived the conquest of the Ayyubids, the Shiite Dar al-Hikma did not. The famous Ayyubid conqueror Salah al-Din (Saladin, r. 1174–93) ordered the destruction of al-Hakim’s library and its contents. An estimated 120,000 books were burned, thrown into the Nile River, or buried in the sand.

5.Ijaza (Certificate)
(1)Once a student had finished reading a book with a particular teacher, he requested a certificate, an ijaza. This document attested to the fact that a particular student had studied a particular book with a particular teacher. A more specialized form of certificate was the ijaza, entitling the student to act as a mufti and therefore exercise ijtihad or teach a particular book or subject. An ijaza sometimes took the form of an elaborate listing of the whole chain of transmission from teacher to student over many generations of intellectual ancestors. It is important to note that in the Islamic culture of learning, the transmission of knowledge required not only reading and learning from books but especially personal guided training, commentary, and interpretation by a reputable scholar. Independent learning through private reading was less socially accepted, as is made patently clear by a legal and medical scholar of Baghdad, Abd al-Latif (d. 1231), who urged the would-be scholar
(2)not to learn your sciences from books unaided, even though you may trust your ability to understand. Go to professors for each science you seek to acquire, and if your professor is limited in knowledge, take all that he can offer until you can find another more accomplished. Venerate and respect him. . .. Frequently distrust your own nature rather than have a good opinion of it, and submit your thoughts to men of learning and their works, preceding with caution and avoiding haste. Whoever has not endured the stress of study will not taste the joy of knowledge. (Hourani 1991, 165)

6.The City
(1)Every great Muslim city had at its heart the medina, which consisted of three classes of buildings. First were the buildings associated with the mosque. The mosque was both a house of prayer and the center of political administration—reflecting the symbiosis between the religious and the political—as well as a communal meeting place. Following the custom of the prophet Muhammad, in the seventh century the seat of government (dar al-imara) was situated beside the mosque. During the early Abbasid period the caliphs introduced the custom of building the palace beside the congregational mosque, which was joined by a special balcony or bridge. This tradition soon gave way to the building of elaborate palace complexes located outside the city center (see below). The minbar (dais or pulpit) represented the sovereign authority of the prophet Muhammad, and thus the ceremonial installation of the caliph consisted of his seating himself upon the minbar, from which he would receive the official pledge of loyalty (baya). From the minbar preachers delivered sermons to the faithful at Friday communal prayer, and leaders issued official proclamations. Located near the mosque were the house or court of the chief qadi, the madrasas and schools of learning, and shops that sold books, candles, and other objects pertaining to piety and to the law.

(2)The second complex of buildings included the central marketplace, the suq. Here were located shops that sold textiles, jewelry, spices, and valuable goods. There were storehouses for imported wares. This also was the site for offices of moneychangers who were bankers for foreign trade. Sometimes these shops, storehouses, and offices were arranged in a quadrilateral of streets parallel to or crossing each other, or in a tight mass of buildings closely linked for walking among them, not for roads.

(3)The third complex of city buildings was the government center, in which watchmen, market supervisors, and police worked and lived. From the ninth century onward the leader or ruler lived separately in a royal city, not in the medina. Manufacturing might take place outside the city center. Workshops producing textiles and metal, as well as residences for artists, artisans, and craftsmen, generally were outside the central city. Wealthier merchants and scholars might live near the center, but most of the population lived in residential quarters.

(4)Each residential quarter was a mass of small streets opening off a main street. Most quarters had gates that were shut and guarded at night. A quarter might contain a few hundred or a few thousand people and might have its own mosque, church, or synagogue, a subsidiary market called a suwayqa that provided items purchased for daily life, and a public bath called a hammam.

(5)Most such quarters belonged to those who lived there. Privacy was protected in case of need by its young men organized into groups called zuar, ayyarun, and fityan who maintained the peace and preserved the security. Farther from the center of town and near the walls of the town or right outside the walls were caravans, houses of poor rural immigrants, and markets where country dwellers would offer fruit, vegetables, and livestock for sale. Noisy and odoriferous workshops such as those for tanning and butchering were located on these peripheral sites. Outside all these areas were the cemeteries.

(6)This general city design varied by country and century but generally was imitated if a city was newly built and emended and adapted if an old city was taken over after Muslim expansion. Aleppo was an old city important in both the Hellenistic Greek and Byzantine eras well before the beginning of Islam. Cairo, however, was a new city created during the early centuries of Islamic rule in Egypt. There government had moved inland from Alexandria. The city of Fez was formed by amalgamating two settlements lying on each side of a small river.

7.The Royal Palace
(1)The Abbasids moved out of their own beloved city of Baghdad to Samarra in 836. The Ayyubids and Mamluks held court in the citadel built on the Muqattam Hill overlooking the city of Cairo. In 936 the newly proclaimed Umayyad caliph Abd al-Rahman III of Spain (r. 912–61) ordered the construction of his magnificent palace at Medinat al-Zahra outside Córdoba as a display of his claim to the caliphate.

