Factors behind the Decline of Muslim Power and Prosperity

December 13, 2017Science & Faith

Most of the core Islamic countries, or the lands of the Islamic Middle East, are composed of arid or semi-arid lands with some scattered inhabited lands and large uncultivated or desert areas. Taking the lands of the early Islamic empire, excluding Spain, the inhabited area did not exceed one quarter of the total, the rest being barren or desert lands. Even the inhabited areas are mostly dependent on irrigation for their cultivation, since the rainfall in most of the areas is not sufficient to support agriculture. This ecology of the Middle East meant that its most productive agriculture was confined mainly to the basins of the great rivers of the Nile, the Euphrates and the Tigris. But the harnessing or utilization of the waters of these rivers could not be attempted by individuals, and this job had been undertaken since the days of the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Babylonia by the strong central governments. Also in the first centuries of the Islamic empire, during the Umayyads and the Abbasids, the caliphs and the governors of the provinces gave great attention to the construction and the maintenance of the irrigation systems. And it is well known that an agricultural revolution took place in the first centuries of the Islamic empire. When the central government was weakened or disappeared, the irrigation works were neglected, and when, in addition, these works were destroyed by the Mongol invasions, as had happened in Iraq in the thirteenth century, agricultural lands became arid or turned into marshes and the whole economy and civilization of the region were destroyed.

Some changes in climate and in the rate of rainfall contributed also to the conversion of agricultural lands into arid. At the beginning of the Islamic period and until the middle of the thirteenth century, the area east of Antioch in Syria was one of high rainfall, and it saw the founding of many cities and much farming was taking place. Yet within a few centuries, the territory became arid.

The important consequence of this ecology is that the area is considered a poor one from an agricultural point of view. It cannot depend only on agriculture for its prosperity and for the development of its civilization.