Why did Arabization occur only where it did?

Louis XXIV said:

Was Arabic ever a significant language in Anatolia? I know Byzantine rule and Seljuk rule, but did it go Greek to Turkish without much in between?

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Not to my knowledge, but they had an Arabic script up until Ataturk.

Kaiserguard said:

Greek Muslims?

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Partly, and also Greek Christians. The Greco-Turkish War shafted a lot of Greek Christians living in those areas.

... something like 1.5 million Christians, not just Greeks, were forced out of Anatolia in 1922/23 because of the Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations including, amusingly, Turkish speaking Orthodox Christians because "Greek" in this case was, quite literally, defined as being Orthodox Christians. Something like half a million Muslims out of Greece despite many of them speaking little to no Turkish. The net result of which was that in 1922/23 Orthodox Christianity all but went extinct in Turkey and Islam went all but extinct in Greece.

I assume the Muslim Greeks got Turkified by Atatürk.

I'm not sure if they did, necessarily. Sunni Pontic Greeks are still a thing in Turkey.

Did they translate the Quran into Greek?

Probably not but that doesn't really matter all that much.

The Koran isn't generally translated, but Muslim children are usually taught Arabic regardless of their first language in order to be able to read it.

I have seen inside Quran's where the Dutch translation was written alongside the Arabic text, but apparently it isn't that common.

it's quite normal actually . But the thing to stress you are not to claim it's an exact match for the Arabic original . Stuff get lost in translation however good the translation might be ; and it's beyond obvious that the Arabs don't understand Kuran themselves anyhow .

... something like 1.5 million Christians, not just Greeks, were forced out of Anatolia in 1922/23 because of the Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations including, amusingly, Turkish speaking Orthodox Christians because "Greek" in this case was, quite literally, defined as being Orthodox Christians. Something like half a million Muslims out of Greece despite many of them speaking little to no Turkish. The net result of which was that in 1922/23 Orthodox Christianity all but went extinct in Turkey and Islam went all but extinct in Greece.

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and which came to because Venizelos insisted on it as if it was the end of the world . Got a "possible" 5th Column out of his country , took "Turks" to convert to become Greeks to cover for the losses of the Greek debacle in Anatolia , too . Already confident when the British and the like "returned" it would be our fault , us barbarians driving Christians out of Anatolia

Masada said:

Probably not but that doesn't really matter all that much.

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So they just have to recite some lines in a language they do not know, nor probably even understand what they are saying, and they are good Muslims, or they just have to pay a tax, and nothing else. They can still believe whatever as long as they pay the tax?

If they only paid the tax, they would not be Greek Muslims. They would just be paying for their freedom of choice.

Interesting subject. Let me give my thoughts.

1) First of all it's important to consider that the arabic speaking countries actually consist of different cultural zones each with their own linguistic traditions. These still exist to some extend.

a: The Arabian peninsula probably always spoke Arabic to some extend.

b: Mesopotamia and the Levant is region that came into contact with Arab very early on. But it is also a region with very strong existing culture. Assyrian, Aramaic, and still exist as pockets in Syria and Iraq. Even Greek could be found in isolated areas untill fairly recently. As has been said, Persian got a special status, especially in the Abbasid dynasty, which probably saved Farsi and Kurdish in these areas too. The Ottomans even important Circassians and and Turks into the area. So these supposedly "Arabiac" countries are only Arabic to some extent.

c: Egypt is probably one of the places where Arabic had the most succes. I don't really know why, but as has been said there is a difference between language and identity. And Egyptian identity has been more Muslim and Egyptian than Arabic for most of it's post-muslim conquest history. Pan-Arabism is a fairly new thing that was really only imbraced by President Nasser.

b: Magreb or the area West of Egypt. These areas were actually Berber speaking for most of the time after the Muslim conquests, but have gone through a long period of incremental Arabization. Genetically the populations of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia is not very Arabic. To this day there is a tension between the Arabic elite and the Berber people's in these countries.

2) Secondly, why did some areas not become Arab? Well Anatolia was never conquered by the Arabs, but by the Turks. Persia was, but I think it's also necessary to consider that the geography of Iran is much different from Iraq, Egypt etc. You have high mountains and cold winters which probably scared the nomadic Arabs. I consider it quite possible that the conquers simply paid less attention to Persia in a sense. They did take the land, but many Persian powerfull families were left in charge if they just agreed to convert.

3) Third, there's always the danger of reading history backwards. Our modern concept of an Arabic world have been inspired by the Pan-Arabism movement of the twentieth century. The Middle East was acutally only ruled by Arabs for a very short period. After the Seljuks it was all about the Turks up untill the First World War.

I can give a simple answer- it was profitable to be an Arab, at least during the Rashidun caliphate.

During the times of the Arab conquests there was no formal definition of citizen as there is today perse, but for administrative purposes, the second caliph Umar created a tribal register for his base of support- the Arab tribes. This allowed him to efficiently tax and levy armies from them. He also used the wealth of the treasury to help these tribes. So a system of responsibilities in exchange for government benefits in short.

As more and more non- Arabs became part of the empire, it became necessary to expand this system. Rather than creating more tribes, what ended up happening is that the existing tribes took on people as clientele and added them to the tribal register. Meaning that an Egyptian picked up by say the Bani Hashim ( tribe the prophet belonged to) would have he same duties and government benefits as them. This had the unfortunate effect of essentially forcing non Arabs to become Arabs or not receive any government benefits.

