Unit 5 · Islam: The Qur'an and the Five Pillars

Picture Mecca around the year 600. It sits in a dry valley in western Arabia, on a caravan route that carries spices, leather and cloth between Yemen in the south and Syria in the north. In the middle of town stands a cube-shaped stone building called the Kaaba. Arabs from across the peninsula travel to it each year, and during the pilgrimage months fighting stops so that they can come safely. Inside and around the Kaaba, historians say, stood images of many tribal gods.

Most Arabs at this time were organized by tribe, a large group of related families that protected its members and avenged them when they were wronged. There was no king and no central government. Loyalty, generosity and courage were prized; poetry was the great art, recited from memory at fairs and markets. Muslims later called this period the jahiliyya, a word usually translated as the age of ignorance, meaning the time before the Qur’an’s guidance arrived.

Arabia was not cut off from the wider world. Jewish tribes had lived in the oasis town of Yathrib, later called Medina, for centuries. Christian communities existed in Yemen, in the north near Syria and among some Arab tribes. The two great empires of the day, the Christian Byzantine Empire and the Zoroastrian Persian Empire, fought long wars just beyond Arabia’s borders. Stories of Abraham, Moses and Jesus were known in Mecca before Islam began.

Islamic tradition also remembers a few Meccans called hanifs who rejected the tribal gods and worshiped one God without belonging to a Jewish or Christian community. Muslims believe that the Kaaba itself was first built by Abraham and his son Ishmael as a house for the one God, and that Meccans had forgotten this over time. Whether or not a student accepts that account, it explains why the Kaaba matters so much in the rest of this story.

Islamic tradition tells the story this way. Muhammad was born in Mecca around 570 into the Quraysh tribe. His father died before his birth and his mother when he was about six, so he was raised by his grandfather and then his uncle, Abu Talib. He worked in the caravan trade and earned a reputation for honesty; people called him al-Amin, the trustworthy. At about twenty-five he married Khadija, a wealthy merchant widow who employed him, and they had several children.

Muhammad had a habit of going alone to a cave on Mount Hira, outside Mecca, to think and pray. Muslims believe that one night in about 610, when he was about forty, the angel Gabriel (Jibril in Arabic) appeared to him and commanded, Recite. Muhammad answered that he could not recite. The command came again, and then the first words of what became the Qur’an: verses that speak of a Lord who created humans and taught them by the pen. Muslims call this night Laylat al-Qadr, the Night of Power.

According to the tradition, Muhammad came home shaking and asked Khadija to cover him. She comforted him, and she became the first person to believe that the message was from God. Over the next twenty-three years, Muslims hold, Gabriel brought further revelation in pieces, sometimes a few verses at a time, until Muhammad’s death in 632. Muhammad recited each passage to his followers, who memorized it and wrote parts down on whatever was at hand.

Muslims do not believe that Muhammad wrote the Qur’an or that he was divine. They believe he was a prophet, a human messenger chosen to deliver God’s words, in the same line as Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus, and that he was the last of them. That is why Muslims often add the words peace be upon him after his name, and why a student of religion writes Muslims believe when describing these events, rather than stating them as settled history.

For about a dozen years Muhammad preached in Mecca. His message, that there is one God, that the idols at the Kaaba are false, that the rich must care for the poor and that everyone will be judged, won a small following: family members, some young people, some enslaved people and poor Meccans. Mecca’s leading families opposed him. The shrine and its pilgrims were their business, and a preacher attacking the tribal gods threatened both their beliefs and their income. Some early Muslims were beaten; a few were killed.

In 622, after Khadija and Abu Talib had died and the danger had grown, Muhammad accepted an invitation from the town of Yathrib, about 200 miles north, where feuding tribes wanted an outside judge. He and his followers moved there in small groups. This move is the hijra, meaning migration. It matters so much that the Islamic calendar counts years from it: the year 622 CE is year 1 AH, from the Latin for in the year of the hijra. Yathrib became known as Medina, from Madinat al-Nabi, the city of the Prophet.

In Medina Muhammad was no longer only a preacher but the leader of a community, the umma, the body of all Muslims. He built the first mosque, set up rules for how Muslims, Jews and others in the town would live together, and led the community through several battles with Mecca, including Badr in 624 and Uhud in 625. The revelations from these years, Muslims note, deal more often with law, family and community than the shorter, urgent Meccan passages.

In 630 Muhammad returned to Mecca at the head of a large force, and the city surrendered with little fighting. According to tradition he cleared the Kaaba of its idols and rededicated it to the one God, while granting a general pardon to most of his former enemies. He died in Medina in 632 and is buried there. By then most of Arabia’s tribes had accepted Islam. The question of who would lead the umma after him is taken up in the next chapter.

