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A dhimmi (also zimmi, Arabic ذمي, usually translated as "protected", plural: ahl al-dhimma) is a non-Muslim subject of a state governed in accordance with sharia — Islamic law. The word dhimmi is an adjective derived from the noun "dhimma", which means "tutelage" and denotes the legal relationship between a dhimmi and the Islamic state. It applied mostly to non-polytheists who were conquered by a Muslim state and allowed to retain their religion.

Dhimmis were guaranteed their personal safety and security of property, in return for paying a special capitation tax known as the jizya and accepting various restrictions and legal disabilities. These provisions of sharia limited the ability of dhimmis to visibly practice their rituals, expand and repair places of worship. Dhimmis were not allowed to testify in cases involving a Muslim; dhimmi men were prohibited from marrying Muslim women. Some restrictions imposed on dhimmis from time to time were largely symbolic in nature and were designed to highlight the inferiority of dhimmis compared to Muslims. These regulations included, among others, requirements to wear distinctive clothing and prohibitions on riding horses and camels.

The conditions of dhimma resulted in a gradual acceptance of Islam by most Middle Eastern Christians and Zoroastrians living under the Muslim rule.

Background

The status of dhimmis was initially given to "People of the Book" living in lands under Muslim rule, namely Jews and Christians. Over time Muslims extended this category to Zoroastrians, Mandeans, and Sikhs. Many, but not all, extend this to Hindus.

Sources of dhimma

The medieval Quranic commentator Ibn Kathir justified the dhimma in terms of Sura 9:29 of the Qur'an . The verse calls upon Muslims to fight against the People of the Book until they pay the jizya head tax and are humbled:

Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold forbidden that which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.

A classic precedent of dhimma was an agreement between Muhammad and the Jews of Khaybar, an oasis about 95 miles from Medina. Khaybar was the first territory attacked, conquered, and subjugated by the Muslim state ruled by Muhammad himself. The Jews of Khaybar surrendered to Muhammad after a siege lasting a month and a half; Muhammad allowed them to remain in Khaybar in return for handing over to the Muslims one half of their annual produce. The Khaybar case served as a precedent for later Islamic scholars in their discussions on the issue of dhimma, even though the second caliph Umar I subsequently expelled the Jews from the oasis.

The Pact of Umar , allegedly concluded between Umar I and the conquered Christians, was another source of regulations pertaining to dhimmis. The document meticulously lists the obligations and restrictions that the Christians purportedly proposed to the Muslim conquerors as conditions of surrender. However, modern historians, such as Arthur Tritton, Bernard Lewis, or Hugh Goddard, dispute the authenticity of the Pact, describing it as a product of later jurists who attributed it to the caliph Umar in order to lend greater authority to their own opinions. These historians argue that it is usually the victors, not the vanquished, who propose, or rather impose, the terms of peace, and that it is highly unlikely that such a document could be drafted by the people who spoke no Arabic and knew nothing of Islam.

Modern historians also agree that discriminatory legislation enacted against Jews and non-Melkite Christians in the Byzantine Empire, as well as laws applying to Jews and Christians in the Sassanid Persian Empire, were other sources of dhimmi regulations, though Islamic jurists never explicitly acknowledge these sources. Numerous provisions of the Theodosian Code of 438 and the Justinian's Code of 529 migrated into the Islamic law virtually unchanged. Under the Byzantine rule, Jews were obliged not to pray loudly; their prayers were not to be audible in the nearby church. Building new synagogues (and repairing existing ones) was likewise prohibited, unless the buildings threatened to collapse and a special permission was obtained. Jews were banned from all public offices and the army; they were prohibited from criticizing Christianity, marrying a Christian, or owning a Christian slave. Furthermore, Jews paid special taxes, possibly the precursors of jizya. Amplified and expanded, these regulations were applied to Christians also, after Byzantine lands fell under Muslim rule.