That's a good explanation. I appreciate the information and input.

timtofly said:

So they just have to recite some lines in a language they do not know, nor probably even understand what they are saying, and they are good Muslims, or they just have to pay a tax, and nothing else. They can still believe whatever as long as they pay the tax?

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Sorta, kinda, not. The mere fact that a particular faith might put a lot of value in using a sarcal language that the layperson doesn't understand, e.g. Classical Arabic, Pali, Sanskrit, Latin, Church Slavonic, doesn't mean those laypersons are somehow ignorant or blaise about their faith. To the contrary, the sacralized use of language in particular religious context might be considered part and parcel of how one ought to follow that particular religion. An example, the Tisagion is used in the Serbian Orthodox Church but is in an old form of Greek. Does this mean that the Serbian faithful don't understand what it means and its purpose? Of course not, the Serbian Orthodox Church in Australia issues books that break down each and every single part of the service and its purpose. Most faiths, including Islam, have that sort of mediating presence be it in the form of formal books on religion written in the vernacular or the rather more simple expedient of someone e.g. a member of the Ulema explaining what the verse says before providing a short discussion of the verse peppered with some suitable anecdotes about the life of the Prophet or his Companions. It's very much a modern Protestant thing to imagine that core religious texts need to be in the vernacular to be understand. Most religious traditions are not big on that sort of thing.

Plotinus said:

it was quite possible to live a few miles from Alexandria and never visit it.

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I strongly disagree, peasants visited cities once a week to sell their agricultural goods on local markets.

There was no historical society where rural and urban communities existed in isolation from each other.

Masada said:

Sorta, kinda, not. The mere fact that a particular faith might put a lot of value in using a sarcal language that the layperson doesn't understand, e.g. Classical Arabic, Pali, Sanskrit, Latin, Church Slavonic, doesn't mean those laypersons are somehow ignorant or blaise about their faith. To the contrary, the sacralized use of language in particular religious context might be considered part and parcel of how one ought to follow that particular religion. An example, the Tisagion is used in the Serbian Orthodox Church but is in an old form of Greek. Does this mean that the Serbian faithful don't understand what it means and its purpose? Of course not, the Serbian Orthodox Church in Australia issues books that break down each and every single part of the service and its purpose. Most faiths, including Islam, have that sort of mediating presence be it in the form of formal books on religion written in the vernacular or the rather more simple expedient of someone e.g. a member of the Ulema explaining what the verse says before providing a short discussion of the verse peppered with some suitable anecdotes about the life of the Prophet or his Companions. It's very much a modern Protestant thing to imagine that core religious texts need to be in the vernacular to be understand. Most religious traditions are not big on that sort of thing.

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Pretty much what happens, but often I prefer reading the Quran in vernacular to depending on my imam to interpret it for me, because at least the book has no bias. Imams might have a political agenda they want to push, and they will choose verses that help with that. Also, there is practically an industry on commenting on the Quran. If you can't make sense of the translation, or you want to make sure you understand what you've read properly, pick those up.

Domen said:

I strongly disagree, peasants visited cities once a week to sell their agricultural goods on local markets.

There was no historical society where rural and urban communities existed in isolation from each other.

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Macarius the Great visited Alexandria only once or twice in his life, despite spending much of his life in the nearby desert, first as a niter smuggler and later as a hermit.

Certainly there was plenty of interaction between the city and the rural communities, but I didn't deny that; I said only that it was possible for an individual never to go from one to the other, perhaps much as there are supposedly people who have never left the Isle of Wight in their lives.

Last year, I also pondered this question and found the following useful:

BBC In Our Time podcast on the Arab Conquests (bibliography in first link).

Chris Wickham The Inheritance of Rome.

One of these accounts claimed that Arabization was very accidental. Islamic theology required Muslims to rule the whole world, but had little or no interest in whether individuals joined the religion. The rulers initially lived in encampments - they had an apartheid lifestyle (not meaning a racist ideology, but the Arabs only met the locals when the latter were serving food or mopping the floor). When local populations started showing interest, the elites main concern was loss of tax revenue. This meant a class of Greek middlemen grew up to run the bureaucracy and as they accumulated wealth and wanted to move up the social scale, there was an incentive for them to convert. The Christian/Greek/Roman masses then had no elite to pass on their heritage.

You can imagine this working over hundreds of years. The village headman has his position because he's got an uncle who works for the city government. The uncle converts, and when the headman's son (Faisal) go to stay with him, he sees Islam is the future and is the first in the village to convert. In the next generation, there's a village boy (Andrew) who's smarter than average. The monasteries aren't in a position to take lads like him any more, so the Faisal agrees to send him in the city, hoping to get a son-in-law and a link to power. Andrew becomes Ali, goes to the city, makes it big. On his trips home, he converts some of his childhood friends. Etc, etc.

Plotinus said:

Macarius the Great visited Alexandria only once or twice in his life, despite spending much of his life in the nearby desert, first as a niter smuggler and later as a hermit.

Certainly there was plenty of interaction between the city and the rural communities, but I didn't deny that; I said only that it was possible for an individual never to go from one to the other, perhaps much as there are supposedly people who have never left the Isle of Wight in their lives.

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I have anecdotal confirmation of that from Chinese peasant families. I've met peasants who live within the city limits of Beijing but very rarely visit the urban area. They'll go once to see the sights, like any other peasant in the country might do, but otherwise have no reason to go. They sell their produce in the local farmer's co-op (in the Alexandrian context, the local market town).

Same thing happens with slum dwellers the world over. I've met people who lived in Jakarta but had never been to Medan Merdeka because people like them get moved on.