Open a printed Qur’an and the first thing you meet is not the first revelation from Mount Hira. It is a short prayer of seven verses called al-Fatiha, the Opening. After it comes the longest chapter in the book, and the chapters then generally grow shorter until the last ones are only a few lines. Each chapter is a sura, and each verse is an ayah, a word that also means a sign. There are 114 suras and, by the usual count, 6,236 ayahs.

The order is not chronological. Muslims believe the passages were revealed over twenty-three years, and scholars sort suras into Meccan ones, usually short and intense, warning of judgment and calling people to the one God, and Medinan ones, usually longer, with laws about marriage, inheritance, contracts and the community. A single sura can contain verses from both periods. Each sura has a name taken from a word in it: the Cow, the Bee, the Light, the Night.

For daily reading, the Qur’an is also divided into thirty roughly equal parts called juz'. A person who reads one juz’ each night finishes the whole book in a month, which is exactly what many Muslims do during Ramadan. Muslims believe the text was fixed in writing under the third caliph, Uthman, in the 650s, when official copies were sent to the main cities. The Arabic text used today is, Muslims hold, unchanged since then.

Two features surprise students who expect a book like the Bible. First, the Qur’an is mostly not a narrative; it speaks directly, often as God addressing the listener, and returns again and again to the same themes. Second, it assumes you already know the stories of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses and Jesus, and refers to them briefly to make a point. The Qur’an calls Jews and Christians People of the Book, communities that also received scriptures.

The word Qur'an means recitation. Before it was a book it was a sound, and for most Muslims it still is. Children learn to recite suras long before they can read them, and a person who has memorized the whole text is honored with the title hafiz, meaning guardian. There are set styles of melodic recitation called tajwid, with rules for how long each vowel is held and where to breathe. Famous reciters have followings the way singers do, and recitation contests draw thousands of listeners.

This is why the Arabic matters so much. Muslims believe the Qur’an is God’s speech in the very words revealed to Muhammad, so the Arabic text is the Qur’an and a translation is not. An English version is usually titled something like The Meaning of the Glorious Qur’an to make this point. Muslims who do not speak Arabic, and that is most of the world’s Muslims, still pray in Arabic and often study the original alongside a translation in their own language.

For a student in a public school, translations are what we have, and it helps to know a little about them. The first English versions were made by non-Muslims, and some were hostile. J. M. Rodwell’s translation (1861) and E. H. Palmer’s (1880) are now in the public domain and were used by scholars for decades. Twentieth-century translations by Muslims, such as Marmaduke Pickthall’s (1930) and Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s (1934), are widely read today, along with many newer versions. Rodwell even rearranged the suras into what he thought was their historical order.

Comparing two translations of one verse is a good habit for this course, as unit 1 taught. A single Arabic word may be rendered God or Allah, the Merciful or the Compassionate, recite or read. None of these choices is neutral. When this course quotes the Qur’an in paraphrase, it is offering one careful reading of the meaning, and a Muslim reader would remind you that the real thing is the Arabic.

Sura 112 is one of the shortest chapters in the Qur’an, four lines that many Muslims recite every day. It says that God is one, eternal and absolute, that God does not beget and was not begotten, and that nothing is like God. Muslims call the teaching packed into those lines tawhid, the oneness of God. It is the first half of the Muslim declaration of faith, and everything else in Islam is meant to follow from it.

The opposite of tawhid is shirk, associating anything else with God: worshiping idols, as Meccans did before Islam, but also treating wealth, power or any person as if it were divine. The Qur’an treats shirk as the gravest error. This is also why Muslims do not accept the Christian teaching that Jesus is the Son of God or part of a Trinity, even though the Qur’an honors Jesus as a prophet born of the Virgin Mary who worked miracles. Muslims and Christians agree on much about Jesus and differ here.

From tawhid flow the other core beliefs that Muslim teachers list. Muslims believe in angels, God’s messengers, including Gabriel. They believe God sent scriptures before the Qur’an, the Torah to Moses, the Psalms to David, the Gospel to Jesus, but that those texts were altered over time, which the Qur’an corrects. They believe in a line of prophets ending with Muhammad. And they believe in a Day of Judgment, when each person is raised and answers for their deeds, followed by paradise or hell.

Muslims speak of God with ninety-nine names drawn from the Qur’an: the Merciful, the Compassionate, the Just, the Forgiving, the Creator, the Light. You may see them on prayer beads or on the walls of a mosque. The word Allah is simply Arabic for God, and Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews use it too. Understanding tawhid explains a great deal about Muslim practice, from the ban on images in worship to the fact that prayer is addressed to God alone.