Status of dhimmis

Under Muslim rule, dhimmis were allowed to observe the commandments of their religions, albeit with restrictions attached. In exchange, they had to pay taxes for the benefit of the Muslim community and faced additional regulations, some of them intentionally humiliating and serving to remind dhimmis of their inferiority vis-a-vis Muslims. The overarching principle in the treatment of dhimmis is encapsulated in the statement: "Islam is exalted, and nothing is exalted above it". In the words of the British historian Bernard Lewis:

It is only very recently that some defenders of Islam began to assert that their society in the past accorded equal status to non-Muslims. No such claim is made by spokesman for resurgent Islam, and historically there is no doubt that they are right. Traditional Islamic societies neither accorded such equality nor pretended that they were so doing. Indeed, in the old order, this would have been regarded not as a merit but as a dereliction of duty. How could one accord the same treatment to those who follow the true faith and those who willfully reject it? This would be a theological as well as a logical absurdity.

The treatment of dhimmis varied over time and space, mostly depending on the goodwill of the ruler. Arthur Tritton describes dhimmis living under the rule of caliphs as being vulnerable to the whims of rulers and the violence of mobs. Dhimmis were allowed to live, and even prosper, according to historian Clifford Bosworth, largely because they practiced trades that Muslims valued, such as medicine, or because they performed functions that Muslims either could not perform for religious reasons, such as money-lending with interest, or viewed with disdain, such as money-changing. Still, in the late Middle Ages, some Jews preferred living as dhimmis in the Ottoman lands to living under Christian rule; those immigrants were possibly lured by stories of greater religious freedom and opportunities for social advancement.

Religious aspects

Freedom of religion and forced conversions

File:Rambam.jpg

Maimonides (pictured) narrowly escaped death during the massacre of dhimmis in Cordoba, and later served as physician to the sultan Saladin in Cairo

The pledge of protection granted dhimmis the freedom to practice their religion and spared them forced conversions. Indeed, in the first several centuries after the Islamic conquest and subsequently in the Ottoman Empire, forcible conversions were rare. In some cases, over-eager rulers broke the pledge and dhimmis were occasionally forced to choose between conversion to Islam and death. In the 12th century, rulers of the Almohad dynasty killed or forcibly converted many Jews and Christians in Andalusia and the Maghreb, possibly putting an end to the existence of Christian communities in North Africa outside Egypt. According to Bernard Lewis, during the Cordoba massacre of 1148, the Jewish philosopher, theologian, and physician Maimonides saved his own life only by converting to Islam; after Maimonides moved to Egypt, this conversion was ruled void by a Muslim judge who was a friend and patient of Maimonides. Other sources say that Maimonides, then 13, accepted exile with his family (and with most other Jews of the city) over conversion or death. Sporadic waves of forced conversion occurred at different times and places: for example, in Lybia in 1558-89, in Tabriz in 1291 and 1338, and in Baghdad 1333 and 1344. In 1839, Jews were massacred in Mashhad and survivors were forcibly converted.

Dhimmis had the right to choose their own religious leaders: patriarchs for Christians, exilarchs and geonim for Jews. However, the choice of the community was subject to the approval of the Muslim authorities, who sometimes blocked candidates or took the side of the party that offered the larger bribe.

Dhimmis were prohibited from proselytizing on pain of death. They were also not allowed to obstruct the spread of Islam in any manner. Other restrictions included a prohibition on publishing or sale of non-Muslim religious literature, and a ban on teaching the Qur’an.

Rituals

Although dhimmis were allowed to perform their religious rituals, they were obliged to do so in a manner not conspicuous to Muslims. Display of non-Muslim religious symbols, such as crosses or icons, was prohibited on buildings and on clothing (unless mandated as part of distinctive clothing). Loud prayers were forbidden, as was the ringing of bells or the trumpeting of shofars. According to one hadith, Muhammad said: “The bell is the devil’s pipe.” (Sahih Muslim, book 24, #5279). Furthermore, dhimmis had to bury their dead without loud lamentations and prayers.

