    8

    T hey possessed the finest homes the architects of the day could

    conceive.  They had slaves and harems, dancing girls and the most

    succulent food.  They held the power of life and death over the newly

    subjugated citizens of the conquered lands.

    The writings of Abû 'Ali al-Muhassin al-Tanûkhî, a judge in tenth

    century Baghdad, gave an astonishing sense of the Islamic elite's

    opulent lifestyle.  Tanûkhî recalled, for example, that the `Abbasid

    Caliph "Mutawakkil desired that every article whereon his eye should

    fall on the day of a certain drinking bout should be coloured yellow.

    Accordingly there was erected a dome of sandalwood covered and

    furnished with yellow satin, and there were set in front of him melons

    and yellow oranges and yellow wine in golden vessels; and only those

    slave-girls were admitted who were yellow with yellow brocade

    gowns.  The dome was erected over a tesselated pond, and orders were

    given that saffron should be put in the channels which filled it in

    sufficient quantities to give the water a yellow colour as it flowed

    through the pond."  When the servants unexpectedly ran out of saffron

    mid-way through the afternoon, the Caliph ordered them to fetch

    yellow fabrics from the public treasury and soak them in the water

    channel so the leaking dyes would keep the pond flowing with liquid

    of the correct hue.  The afternoon's decorating scheme cost the empire's

    citizens 50,000 dinars.14

    Allah had promised great rewards to the faithful.  And He had

    delivered in spades.  But no holy force stood behind the presentation of

    His gifts.  The mechanism responsible was something far more

    down-to-earth.  Mohammed's ideas--like those of Christ-- had been a

    remarkably successful social glue.  Had created a superorganismic

    bond.  And the growth of the superorganism possesses the one power

    every prophet from Jesus to Marx has dreamed of--the capacity to

    deliver a small slice of utopia.

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