Muslim teachers sum up the practice of Islam in five duties called the Five Pillars, an image of posts holding up a roof. A well-known hadith, a report of the Prophet’s words, lists them: testimony of faith, prayer, charity, fasting in Ramadan and pilgrimage. The first is the shahada, the declaration: There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God. Saying it sincerely, usually in Arabic and often before witnesses, is how a person becomes a Muslim. It is whispered into a newborn’s ear and, if possible, is the last thing a dying person says.

The second pillar is salat, ritual prayer five times a day: before sunrise, at midday, in the afternoon, just after sunset and at night. The times shift with the sun, so they change through the year. In a Chicago June the last prayer falls after 10 p.m. Before praying, a Muslim performs wudu, washing the hands, mouth, nose, face, arms, head and feet. Then, facing the qibla, the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca, the worshiper recites al-Fatiha and other verses while standing, bowing, prostrating with the forehead on the ground and sitting, in a set sequence.

Salat can be done anywhere clean, on a mat at home, in an office, in an airport, but praying together is preferred, and the midday prayer on Friday, jumu’ah, is a congregational prayer at the mosque with a sermon. The call to prayer, the adhan, is chanted from the mosque in Arabic and begins Allahu akbar, God is greater. In Muslim-majority countries it sounds from loudspeakers five times a day. In Chicago it is more often an app notification.

Notice what these two pillars do. The shahada names the two things a Muslim must affirm, one God and one final messenger, and nothing more. There is no long creed to sign. Salat then takes that belief and puts it into the body five times a day, at the same times and in the same direction as more than a billion other people. Muslims often describe salat as a conversation with God and as a reset that pulls them out of ordinary business.

The third pillar is zakat, which means purification. Once a year, Muslims who have savings above a set minimum give a fixed share, traditionally 2.5 percent of that wealth, to people in need. The Qur’an names who may receive it: the poor, the needy, those in debt, travelers, those who collect it and others. Zakat is not the same as ordinary charity, which Muslims call sadaqa and give freely; zakat is a duty, and in some countries it is collected like a tax. Many Muslims calculate it during Ramadan.

The fourth pillar is sawm, fasting during Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, the month in which Muslims believe the Qur’an was first revealed. From the first light before dawn until sunset, adults do not eat, drink, smoke or have sexual relations. The Qur’an lists exceptions: the sick, travelers, and by extension pregnant and nursing women and the elderly, who make up the days later or feed the poor instead. Children are not required to fast, though many start with partial days.

Because the Islamic calendar follows the moon, its year is about eleven days shorter than the solar year, so Ramadan moves earlier each year and circles through all the seasons in about thirty-three years. A Chicago Ramadan in December means a fast of about ten and a half hours; one in June means nearly seventeen. Each day ends with the iftar, the fast-breaking meal, often begun with dates and water. The pre-dawn meal is called suhoor.

Muslims describe Ramadan as much more than not eating. Mosques are full for extra night prayers, during which the whole Qur’an is recited over the month. People try to give up gossip and anger, read more, and give more. The last ten nights include Laylat al-Qadr, the Night of Power, when Muslims believe the first revelation came and prayer is said to be especially valuable. The month ends with a festival, Eid al-Fitr, which the next section describes.

The fifth pillar is the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca during the last month of the Islamic calendar, Dhu al-Hijjah. Every adult Muslim who is physically and financially able is expected to make it once in a lifetime. In recent years about two million pilgrims have come each year from nearly every country on earth; Saudi Arabia limits numbers through a quota system because the holy sites cannot hold more. Non-Muslims are not permitted to enter Mecca, so what outsiders know comes from pilgrims’ accounts and films.

Before arriving, pilgrims enter a state of ritual purity called ihram. Men put on two plain white unsewn cloths; women wear simple modest dress, often white. A king and a janitor look the same, which is the point. Pilgrims then perform tawaf, walking seven times counterclockwise around the Kaaba, and walk seven times between the hills of Safa and Marwa. Muslims believe this retraces the steps of Hagar, Abraham’s wife, as she searched for water for her son Ishmael, until the spring of Zamzam appeared.

The heart of the hajj is the day of standing at the plain of Arafat, about twelve miles outside Mecca, where pilgrims spend the afternoon in prayer. Muslims believe the Prophet gave his farewell sermon there in 632. Pilgrims then camp at Muzdalifa, throw pebbles at stone pillars at Mina, which Muslims believe recalls Abraham rejecting Satan’s temptation, and sacrifice an animal, recalling Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son. Muslims around the world celebrate that day as Eid al-Adha.

People who have completed the hajj may add the title hajji or hajja to their name. Many describe it as the most important experience of their lives. The American Muslim leader Malcolm X, after his 1964 hajj, wrote that praying beside pilgrims of every color changed his views about race. A shorter visit to Mecca at any other time of year, the umra, is encouraged but does not fulfill the pillar.