Places of worship

According to Islamic law, the permission for dhimmis to retain their places of worship and build new ones depended upon the circumstances in which the land fell under the Muslim rule. According to an Islamic jurist al-Nawawi, dhimmis could not use churches and synagogues if their land was conquered by attack. In such lands, as well as in towns founded after the conquest, or where inhabitants voluntarily converted wholesale to Islam, Islamic law does not allow dhimmis to build new churches and synagogues, or expand or repair existing ones, even if they fall into ruin. If the country submitted by capitulation, al-Nawawi wrote, dhimmis were permitted to build new houses of worship only if the capitulation treaty stated that dhimmis remained owners of their land. In observance of this prohibition, Abbasid caliphs al-Mutawakkil, al-Mahdi and Harun al-Rashid ordered the destruction, in their realms, of all churches and synagogues built after the Islamic conquest. In the 11th century, the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim oversaw over the demolition of all churches and synagogues in Egypt, Syria and Palestine, including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. However, al-Hakim subsequently allowed the rebuilding of the destroyed buildings. Nevertheless, dhimmis sometimes managed to expand churches and synagogues and even build new ones, albeit at the price of bribing local officials in order to get permissions.

There was no consensus in Islamic jurisprudence as to whether it was permissible for dhimmis to repair churches and synagogues. The pact of Umar, as cited by ibn Kathir, puts an obligation on dhimmis not to “restore any place of worship that needs restoration” . At the same time, al-Mawardi wrote in the 11th century that dhimmis “can restore ancient synagogues and churches that have fallen into ruin”. As in the case of building new houses of worship, the ability of dhimmi communities to repair churches and synagogues usually depended upon its relationship with local Muslim authorities and its ability to pay bribes.

Taxation

Main article: Jizya Main article: Kharaj

Dhimmi communities were subjected to taxes known as jizya – a poll tax – and kharaj – a land tax. Early chronicles use these terms indiscriminately; only later did the kharaj emerge as a tax payable by a farmer regardless of his religion. The resulting tax burden on dhimmis was higher than that on Muslims who paid zakat – mandatory alms. According to Norman Stillman: “Jizya and kharaj were a crushing burden for the non-Muslim peasantry who eked out a bare living in a subsistence economy.” Most Islamic scholars agree that jizya must be levied only upon adult males, and the 8th-century scholar Abu Ubayd advises that dhimmis must not be burdened above their capacity or caused to suffer. The Shafi'i school however dissents, demanding “the poll tax to be paid by dying people, the old, … the blind, monks, workers, and the poor, incapable of practicing a trade.” The latter view was often applied in practice, as contemporary non-Muslim sources give witness of taxation even of dead persons, widows, and orphans. All taxes paid by Muslims were usually doubled for dhimmis.

Sura 9:29 demands that jizya be exacted from non-Muslims as a condition required for jihad to cease. Failure to pay the jizya could result in the pledge of protection of a dhimmi's life and property becoming void, with the dhimmi facing a choice between conversion and death (or imprisonment, as advocated by Abu Yusuf, the chief qadi — religious judge — of Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid). Al-Nawawi however advocates that the unpaid amount of poll tax remain a debt to the dhimmi’s account until he becomes solvent. In the Ottoman Empire, dhimmis had to carry a receipt certifying their payment of jizya at all times, upon pain of imprisonment.

Legal aspects

Prohibition on testimony

The testimony of dhimmis was not admissible in cases involving a Muslim; on the other hand, Muslims could testify against dhimmis. This legal disability put dhimmis in a precarious position where they could not defend themselves against false accusations leveled by Muslims, except by hiring Muslim witnesses and bribing qadis. Apart from breeding corruption, the prohibition on non-Muslim testimony deepened the rift between communities, as dhimmis sought to reduce the possibility of conflict by limiting contact with Muslims.

Punishment for murder of a dhimmi

In all schools of Islamic jurisprudence, except the Hanafi, the maximum punishment for the murder of a dhimmi, if perpetrated by a Muslim, was the payment of blood money; no death penalty was possible. For Maliki and Hanbali schools of jurisprudence, the value of a dhimmi's life was one-half the value of a Muslim's life; in the Shafi'i school, Jews and Christians were worth one-third of a Muslim and Zoroastrians were worth just one-fifteenth. The Hanafi school, however, believes that the murder of a dhimmi must be punishable by death, citing a hadith according to which Muhammad ordered the execution of a Muslim who killed a dhimmi.