(2)The wealthy and powerful wanted seclusion to express magnificence. In a separate city the ruler could isolate himself from public opinion. Another important reason for isolation was to keep the caliph’s soldiers away from contact with the city, where they might learn insurrection or at least bad habits that conflicted with their duties of loyalty and security. The royal city, as opposed to the people’s city, had its palace, treasury, mint, and offices for secretaries. Outer courts of the palace were sites for public business. There ambassadors were received, royal armies reviewed, and justice dispensed by courts. The ruler appeared in the outer courts on particular days for special purposes. Inner courts were reserved for the ruler himself and his family. The ruler’s women customarily were guarded by eunuchs. Palace slaves also lived in the royal city.

(3)The royal city had barracks for the royal guards and specialized suqs for the court and army. There were an arsenal and markets for horses, arms, and armor. Workshops for fine textiles for the use of the palace, the tiraz factories, were located in the royal city, and living spaces were nearby for those working in these crafts.

(4)Houses were meant to be seen from within, not from the outside, and usually were constructed around an interior courtyard. Opening on to the street were a single door and a noncommittal building facade that rarely announced the wealth or belongings of the inhabitants. The women’s section of the house also was invisible from the outside. Only those welcome in the courtyard had access to information on who lived within, how many people, and in what condition of lavish ostentation or Spartan simplicity.

8.Daily Hygiene
(1)The Islamic bath, hammam, is a key social institution of any Muslim community, and any town or city could boast of multiple hammams. The early Muslims considered the public bath a foreign institution, as the name al-hammam al-rumi (“Roman bath”) clearly indicates. Yet the pragmatic roles that the hammam fulfilled in the service of ritual ablutions and personal hygiene made the Muslims forget their earlier reticence and incorporate the hammam as a veritable annex to the mosque. In addition to using the hammam to perform their ritual ablutions before performing the obligatory prayers in the mosque, Muslims as well as Jewish and Christian dhimmis routinely used the hammam for personal hygiene, relaxation, and therapy and as a social meeting ground. In order to maintain sexual decorum, separate days or times of the day were designated for men and women, and in some cities men and women had separate baths altogether. In unisex hammams a veil was placed in front of the entrance to indicate that it was the women’s turn. At this point all male staff would leave the premises and be replaced entirely by women.

(2)The basic design and services of the hammam were fairly consistent throughout the Islamic world. The client would pass through the entrance into a dressing room that communicated with the latrines. There they would undress, tend to physical necessities, and put on a loincloth or robe that would help them to accustom themselves to the increasing heat as they advanced through the “transition room” into the “warm room.” There they remained awhile before going on to the “hot room” or “steam room,” where they completed the cycle of profuse sweating. They then returned to the “warm room,” which contained alcoves, small pools of soothing cold and warm water, and stone benches. There attentive staff provided the treatment known as friction, whereby the staff member donned special coarse gloves made of wool and goats’ hair and vigorously scoured and rubbed clients to remove all dirt and the first layer of skin after they had bathed them in ample soap and water. Clients may have also enjoyed a brisk massage if they so chose. After this treatment clients completed their personal hygiene and purifications, were given a clean loincloth or robe, and were toweldried by another staff member. They were finally led into the rest room, where the superintendent escorted them to a bench and had coffee and refreshments served to them.

(3)As in the Jewish tradition, a trip to the hammam accompanied many rites of passage: Expectant mothers went regularly to the baths, hoping to ensure a safe delivery. New mothers would go to a hammam 40 days after giving birth to perform the ritual purification. Young boys were taken to the bath to be purified before being circumcised. Brides-to-be visited the hammam three times before the wedding: once seven days beforehand for ritual purification, once three days beforehand to have the decorative henna applied to the body, and once hours before the consummation of the marriage. Bridegrooms-to-be would also visit the hammam in the company of friends and relatives before and after consummating the marriage.

9.Public Administration and Taxes
(1)The second caliph of Islam, Umar b. al-Khattab (r. 634–644), is credited with establishing the basis of the notion that wealth accumulated by rulers should be distributed for the public good rather than kept as private property. After the conquest of Iraq and Syria, some of the Muslim leaders suggested to Umar that the wealth be divided among the conquerors, “just as the spoils of the army are divided.” To which Umar is said to have retorted, “Allah has given a share in these lands to those who come after you” (Coulson 1141). The Islamic institution of the Bayt al-Mal (lit. House of Wealth, Treasury) is traditionally regarded as the outcome of Caliph Umar’s proclamation. To finance public administration, Islamic governments levied taxes on the inhabitants of the cities and rural areas under their control. Islamic law established the guidelines for the taxation of different categories of people according to their wealth, social status, and membership in the Muslim community, but it was under the Abbasids that the system of taxation became canonized. Muslims had to pay the obligatory alms tax, zakat, one of the Five Pillars of Islam. Muslim landowners paid the zakat in the form of a tithe called ushr. There were two major types of taxes imposed on non-Muslims: the kharaj, a collective levy imposed on agricultural land, mines, and their produce, which a village could be paid in kind or in money and was generally higher than the zakat paid by Muslim landowners, and the jiyza, a poll tax levied on non-Muslims living under Muslim rule (dhimmis), which was generally higher than the kharaj. In the cities taxes were also imposed on households, craftsmen, and merchants. Revenues accrued from taxation on the estates of the deceased and the confiscation of the property of apostates or unknown owners.