The word Eid means festival, and Muslims celebrate two each year. Eid al-Fitr, the festival of breaking the fast, begins when the new moon is sighted at the end of Ramadan. Before the holiday prayer, each family gives a small food or cash donation, zakat al-fitr, so that poor families can celebrate too. Then large crowds gather early in the morning for a special prayer. It is often held outdoors or in a rented hall, because no mosque is big enough. In the Chicago area, Eid prayers have filled convention halls and stadium fields.

After the prayer comes visiting: new clothes, sweets, gifts of money to children, and a long day of meals with relatives and friends. Greetings of Eid Mubarak, blessed festival, are exchanged. Because Ramadan is a month of discipline, Muslims often describe the morning of Eid, when they may eat in daylight again, as a feeling of relief and gratitude. In many families the first breakfast in a month is a small ceremony.

Eid al-Adha, the festival of sacrifice, falls about seventy days later, on the day pilgrims at the hajj perform their sacrifice. Muslims everywhere who can afford it sacrifice a sheep, goat or cow, or pay for one to be sacrificed. They divide the meat in thirds: for the family, for friends and neighbors, and for the poor. The festival recalls the story, told in both the Qur’an and the Bible, of Abraham’s readiness to offer his son. Most Muslims understand the son to be Ishmael, while the Bible names Isaac. In the United States, families usually arrange the sacrifice through a farm or a charity that ships meat to those in need.

Both Eids show a pattern you will see across the tradition: a communal prayer, a required act of giving built into the holiday, and food shared beyond the family. Because the Islamic calendar is lunar, the Eids, like Ramadan, move through the seasons. Some school districts in Illinois and elsewhere have begun listing the Eids on their calendars or excusing students who observe them, though practice varies from district to district.

The Arabic word for mosque is masjid, a place of prostration, and the name tells you the building’s main job: it is a clean, open space where people can line up and pray. Take off your shoes at the door, as everyone does, and you will see a carpeted hall with no pews. On the wall facing Mecca is a niche called the mihrab, which shows the qibla and helps carry the prayer leader’s voice. Beside it stands the minbar, a set of steps from which the Friday sermon is given. Outside, many mosques have a tower, a minaret, from which the call to prayer was traditionally chanted.

You will not find statues or paintings of God, Muhammad or saints. Because of tawhid and the fear of shirk, images of living beings are traditionally avoided in places of worship. Instead, walls are decorated with Arabic calligraphy, often verses of the Qur’an or the names of God, and with geometric and floral patterns. A large mosque may have a dome, a courtyard, fountains for wudu, classrooms, a library and a kitchen. Men and women usually pray in separate areas or rows, in arrangements that vary from mosque to mosque.

The prayer leader is the imam, which simply means the one in front. In most Sunni communities the imam is not a priest with special powers. Any knowledgeable adult can lead prayer, though larger mosques employ trained scholars who also teach, counsel and give the Friday sermon, the khutba. In Shia communities the title imam also has a deeper meaning, described in the next chapter. Islam has no central authority like a pope, and mosques are usually run by local boards.

The Chicago area has well over a hundred mosques, from converted storefronts to large purpose-built centers with domes and minarets in the southwest and northwest suburbs, and they serve communities whose families come from South Asia, the Arab world, Africa, Bosnia, Turkey and Iran, along with many African American and other American-born Muslims. Most welcome respectful visitors outside prayer times. Visitors are asked to dress modestly, remove shoes, and, for women in many mosques, cover their hair.

Walk down Devon Avenue on Chicago’s Far North Side and you pass grocery stores, butchers and restaurants with the word halal in their windows. Halal means permitted, and it applies to all of life, not only food. Its opposite is haram, forbidden. For food, the Qur’an lists the main rules: Muslims do not eat pork or any pork product, blood, animals that died on their own, or animals sacrificed to anyone but God. They also do not drink wine or, by extension, any alcohol.

Meat from permitted animals such as chicken, lamb, goat and beef must be slaughtered in a prescribed way, called zabiha or dhabiha: by a Muslim, with a sharp knife across the throat, while pronouncing the name of God, and with the blood drained. Jewish kosher slaughter is similar, and the Qur’an says the food of the People of the Book is permitted to Muslims, so some Muslims will eat kosher meat when halal is not available. Others will not. Seafood is generally considered halal, though schools of law differ on shellfish.

The rules reach into the details. Gelatin made from pork appears in some candies and marshmallows, and many Muslims check labels for it. Vanilla extract contains alcohol, and opinions differ on whether the tiny amount matters. Halal certification agencies now label products the way kosher agencies do, and Illinois passed a Halal Food Act in 2001 making it illegal to sell food falsely labeled as halal. Fast-food chains in Muslim neighborhoods often advertise halal meat.