A peculiar practice developed in Yemen, where Arab tribes collected jizya from Jews, offering them protection. If a Muslim from one tribe killed a Jew protected by another tribe, then the other tribe could retaliate by killing a Jew protected by the tribe of the murderer. As a result, two Jews were murdered, while no direct sanctions were imposed on the Muslims.

Social and psychological aspects

Humiliation of dhimmis

Islamic law stipulates that dhimmis must be belittled for their rejection of Islam; humiliating them was an act of piety, a fulfillment of divine will. Bernard Lewis comments that

The Qur'an and tradition often use the word dhull or dhilla (humiliation or abasement) to indicate the status God has assigned to those who reject Mohammad, and in which they should be kept for so long as they persist in that rejection.

Ibn Kathir wrote that dhimmis must feel “disgraced, humiliated and belittled. Therefore, Muslims are not allowed to honor the people of the dhimma or elevate them above Muslims, for they are miserable, disgraced, and humiliated." Echoing a saying attributed to Muhammad (Sahih Muslim, book 26, #5389), Hasan al-Kafrawi, an 18th century scholar, advises that “if you encounter one of them on the road, push him into the narrowest and tightest spot”. European travelers to the Middle East describe humiliations and insults of Christians and Jews on the streets until the mid-19th century. As recommended by many Muslim scholars, most notably al-Zamakhshari and al-Nawawi, jizya was often collected in a humiliating procedure:

he collector remains seated and the infidel remains standing..., his head bowed and his back bent. The infidel must place money on the scales, while the collector holds him by his beard and strikes him on both cheeks.

This ritual stemmed from the traditional interpretation of Sura 9:29, being that jizya was not merely a tax, but also an expression of submission. Abu Yusuf, however, advises against the mistreatment of dhimmis during jizya collection, saying that "they should be treated with leniency". The procedure was not followed in the Ottoman Empire, where jizya was collected by representatives of the dhimmi communities themselves.

Distinctive clothing

See also Yellow badge

For dhimmis to be clearly distinguishable from Muslims in public, Muslim rulers often prohibited dhimmis from wearing certain types of clothing, while forcing them to put on highly distinctive garments, usually of a bright color. To increase the debasement of non-Muslims, the clothes usually had to be made of rough fabrics and were often incongruous. Although distinctive clothing for non-Muslims was not spelled out in Islamic holy texts, Muslim scholars still agreed that dhimmis must not wear the same clothing as Muslims do; frequently, these scholars cited the Pact of Umar in which Christians supposedly took an obligation to "always dress in the same way wherever we may be, and ... bind the zunar round our waists". Al-Nawawi required dhimmis to wear a piece of yellow cloth and a belt, as well as a metallic ring, inside public baths.

Regulations on dhimmi clothing varied frequently to please the whims of the ruler. Although the initiation of such regulations is usually attributed to Umar I, historical evidence suggests that it was the Abbasid caliphs who pioneered this practice. In 807, Harun al-Rashid ordered that Jews should wear high cone caps and yellow belts, the first prototypes of the yellow badge; Christians had to wear blue belts. These distinction marks became obsolete in 849 when al-Mutawakkil ordered dhimmis to put a yellow veil on their heads and shoulders and wear a wide belt. He also required them to wear small bells in public baths. In the 11th century, the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim ordered Christians to put on half-meter wooden crosses and Jews to wear wooden calves around their necks. In the late 12th century, Almohad ruler Abu Yusuf ordered the Jews of the Maghreb to wear dark blue garments with long sleeves and saddle-like caps. His grandson Abdallah made a concession after appeals from the Jews, relaxing the required clothing to yellow garments and turbans. In the 16th century, Jews of the Maghreb could only wear sandals made of rushes and black turbans or caps with a red piece of garment on it.