(2)Once collected, these revenues were deposited in the Bayt al-Mal. According to Islamic law, a fifth (khums) was originally to be spent on the family and descendants of the Prophet, the poor, orphans, and wayfarers. The zakat was likewise designated for the poor, orphans, the sick, and similar groups. Expenditures for the most part went to the payment of salaried government officials and the army, the maintenance of prisons and prisoners, and the construction and maintenance of roads, water supplies, religious buildings, and other items benefiting the general public welfare.

10.CHARITABLE ENDOWMENTS: WAQFS
(1)Another means by which governments as well as individuals financed projects for the public welfare was through the institution of religious endowments, or waqfs. A waqf was a legal assignment in perpetuity of the income from a piece of property for charitable purposes. Waqfs provided mosques, schools, hospitals, public fountains, hostels for travelers, and facilities for sick animals. An individual donor’s charitable contribution of a waqf ensured the permanence of what he or she built. Waqfs were established by wealthy men and women, rulers, and high officials in all countries throughout the Islamic lands.

(2)A founder could designate a member of his or her own family to act as administrator of the waqf and assign him or her a salary. A founder could provide surplus income from the endowment to descendants so long as they were alive. Waqfs were placed under the care of a qadi and ultimately the ruler.

11.Landed Estates
(1)The Islamic world did not develop a feudal system comparable to that of Christian Europe. Instead, landholdings were characterized according to their fiscal status, which was determined by several factors, including membership in the Islamic community and social status. Muslimowned rural estates subject to the ushr tax were known as daya. Some notables lived on their estates and cultivated their own land with the aid of hired help; most landowners preferred to live in the city and hired a bailiff (wakil) to manage the estate and peasant sharecroppers to farm the land. Under this arrangement sharecroppers would pay rent to the estate owner, who in turn paid a small portion (usually one-fifth) of this income to the government via the ushr tax. The tax benefits of estate ownership helped maintain the privileged position of the landed aristocracy.

(2)Not surprisingly, the largest estate owner was the caliph, followed successively by the princes of his family, the governors of the army, the heads of administration, and finally the merchant class and other wealthy citizens who invested in landed property. Caliphal estates were distinguished from others by their classification as “private” (khassa), as opposed to “public” (amma), and they were usually known S O C I E T Y 153 by the distinct name of sultaniyya or diwaniyya. One of the privileges the caliph could bestow upon a local ruler was the right to levy taxes on his subjects, provided he paid a portion (muqataa) of the revenues to the central government. Similarly, it became common practice for caliphs anxious to maintain the loyalty of the army to grant soldiers the right to the taxes of the regions under their control, provided they paid a fifth to the government.

12.LAND GRANTS (IQTA)
(1)In the first centuries of Islamic expansion up until the early Abbasid period, the caliph would cede portions of the territories acquired, called qatias, to the Muslim notables, who then were required to pay the ushr tithe. In the ensuing centuries the system of land concession evolved into the administrative grant (iqta). The recipient of an iqta did not obtain the land as private property but rather attained the fiscal rights of the state over lands subject to the more costly kharaj tax. The grantee’s benefice consisted of the difference between the kharaj tax he or she received and the lesser ushr tithe s/he owed to the ruler. The Shiite Buyids were the first to use iqta concessions as a form of pay of army officers, and the practice was adopted by other regimes in which the army effectively governed, such as the Seljuks, the Mamluks, and the Mongols. In such cases the roles were reversed: The caliph, having lost most (or all) of the powers of government, including fiscal control, now became the recipient of iqtas from a military aristocracy that now surpassed the merchants, civilian landlords, and high-ranking government officials in social status, wealth, and political power.?

(2)In its origins the iqta was ephemeral as both land rights granted and grantees constantly changed because of the mobility of the army. Under the Seljuks iqta concessions became much larger, hereditary, and sometimes exempt from taxes in order to ensure the loyalty of the army during critical periods such as the wars with the Christian crusaders. In Seljuk Asia Minor the iqta resembled a feudal fiefdom insofar as the peasants inhabiting the land in question were reduced to quasi-serfdom and prohibited from leaving the land if the taxes due had not been paid. It would be inaccurate, however, to equate the iqta with the European feudal manor. Feudal relationships were personal relationships in which a serf swore an oath of loyalty to his lord in return for protection. No such relationship was envisaged in the medieval Islamic world, where “all personal power was a delegation of [the] public power” of the ruler, be he caliph or military soldier (Cahen 1188). Moreover, some iqta grantees were military slaves and therefore could not inherit the iqta rights according to Islamic law, although it is also true that outstanding military slaves trained in the elite army corps were manumitted and could enter the military aristocracy. Finally, and perhaps most important, Islamic inheritance laws required all heirs to receive their fair share of wealth, a system that prevented the long-term concentration of iqta rights in the hands of one person.

《Handbook To Life in The Medieval World》(2008)
By Madeleine Pelner Cosman and Linda Gale Jones??