As with fasting, the tradition builds in mercy. The Qur’an says that a person who eats forbidden food out of real necessity, without wanting to, is not at fault. And Muslims differ in practice: some eat only certified zabiha meat, some eat any meat except pork, some keep the rules strictly at home but loosely when traveling. A hospital or school cafeteria that serves Muslim students usually offers a vegetarian option, marks pork clearly, and, where possible, provides halal meat.

The Qur’an tells Muslims many times to pray, but it does not spell out every movement of the prayer or how many times to bow. Muslims learned those details by watching Muhammad. The Qur’an itself calls the Messenger of God a fine example to follow. His way of living, speaking and deciding is called the Sunnah, meaning the beaten path or custom. For most Muslims it is the second source of guidance after the Qur’an.

The Sunnah is known through the hadith, reports of what the Prophet said, did or approved. Each hadith has two parts. The isnad is the chain of people who passed it on: one person heard it from a second, who heard it from a third, who heard the Prophet. The matn is the text of the report itself. After Muhammad’s death, thousands of reports circulated, and some were invented to support one side in a dispute.

So scholars built a science for testing reports. They studied every person in each chain. Was he or she honest? Did they have a good memory? Could they really have met the person they quoted? A report judged fully reliable is sahih, meaning sound; others are graded good or weak. In the 800s, al-Bukhari (died 870) and Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj (died 875) compiled the collections Sunni Muslims trust most, each called a Sahih. Shia Muslims rely on their own collections, which give special weight to reports passed down through the Prophet’s family.

Hadith shape ordinary life: how to wash before prayer, what to say after a sneeze, eating with the right hand, and the teaching that even a smile for another person counts as charity. Keep one distinction clear. Muslims believe the Qur’an is the word of God. Hadith are human reports about the Prophet, and scholars have always weighed them, sometimes reaching different conclusions about the same report.

A Muslim college student in Chicago wants to buy a car, but she does not want a loan that charges interest. Many scholars read the Qur’an’s ban on riba, usury, as covering ordinary interest, while others disagree. She asks what is permitted. That is a question about sharia. The word first meant the path to a watering place, a route to life-giving water in the desert. Muslims use it for the whole of God’s guidance for human life: prayer, fasting, family, business, food and manners, with crime and punishment a smaller part.

Muslim scholars separate sharia from fiqh, literally understanding, the human work of figuring out what that guidance requires in a real case. Sharia, Muslims believe, is perfect; fiqh is done by people and can disagree. In classical Sunni theory, jurists draw on four sources: the Qur’an, the Sunnah, ijma, the consensus of scholars, and qiyas, reasoning by analogy. The Qur’an forbids wine, for example, and by analogy most jurists extended the ban to other intoxicants. Shia jurists use a similar method, with a larger role for reason and for the teachings of the imams.

Jurists sort acts into five categories: required, such as the five daily prayers; recommended, such as extra prayers; permitted, which covers most of daily life; disliked, such as wasting water while washing for prayer; and forbidden, such as theft or eating pork. A scholar qualified to answer questions is a mufti, and the answer is a fatwa, a legal opinion. A fatwa is not automatically binding. News reports sometimes use the word as if it meant a death sentence, but most fatwas answer ordinary questions about prayer, money or marriage.

Countries today differ widely. Some, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, base much of their national law on their own reading of sharia. Many Muslim-majority countries apply it mainly to family matters like marriage and inheritance, alongside civil law codes. In the United States, Muslims follow sharia in personal practice, such as prayer, fasting and halal food, much as observant Jews follow Jewish law, while living under American law. Debates about sharia, including over punishments and the rights of women, continue among Muslims themselves.

Watch the rows of worshipers in a large mosque and you may notice small differences. Some fold their hands on the chest, some just below the navel, and many Maliki Muslims and most Shia let their arms hang at their sides. These differences often come from the madhhab, the school of law, that a person follows. Each school grew from the teaching of an early scholar and his students in the 700s and 800s, and each built its own body of rulings.

Sunni Muslims recognize four schools. The Hanafi school, named for Abu Hanifa of Kufa (died 767), is the largest, strong in Turkey, Central Asia and South Asia. The Maliki school, from Malik ibn Anas of Medina (died 795), dominates North and West Africa. The Shafi’i school, from al-Shafi’i (died 820), is strong in parts of Egypt, East Africa, and Southeast Asia, including Indonesia and Malaysia. The Hanbali school, from Ahmad ibn Hanbal of Baghdad (died 855), is the smallest and strongest in Saudi Arabia.