Ottoman sultans were similarly diligent and inventive in regulating the clothings of their non-Muslim subjects. In 1577, Murad III issued a firman forbidding Jews and Christians from wearing dresses, turbans, and sandals. In 1580, he changed his mind, restricting the previous prohibition to turbans and requiring dhimmis to wear black shoes; Jews and Christians also had to wear red and black hats, respectively. Observing in 1730 that some Muslims took to the habit of wearing caps similar to those of the Jews, Mahmud I ordered the hanging of the perpetrators. Mustafa III personally helped to enforce his decrees regarding clothes. In 1758, he was walking incognito in Istanbul and ordered to beheading of a Jew and an Armenian seen dressed in forbidden attire. The last Ottoman decree affirming the distinctive clothing for dhimmis was issued in 1837 by Mahmud II. Discriminatory clothing did not exist only in those Ottoman provinces where Christians were in majority, e.g. in Greece and the Balkans.

Riding

Dhimmis were forbidden to ride horses or camels; they were only allowed to ride donkeys and only on packsaddles. The initiation of this prohibition is attributed alternatively to caliph Umar II or Umar ibn al-Khattab. In the 18th century, Damanhuri, rector of Al-Azhar University, summed up the consensus of Islamic jurists: “Neither Jew nor Christian should ride a horse, with or without saddle. They may ride asses with a packsaddle.” European travelers passing through the Middle East in the 18th and 19th centuries left ample evidence of the careful enforcement of prohibitions on horseback riding. Danish traveller Carsten Niebuhr wrote in 1761 that in Egypt, Jews and Christians were forced to alight while passing the houses of notable Muslims and when meeting such notables in the street.

Marriage

Islamic jurists reject the possibility that a dhimmi man may marry a Muslim woman. As some scholars put it, marriage is like enslavement, with the husband being the master and the wife being the slave. Even as dhimmis are prohibited from having Muslim slaves, so are dhimmi men not allowed to have Muslim wives. Following the same logic, Muslim men were allowed to marry dhimmi women because the enslavement of non-Muslims by Muslims is allowed.

Personal freedom

An exception to the right of personal freedom guaranteed by the dhimma was the practice of enslavement of young non-Muslim boys for the ruler’s slave army. The practice goes back to the Abbasids, who recruited such slave warriors mainly from non-Muslim Turkic populations; descendants of those slaves later formed the Mamluk dynasties. The Ottoman Empire practiced a similar system, known as devshirmeh, by annually enslaving young boys from the Christian population of its Balkan provinces, to muster Janissary troops.

Shi'a ritual purity

Shi'a Islam devotes much attention to the issues of ritual purity — tahara. Shi'a jurists have traditionally deemed non-Muslims to be ritually impure — najis — so that physical contact with them or things they touched would require Shi'as to wash themselves before doing regular prayers. In Persia, where Shi'ism is dominant, these beliefs brought about restrictions that aimed at limiting physical contact between Muslims and dhimmis. Dhimmis were not allowed to attend public baths with Muslims; they were also not allowed to go outside in rain or snow, ostensibly because some impurity could be washed from them upon a Muslim.

Consequences of dhimma

Over the course of many centuries, dhimma gradually led to the conversion of most Zoroastrians and Christians to Islam, but had only a limited impact on the Jews. Zoroastrianism was the first to crumble after the Muslim conquest of Persia. Closely associated with the power structures of the Persian Empire, Zoroastrian clergy quickly declined after it was deprived of state support.

For Christians, the process of conversion was slower — it is possible that as late as at the time of the Crusades Christians still constituted a majority of the population — but no less inexorable. The switch from a dominant to an inferior position proved too difficult for many Christians and they converted to Islam in large numbers to avoid oppression. Christianity disappeared altogether in Central Asia, Yemen, and the Maghreb, where it was subjected to persecution by the Almohads. In Syria, Iraq, and Egypt, Christians fared better, but their numbers were still reduced from being the overwhelming majority to being a tiny minority. Bernard Lewis argues that the relative resiliency of Christians in those countries stemmed from their subordinated position in the Byzantine Empire, which made them more amenable to accepting Muslim supremacy; he suggests that many of them felt better under the early Muslim rule than under the Byzantines.

