Caliphate

by Hugh Kennedy

  sat Habāba on his right and Sallāma on his left and said, ‘Sing to me Habāba: give me drink Sallāma.’ Then when he had become drunk and the wine had taken hold of him, he rent the garments which had been acquired for a thousand dinars, dinars for which skins had been flayed, hair shaved off and veils torn away [that is, the money had been collected by violence against the ordinary Muslims]. Then he turned to one of the girls and said, ‘Surely I will fly’, and indeed he will fly to hell-fire!

  The squint-eyed Hishām misused the funds of Muslims; Walīd II ‘drank wine openly and deliberately made manifest what is abominable’; and Marwān II, the last Umayyad caliph, was distinguished by his cruelty. Abū Hamza ends up with a general diatribe against the whole dynasty:

  the Umayyads are parties of waywardness. Their might is self-magnification. They arrest on suspicion, make decrees capriciously, kill in anger, and judge by passing over crimes without punishment. They take the alms tax from the incorrect source and make it over to the wrong people. . . . These people [the Umayyads] have acted as unbelievers, by God, in the most blatant fashion. So curse them, may God curse them!7

  The rhetoric is impassioned, but the charges against the Umayyads are fairly predictable—cruelty and oppression, misusing the wealth of Muslims, drink and sex. What makes this speech so intriguing is the fact that, unlike so much of our evidence, it dates from the time of the last Umayyad caliph and reflects not the prejudices of the Abbasid period but the perceptions of people at the time. It can also stand as an epitaph for the dynasty, showing why many Muslims were prepared to reject the Umayyads’ authority and rise against them.

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  THE EARLY ABBASID CALIPHATE

  WHILE THE ABBASID dynasty lasted until 1258, when it was finally defeated by the Mongols, the early period from 750 to 945 marks in many ways the apogee of the power and prestige of the caliphate. When modern commentators look for a classic caliphate to demonstrate what caliphate has been and could be, they frequently look to the Abbasids in their period of greatest power and glory. For the conservative scholar and jurist Ibn Kathīr (d. 1373) for instance, writing in Damascus more than a century after the last Abbasid caliph of Baghdad had been killed by the Mongols, the Abbasids were still the caliphs par excellence, the only true embodiment of the office. The legacy and memory persist to the present day. To give just one example, the choice of the colour black as a symbol and sort of uniform by the present ISIS caliphate in the Jazira province is a clear and direct reference to the Abbasids, who adopted black as the official colour for court dress, an attempt in fact to position this new caliphate as inheriting the role and prestige of their predecessors.

  In this chapter I will investigate how the Abbasids came to represent the caliphate, how they eventually succeeded and what powers they claimed. Finally we must consider the nature of and reasons for the break-up of the caliphate in the tenth century and what this meant for both the past and the future of the institution.

  THE ABBASID REVOLUTION AND ITS AFTERMATH

  The Abbasid family, perhaps fifty in number by this time, were descendants of the Prophet’s paternal uncle, Abbās b. Abd al-Muttalib, and therefore members of the Family of the Prophet. This was a very important relationship, all the more so because Muhammad’s own father died young and Abbās was in many ways his guardian and protector. At the same time they were not Muhammad’s biological descendants. Since his blood did not flow in their veins, they constantly had to counter the claim that they were, in a sense, imposters.

  Abbās’s son Abd Allah figures frequently as a much respected authority of the Traditions of the Prophet, a reputation which may, of course, owe much to the political success of his descendants. He was not, however, one of the six members of the shūra chosen by Umar to elect the caliph after his death and he does not seem to have played a notable role in the Muslim conquests. The family enjoyed a quiet prosperity under the Umayyad caliphs and the remains of their palace have been uncovered by archaeologists at Humayma, in southern Jordan. Compared with the residences of the ruling dynasty, it is a modest structure, with rooms built around a single courtyard. And there is a small mosque outside, clearly identified by its orientation and its mihrab (prayer niche). Ornamental ivories, probably originally attached to pieces of furniture, suggest a degree of wealth and comfort but not extravagant opulence. Along with its agricultural possibilities—the family cultivated olives—the property at Humayma had one other advantage: it lay on the main route from Syria to the Hijaz and the Holy Cities. Plenty of people passed by and the Abbasids must have been well informed about what was going on.

  Until around 720 they seem to have played no active political role and attracted no followers, but at this time Muhammad b. Alī, then the leading member of the family, began to make contact with disillusioned Muslims in the distant north-eastern province of Khurasan. He argued that the Abbasids were members of the Family of the Prophet and had a good claim to lead the Muslim people.