Most Shia Muslims follow the Ja'fari school, named for Ja’far al-Sadiq (died 765), whom Shia honor as the sixth Imam. Twelver Shia also practice something distinctive: each believer chooses a living senior scholar, a marja, meaning source to follow, and follows that scholar’s rulings. The best-known marjas today live in the shrine cities of Najaf in Iraq and Qom in Iran, and they answer questions sent from believers around the world, including from Chicago.

The schools agree on the essentials: the Five Pillars, the ban on pork and alcohol, and the authority of the Qur’an and Sunnah. They differ on details, and classical scholars treated that as normal. A saying often repeated among Muslims calls difference of opinion among scholars a mercy. Today many Muslims follow one school, while others, especially in the West, draw on several or follow reformers who urge a return directly to the Qur’an and hadith.

Medina, June 632. The Prophet has died. He left no surviving son and, Sunnis hold, named no successor. A group of leading Muslims met and chose Abu Bakr, Muhammad’s close friend and father-in-law, as caliph, from the Arabic khalifa, successor or deputy. The caliph led the community in politics, war and prayer, but he did not receive revelation. Muslims believe prophecy ended with Muhammad.

The name Sunni comes from ahl al-sunna, the people of the Sunnah and of the community. Sunnis honor the first four caliphs, Abu Bakr (632 to 634), Umar (634 to 644), Uthman (644 to 656) and Ali (656 to 661), as the Rightly Guided Caliphs. In Sunni thinking, the community should be led by a qualified Muslim whom it accepts. Later caliphs, such as the Umayyads in Damascus and the Abbasids in Baghdad, ruled great empires.

The name Shia comes from Shi’at Ali, the party of Ali. Ali was Muhammad’s cousin, one of the first to accept Islam, and the husband of the Prophet’s daughter Fatima. Shia Muslims believe the Prophet named Ali as his successor at a place called Ghadir Khumm, on the way home from his last pilgrimage. Sunnis accept a report of that event but read its key word as friend, not ruler. For Shia, rightful leadership belongs to a line of Imams descended from Ali and Fatima.

Today, by common estimates, about 85 to 90 percent of the world’s Muslims are Sunni and about 10 to 15 percent are Shia. Shia are the majority in Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan and Bahrain, with large communities in Lebanon, Pakistan and India. The two share the Qur’an, the Five Pillars and the hajj, where they pray side by side. The split began as a question of leadership, though over centuries each developed its own law, holidays and practices.

On the tenth day of the month of Muharram, Shia Muslims in Karachi, in Iraq and in Chicago gather dressed in black to hear a story many of them know by heart. In 680, Husayn, the Prophet’s grandson through Ali and Fatima, refused to pledge loyalty to Yazid, the Umayyad caliph. He set out for Kufa in Iraq with his family and a small band of companions. At Karbala, near the Euphrates River, a far larger army surrounded them and cut them off from water. Husayn and most of the men were killed; the women and children were taken captive.

Shia Muslims remember that day as Ashura. Communities hold gatherings where reciters retell the story and listeners weep. There are processions, poems of mourning, and in Iran traditional passion plays that reenact the battle. Many mourners beat their chests in rhythm; a few practice harsher forms of mourning that many Shia scholars discourage, and some communities hold blood drives instead. Sunni Muslims also mark Ashura, often with a voluntary fast, recalling a hadith that links the day to Moses and the Israelites being saved from Pharaoh.

Shia Muslims believe a line of Imams followed Ali. The largest branch, the Twelvers, count twelve. They believe the twelfth, Muhammad al-Mahdi, went into hiding in the 870s, a state called occultation, and will return at the end of time to fill the world with justice. Other Shia branches include the Ismailis, the largest group of whom, the Nizaris, follow a living Imam who holds the title Aga Khan, and the Zaydis of Yemen.

Shia devotion centers on shrines of the Imams: Ali’s tomb at Najaf, Husayn’s at Karbala, and the eighth Imam’s at Mashhad in Iran. Each year, forty days after Ashura, millions of pilgrims walk to Karbala, one of the largest gatherings on earth. Themes of martyrdom, standing against injustice and love for the Prophet’s family run through Shia life. Sunnis, too, honor Ali and Husayn as members of the Prophet’s family.

In Konya, Turkey, men in tall felt hats and long white skirts turn slowly to the music of a reed flute, the right palm raised toward heaven and the left turned toward earth. They belong to the Mevlevi order, founded by followers of the poet Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207 to 1273), who is buried in Konya. For them the turning, called sema, is a form of prayer. Rumi’s poems, often in loose English versions, are widely read in the United States today.

Sufism, tasawwuf in Arabic, is the mystical path within Islam: the effort to know God directly, from the heart, and not only through outward rules. Most Sufis have kept the law carefully and seen it as the doorway to the inner path. The name probably comes from suf, wool, the rough cloth early ascetics wore. An early Sufi, Rabi’a al-Adawiyya of Basra (died 801), is remembered for teaching that God should be loved for God’s own sake.