Jews, on the other hand, were the least affected. Accustomed to survival in adverse circumstances after many centuries of Roman and Byzantine persecutions, Jews saw the Islamic conquests as a just another change of rulers; this time, not necessarily for the worse. Voluntary conversion among the Jews was rare, and they managed to preserve their religion all over the Muslim lands.

Notes

Lewis (1984), pp. 10–11
Tritton (1970); Lewis (1984), pp. 24–25; Goddard (2000), p. 46
Bat Ye’or (2003), pp. 111–113; see also Lewis (1984), p. 19; Goddard (2000), p. 47
Lewis (1984), p. 16
Lewis (1984), p. 4
Friedmann (2003), p. 35
Bosworth (1982), p. 232
Tritton (1970), p. 49
Lewis (1984), p. 121
Stillman (1979), pp. 37–39
Lewis (1984), p. 52
Lewis (1984), p. 100
Kantor (1989), p. 150; Husik (1946), p. 238
Bat Ye’or (2003), p. 88
Lewis (1984), p. 168
An alternative translation of this phrase is “The bell is the musical instrument of the Satan.”
Bat Ye’or (2003), pp. 83–85
Lewis (2002), p. 81
Lewis (1984), pp. 14–15
Stillman (1979), p. 26
Al-Nawawi, Minhadj, quoted in Bat Ye’or (2003), p. 70
Bat Ye’or (2003), pp. 69–71
Abu Yusuf, Kitab al-Kharaj, quoted in Lewis (1984), p. 15
Friedmann (2003), pp. 35–36
Bat Ye’or (2003), p. 74
Lewis (1984), p. 14
Bat Ye’or (2003), p. 75
Bat Ye’or (2003), p. 79
Al-Nawawi, Minhadj, quoted in Bat Ye’or (2003), p. 91
Bat Ye’or (2003), pp. 91–96
Bat Ye’or (2003), pp. 97–98
Friedmann (2003), pp. 161–163
Some modern Shi'a jurists, for example, Fazel Lankarani consider Jews and Christians to be ritually pure
Lewis (1984), pp. 33–34; Bat Ye’or (2003), p. 103
Lewis (1984), p. 17
Lewis (1984), pp. 17–18
Lewis (1984), p. 18

References

Bat Ye'or (1985). The Dhimmi. Madison/Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. ISBN 0838632629.
Bat Ye'or (2003). Islam and Dhimmitude. Where Civilizations Collide. Madison/Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press/Associated University Presses. ISBN 0838639437.
Bat Ye'or (1996). The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam. From Jihad to Dhimmitude. Seventh-Twentieth Century. Madison/Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press/Associated University Presses. ISBN 0838636888.
Bostom, Andrew (2005). The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims. Prometeus Books. ISBN 1591023076.
Bosworth, C. E. (1982). The Concept of Dhimma in Early Islam In Benjamin Braude and B. Lewis, eds., Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society 2 vols., New York: Holmes & Meier Publishing. ISBN 0841905207
Choksy, Jamsheed (1997). Conflict and Cooperation: Zoroastrian Subalterns and Muslim Elites in Medieval Iranian Society. New York.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
Friedmann, Yohanan (2003). Tolerance and Coercion in Islam: Interfaith Relations in the Muslim Tradition. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521827035.
Gardet, Louis (1954). La Cite Musulmane: Vie sociale et politique. Paris: Etudes musulmanes.
Goddard, Hugh (2000). A History of Christian-Muslim Relations. Chicago: New Amsterdam Books. ISBN 1566633400.
Husik, Isaac (1946). A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America. ASIN B0007DFH4E.
Kantor, Mattis (1989). The Jewish Timeline Encyclopedia. Northvale, NJ: Aronson. ISBN 0-87668-229-8.
Lewis, Bernard (1984). The Jews of Islam. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691008078.
Lewis, Bernard (2002). The Arabs in History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0192803107.
Stillman, Norman (1979). The Jews of Arab Lands: A History and Source Book. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America.
Tritton, Arthur S. (1970). The Caliphs and their non-Muslim Subjects: a Critical Study of the Covenant of Umar. London: Frank Cass Publisher. ISBN 0714619965.
Encyclopedia Judaica, Keter Publishing

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