124 Five, or Six, Pillars of Islam northward for 1,000 miles to Siberia in present day Russia; it included modern Mongolia, Chinese Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang (Sinkiang), Tibet, and Russia east of the Pamir Mountains In the 10th century two states dominated by pastoral nomads ringed northern China They were the Khitan state called Liao rooted in the northeast, and the Tangut state called Xixia (Hsi Hsia) rooted in the northwest The founder of the Later Jin (Chin) dynasty ceded 16 prefectures in northeastern China, including the area around modern Beijing, to the Khitan Liao This session bequeathed serious consequences to the Song dynasty; seeking to regain this historically Chinese land the second Song emperor would go to war with the Liao, with disastrous results Another legacy of the Five Dynasties to the Song was the pivotal role of the army in the founding of each dynasty, since the Song too was founded as a result of a coup d’etat, and seeking to end the cycle, Song Taizu (T’ai-tsu) would reorganize his army and put it under civilian control The result was no more coups d’etat, but also an incompetent Song army See also Liao dynasty; Printing, invention in China Further reading: Mote, F W Imperial China, 900–1800 Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999; Bol, Peter K This Culture of Ours: Intellectual Transitions in T’ang and Sung China Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992; Eberhard, Wolfram Conquerors and Rulers, Social Forces in Medieval China Leiden, 1952; Paludan, Ann Chronicle of the Chinese Emperors London: Thames and Hudson, 1998; Wamg, Gung-wu The Structure of Power in North China during the Five Dynasties Stanford: Stanford University Press rpt., 1967 Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur Five, or Six, Pillars of Islam When the prophet Muhammad sensed that he was about to leave this earthly life, he summoned his followers to keep a code of five parts called the Five Pillars Following are the pillars, given in their Arabic names, though each of the words has a long history in the Semitic world Often another pillar is added as the sixth pillar FIRST PILLAR The first pillar is the shahada or creed The creed stands in contrast to those of conventional Christianity, for it is only one line and two parts: There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet Thus, entrance to Islam is easy and direct and does not require mastery of a mass of information or details However easy the words, the shahada must not be taken lightly, but with sincere heart This line is something like the Jewish shema prayer (“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one”), with an affirmation of God’s unity and uniqueness What is different from the Jewish profession is that there is a second plank—“Muhammad is his prophet”—and this second line separates Islam from all other religions Muslims believe that the line about Muhammad does not nullify all the prophets who spoke before Muhammad The angel Jibril (Gabriel) first spoke these lines to Muhammad in the cave of Hira The shahada is repeated 17 times in daily prayer, and ideally it is the first thing a newborn baby and the last thing a dying person hears SECOND PILLAR The second pillar is salat or prayer Ideally this pillar involves group or societal prayer, for Muhammad was interested in bringing people together into community In accordance with this goal, the call to prayer comes five times a day through the mouth of the muezzin on top of a minaret Muhammad’s Abyssinian slave, Bilal, is known to have issued the first call to prayer in Medina, and then later it is known to have occurred during the first hajj in 632 The main times for such prayers are dawn, noon, midafternoon, sunset, and nightfall, and the main prayer day is Friday, so that the community’s rhythm is centered on prayer throughout the day and week If, however, a Muslim finds that prayer at the mosque is not possible, then prayer can be anywhere and solitary The rituals and schedule surrounding prayer are not unique to Islam but show customs and traditions inherited from other Middle Eastern religions: The body, especially the hands and feet, must be washed; shoes must be taken off; prostrations, that is, a full bow to the ground; kneeling; veils for women; worship must face a particular direction; regular days and times for prayer; unison of activities THIRD PILLAR The third pillar is zakat or purification As time went on, the pillar came to be associated with tithing and almsgiving The principle of charity is that all riches come from Allah, so that the tithe or alms is only a formal token that everything belongs to Allah, and again this is the same for Christians and Jews The effect of this token offering is that the whole of the Muslim’s goods are purified, and hence the word zakat is appropriate This concept of tithing is also found in rabbinic Judaism The minimal amount required of Muslims is 2.5 percent of all