The central Sufi practice is dhikr, remembrance: repeating the names of God or a phrase such as la ilaha illa Allah, there is no god but God, alone or in a circle, often in rhythm with the breath. Sufis join a tariqa, an order or path, and learn from a sheikh, a master who guides disciples. Orders such as the Qadiriyya, Naqshbandiyya and Chishtiyya spread across three continents, and Sufi teachers helped spread Islam in South Asia, Africa and Southeast Asia. There are both Sunni and Shia Sufis.

Al-Ghazali (died 1111), a leading scholar in Baghdad, left his teaching post during a personal crisis and later wrote that Sufi experience and the law belong together; many Muslims accepted his view. Not all Muslims embrace Sufism. Some reform movements, including Salafi movements and the Wahhabi movement in Saudi Arabia, criticize practices such as visiting saints’ tombs, which they see as risking shirk. Sufis reply that they honor saints but worship God alone. A student of religion describes both views.

In 762, the caliph al-Mansur founded a new capital on the Tigris River and laid it out as a great circle: Baghdad. Within a century it was one of the largest cities in the world, a crossroads of trade from China to Spain. Paper, a Chinese invention, was being made in Baghdad by the late 700s. It was far cheaper than parchment, so books became cheaper and more plentiful, and booksellers’ shops lined whole streets.

The Abbasid caliphs, who ruled from Baghdad, sponsored a translation movement that lasted about two centuries. Scholars translated the works of Aristotle, Euclid, Ptolemy, Galen and Hippocrates from Greek, often through Syriac, along with books from Persian and Sanskrit. Many translators were Christians, such as the physician Hunayn ibn Ishaq (died 873), who with his students translated much of Galen’s medicine. Jewish, Sabian and Muslim scholars worked alongside them. The caliph al-Ma’mun (ruled 813 to 833) was an especially famous patron.

Al-Ma’mun’s court is linked with the House of Wisdom, Bayt al-Hikma in Arabic, a royal library where scholars read, copied and discussed books. Historians debate how large and organized it was; some describe it mainly as a library rather than a university. What is clear is that scholars in Baghdad did not only preserve the Greek works. They checked them, argued with them and corrected them.

Why did this happen? Historians give several reasons: the Qur’an’s repeated call to reflect on the signs of God in nature; practical needs such as calendars, prayer times, the qibla, inheritance math and medicine; and the prestige that learning brought a ruler. The golden age is usually dated from the 700s to the 1200s. In 1258 the Mongols sacked Baghdad and killed the last Abbasid caliph there, but learning continued in Cairo, Samarkand, Istanbul and Mughal India.

When you solve x + 5 = 12 by subtracting 5 from both sides, you are using a method explained by al-Khwarizmi (about 780 to 850), a scholar in Baghdad. Around 820 he wrote a book on calculating by al-jabr, restoring, and al-muqabala, balancing. Al-jabr became our word algebra. His name, written in Latin as Algoritmi, gave us algorithm. Another of his books spread the Indian system of place-value numerals with zero; Europeans later called them Arabic numerals, though they began in India.

Astronomy had religious uses. Muslims needed to set the times of the five prayers, find the qibla, and sight the new moon that begins each month of the lunar calendar. Astronomers built observatories, such as those at Maragha in Iran (1259) and Samarkand (1420s), improved Ptolemy’s tables, and perfected the astrolabe, a brass instrument for measuring the positions of the sun and stars. Many star names are Arabic, including Aldebaran, Betelgeuse, Altair and Vega.

Cities such as Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo built hospitals, called bimaristan, with separate wards for different illnesses; many treated patients without charge. The physician al-Razi (died about 925) wrote one of the earliest clear accounts telling smallpox from measles. Ibn Sina (980 to 1037) wrote the Canon of Medicine, which was taught in European universities for centuries. In Cairo, Ibn al-Haytham (died about 1040) used experiments to argue that we see because light enters the eye.

These scholars were Arabs, Persians, Central Asians and others; some were Christian or Jewish, like the physician and philosopher Maimonides. Their books were later translated into Latin in Spain and Sicily, where Ibn Sina became Avicenna and al-Razi became Rhazes. Historians describe this as a bridge from ancient Greek science to the European Renaissance, and they stress that it was original work, not only storage for Greek ideas.

In 711, Muslim armies crossed from North Africa into Spain, and the Muslim-ruled lands there became known as al-Andalus. In 756, Abd al-Rahman, an Umayyad prince who had escaped the Abbasids, set up his rule at Córdoba. Its Great Mosque, begun in 785, is famous for its forest of red-and-white striped arches. By the 900s Córdoba was one of the largest cities in Europe, and the library of the caliph al-Hakam II was said to hold hundreds of thousands of books.

