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Interrogating the Project of Military History |
October 26 -
Spent most of today's History of War class talking about the rise of Islam and
the military system of Muhammad and the early caliphs. One of the things I
like about the course is the chance it gives me to bone up on things I know
little about, and this subject was one of them. I had the usual grab bag
of sources, but one of the more useful was Patricia Crone's essay, "The Early
Islamic World," in Kurt Raaflaub and Nathan Rosenstein, eds., War and Society
in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds. (Which, incidentally, is one of
most useful collections of that type that I've seen, and, with its coverage of
societies in Asia, the Mediterranean, Europe, and Mesoamerica, is a good example
of what world military history could produce.)
But for the early development of Islam I looked mostly to a couple of world history textbooks, because when you're trying to impart the basic info it's useful to see how somebody else managed it. They always begin by discussing Arab society before Muhammad's birth. This part got cribbed into my notes thus:
| Key social institution: the clan. Clans grouped together in tribes. Tribes fought one another--clan rivalry was an outgrowth of the values the Arabs shared. Warfare tended to be small-scale: raids to acquire goods, intertribal fighting to avenge insults and gain booty. Not very lethal, as is typical of societies with small populations. For men, bravery in battle was a socially vital attribute, insult and humiliation things to be avoided. Great fear of being shamed. Manliness also involved an obligation to be generous, to give away loot taken in intertribal warfare. Women were often part of this loot. The practice of polygyny was common. |
As I wrote this, I was struck by how much it reminded me of a scene from the film Lawrence of Arabia. Maj. T. E. Lawrence (Peter O'Toole) and Sherif Ali ibn el Kharish (Omar Sharif) are visiting the tent of Auda abu Tayi (Anthony Quinn), trying to persuade him to join their attack on the Ottoman garrison at Aqaba. So today in class I used it, anachronistically but I hoped effectively, to introduce the Bedouin world before Islam.
Audar (Anthony Quinn) reacts to the words of Lawrence (Peter
O'Toole) in Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
After briefly outlining the First World War context, I introduced the clip by saying that Lawrence was a highly educated man, spoke Arabic, and had an extensive knowledge of Arab culture which he tried to exploit in order to secure Audar's cooperation on terms that fit Audar's traditionalist world view:
In Auda's tent
AUDAR
This thing you work against Aqaba, what
profit do you hope from it? [The loot motive]
ALI
We work it for Feisal of Mecca. The Harif
do not work for profit.
AUDAR
Well, if a man was meant to be a servant,
Ali, he could find worse masters than
Feisal, but I...I cannot serve.
LAWRENCE
You permit the Turks to stay in Aqaba.
AUDAR
Yes, it is my pleasure.
LAWRENCE
We do not work this thing for Feisal.
AUDAR
No? For the English, then?
LAWRENCE
For the Arabs.
AUDAR
The Arabs. The Howitat, Ajili, Rala, Beni
Saha; these I know, I have even heard of
the Harif, but the Arabs! What tribe is
that? [tribes as the principal locus of identity]
LAWRENCE
They're a tribe of slaves; they serve the
Turks. [studied use of insult to stimulate Audar's sense of honor]
AUDAR
Well, they are nothing to me. My tribe is
the Howitat...
ALI
Who work only for profit.
AUDAR
Who work at Auda's pleasure.
LAWRENCE
And Auda's pleasure is to serve the
Turks. [another studied insult]
AUDAR
Serve. I serve?
LAWRENCE
It is the servant who takes money.
AUDAR
I am Audar Abu Tayi! Does Audar serve?
CROWD
No!
AUDAR
Does Audar Abu Tayi serve?
CROWD
No!! Ha! Ha! Ha!
AUDAR
I carry twenty-three great wounds, all
got in battle. Seventy-five men have I
killed with my own hands in battle. I
scatter, I burn my enemies tents. I take
away their flocks and herds. The Turks
pay me a golden treasure. Yet, I am poor,
because I am a river to my people! Is
that service? [bravery, prowess in battle; generosity]
LAWRENCE
No. [said respectfully, to acknowledge Audar's honor]
SILIAM
And yet now it seems Audar has grown old
and lost his taste for fighting.
AUDAR
It is well you say it in my tent, thou
old tulip!
ALI
Yet, this is a tulip that the Turks could
not buy.
AUDAR
Why should they wish to? Now! I will tell
you what they pay me, and you will tell
me if this is a servant's wages. They pay
me, month by month, one hundred golden
guineas.
LAWRENCE
One hundred and fifty, Auda.
AUDAR
Who told you that?
LAWRENCE
I have long ears.
AUDAR
And a long tongue between them.
LAWRENCE
A hundred; a hundred and fifty; what
matters? It's a trifle...a trifle which
they take from a great box they have...
ALI
In Aqaba.
AUDAR
In Aqaba!
LAWRENCE
Where else?
AUDAR
You trouble me like women.
LAWRENCE
Friends, we have been foolish. Audar will
not come to Aqaba.
AUDAR
No.
LAWRENCE
For money. [though loot is plainly what motivates Audar]
AUDAR
No.
LAWRENCE
For Feisal? [loyalty to an abstraction like an Arab prince is beyond Audar]
AUDAR
No.
LAWRENCE
Nor to drive away the Turks. He will come
because it is his pleasure. [A direct appeal to Audar's honor]
AUDAR
Thy mother mated with a scorpion.
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It was something of a stretch to use a scene set in 1916 to illustrate a society some thirteen centuries earlier. In fact it was downright "essentialist" (the reduction of peoples to their static essence). But you can't do everything at once. You can't discuss Orientalism with students who as yet may have little knowledge of the rise of Islam, the Crusades, European imperialism, and decolonization. But you can lay the groundwork for it, by introducing those subjects in such a way that, when the right moment comes in the course, you can say, for instance, "Remember that time I showed you a scene from Lawrence of Arabia in a my rise of Islam lecture? It only worked because of an assumption that there is something unchanging in Arab culture. Let's look at it again, this time through the eyes of a Palestinian scholar, Edward Said . . ." And indeed, while in Orientalism (1979) Said has nothing directly to say about the film, he has a lot to say about Lawrence's depiction of the Arabs in Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence's memoir of the Arab Revolt.