Jews and Christians in al-Andalus lived as dhimmi, protected communities who paid a special tax and had fewer rights than Muslims, but kept their own worship and courts. Many historians use the Spanish word convivencia, living together, for the exchange among the three faiths; others stress its limits and periods of persecution. Both are part of the record. The Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd (1126 to 1198) and the Jewish philosopher Maimonides (1138 to 1204), who wrote mostly in Arabic, were both born in Córdoba. Castile conquered the city in 1236, and the mosque became a cathedral.

Timbuktu stands at the edge of the Sahara near the Niger River. Under the Mali and later the Songhay empires, it became a market where gold, salt and books were traded. Mali’s ruler Mansa Musa made the hajj in 1324 and passed through Cairo with so much gold that writers described it for generations. He brought scholars home with him, and the mud-brick Djinguereyber mosque, begun in his time, still stands. Teachers at mosques such as Sankore taught Maliki law, Arabic grammar, astronomy and medicine.

Timbuktu’s families collected manuscript books for centuries: Qur’ans, law, astronomy, poetry and business letters, some in African languages written in Arabic script. In 2012, armed groups occupied the city. Librarians and families smuggled hundreds of thousands of manuscripts south to Bamako; a few thousand were burned, but most were saved. Timbuktu is a reminder that the golden age of Islamic learning was African as well as Arab and Persian.

Look up inside the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, completed around 691, and you see bands of gold Arabic letters, among the earliest dated inscriptions of Qur’anic verses. Islamic religious art usually avoids images of living beings, and the written word takes their place. Calligraphy, beautiful writing, became the most honored art of all, because it gives visible form to words Muslims believe God spoke.

Calligraphers developed many styles. Kufic is angular and was used in early copies of the Qur’an. Naskh is rounded and easy to read, and it became the standard hand for copying books. Thuluth is large and flowing, often used on mosque walls. Calligraphers trained for years under a master, cut their own reed pens, and measured each letter in dots made by the pen’s tip. Ottoman sultans signed decrees with a tughra, an elaborate calligraphic emblem of the ruler’s name.

Two other elements appear everywhere. Geometric patterns start from circles and grow into stars and polygons that seem to repeat without end; many Muslims see in them the order and unity of creation, though artists’ own intentions varied. The arabesque is a pattern of winding vines and leaves. You can see all three at the Alhambra in Granada, in the tiled mosques of Isfahan, and at the Taj Mahal in Agra, built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in the 1600s as a tomb for his wife, with Qur’an verses inlaid in stone.

Not all Islamic art avoids figures. Persian, Turkish and Mughal painters illustrated books of history and poetry with detailed scenes of people and animals, and some even depicted the Prophet, often with his face veiled. Views on images vary by place, period and community; avoidance is strongest in mosques and in copies of the Qur’an. Today calligraphy is still thriving, from traditional masters in Istanbul to young artists painting Arabic letters on city walls.

In 1831, in North Carolina, an enslaved man named Omar ibn Said wrote a short account of his life in Arabic. Born in West Africa, in what is now Senegal, he had studied the Qur’an and other books before he was captured. Historians estimate that a significant share of the Africans enslaved in the Americas were Muslim. Some kept praying and fasting in secret, but very little of their practice survived slavery.

Later, Arab immigrants from the Ottoman Empire, especially from what is now Syria and Lebanon, arrived from the late 1800s. A mosque built in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1934 is one of the oldest still standing. The Nation of Islam, founded in Detroit in 1930, was led for decades from Chicago by Elijah Muhammad. It preached Black self-reliance and taught beliefs that most Muslims worldwide considered outside Islam. After his death in 1975, his son Warith Deen Mohammed led most members into Sunni Islam; Louis Farrakhan later rebuilt a separate Nation of Islam, still based in Chicago.

The Immigration Act of 1965 ended quotas that had favored Europeans. Muslims then came from South Asia, the Arab world, Iran, Africa and elsewhere, later joined by refugees from Bosnia, Somalia, Iraq and Syria. The Pew Research Center estimated about 3.45 million Muslims in the United States in 2017, about 1 percent of the population. Pew found that no single racial or ethnic group makes up a majority, and Black Americans are a large share of U.S.-born Muslims.

Chicago reflects all of this. There are South Asian shops on Devon Avenue, Arab American neighborhoods on the Southwest Side and in suburbs like Bridgeview, Bosnian and West African mosques, and African American communities with roots in the 1930s. The Inner-City Muslim Action Network, IMAN, founded in 1997 on the Southwest Side, runs a health clinic and arts programs open to all. After September 11, 2001, many American Muslims reported discrimination, and civil rights groups still track such incidents.