  The Abbasid claim to the caliphate, as it was articulated after they had come to power, was based on three arguments. The first was, of course, their membership of the Family of the Prophet. This carried some weight, but many Muslims who wanted the rule of the Family to bring about change thought that the ruler should be a descendant of Alī and Fātima themselves. The second idea was that of nass, designation by a previous caliph or claimant. Mukhtār, the rebel in Kufa, had tried to establish an Alid caliphate in the name of Muhammad b. al-Hanafiya, a descendant, as already noted, of Alī but not of Fātima. The attempt had failed and Muhammad died in obscurity, but he left a son called Abū Hāshim, who inherited a claim of sorts to the caliphate. He was himself childless and the story goes that, perhaps travelling through Humayma, he designated Muhammad b. Alī as his successor. It was, to say the least, a flimsy claim, even if the chain of events was true, but, put together with other arguments, it could carry some weight.

  The third point, put forward after the Abbasids had achieved power, was essentially an argument based on action rather than inheritance. It was they who had dealt with the impious Umayyads and, above all, they who had avenged the blood of the martyred Husayn: it was therefore the Abbasids, rather than the direct descendants of Alī, who could rightfully claim the caliphate. They laid considerable emphasis on themselves as the ‘Hāshimiya’. This term may in part be a reference to their supposed designation by Abū Hāshim, but it had a wider significance as well. An earlier Hāshim, who died before the coming of Islam, was the ancestor of the Alids and the Abbasids, but not, and this was the crucial factor, of the Umayyads. By claiming to be the Hāshimiya they were staking their claim to be part of the same kin as their Alid cousins.

  None of these arguments would have been of much use if they had not been backed by the prospect of military force, and this is where the Khurasanis came into the picture. Khurasan was the name given to the vast north-eastern province of the Muslim world. In modern political geography it includes north-east Iran, Afghanistan and the Muslim areas of the Central Asian republics, including Bukhara, Samarqand and the Farghana valley. This huge and diverse province was ruled by Umayyad governors from the great ancient city of Merv, now in modern Turkmenistan. Although it was remote from the centres of Muslim power, a substantial number of Arabs lived there, almost all of them Iraqis sent or encouraged to settle in the frontier cities of the province. This meant that, in contrast with western and central Iran, there was by now a large Muslim population, which included Arabs but also a substantial number of mawālī, non-Arab converts to Islam. As this was a frontier province, many of the Muslims were used to bearing arms and experienced in warfare.

  Quite how the Abbasid connection with Khurasan began is not clear, but from 720 onwards there were increasing contacts between the family based in Humayma and disaffected Muslims, Arab and mawālī alike, in the province, more than a thousand miles away. The leadership in Khurasan was taken by a mysterious and charismatic man known as Abū Muslim. His origins are uncertain, but it s
eems most likely that he was a former slave from Iraq who was sent to Khurasan by the Abbasids. The point, made by the simplicity of his name, was that he was neither clearly Arab nor clearly non-Arab and he had no tribal or family links. He was simply a Muslim everyman to whom all sections of Khurasani society could relate. This was a fundamental part of the Abbasid appeal.

  The movement in favour of an Abbasid caliphate was fortunate in its timing. In 743 Hishām, the last of the great Umayyad caliphs, died and the next year his successor Walīd II was murdered. The regime began to disintegrate, plagued by infighting between different factions. Meanwhile Abū Muslim was managing to persuade large numbers of men to rally to the cause of a campaign to replace the Umayyads as caliphs, not openly naming the Abbasids at this stage but calling for a ‘chosen one from the Family of the Prophet’. No doubt many imagined that this meant a descendant of Alī and Fātima, and Abū Muslim did not disabuse them.

  The movement tapped into a whole spectrum of grievances against the Umayyads. It appealed to Arabs who felt that their interests had been disregarded by the powerful governor Nasr b. Sayyār, mawālī who resented being treated as second-class Muslims, Khurasanis of all backgrounds who no longer wanted to be ruled by a distant government in Syria which collected taxes but seemed to give nothing in return, and pious Muslims who hoped that the coming of the rule of the Family of the Prophet would begin a new era of truly Islamic rule by God-guided caliphs. Abū Muslim marshalled the disparate forces and in 747 was powerful enough to attack and take possession of Merv, the capital of the province. Nasr b. Sayyār was driven out and the new Abbasid army began to march through Iran to take over the rest of the Muslim world. This was no mere provincial rebellion, it was a revolutionary movement which intended to bring radical change to the whole Muslim community.

  The last Umayyad caliph, Marwān II (744–50), was a tough and experienced soldier, but the Umayyad armies were exhausted by many years of fighting; their leaders were divided and Syria itself had recently been ravaged by a terrible earthquake which had left many of its cities in ruins. In a series of battles the Umayyad armies were defeated and Marwān was pursued through Syria to Egypt where he was cornered and killed in a skirmish on the edge of the Nile delta.

  Now the real political manoeuvring began. It was centred on Kufa where an Abbasid agent called Abū Salama, who had acted as a link between the Abbasids in Humayma and Abū Muslim in Khurasan, attempted to hold the ring. Even at this stage, the movement was still calling for an unnamed ‘Chosen One’. Meanwhile members of the Abbasid family travelled to Kufa. Abū Salama prevaricated: it is possible that he intended a new shūra to choose who the new caliph would be. But Abū Muslim, who had remained in Khurasan, was having none of it. He ordered men he trusted in the army to kill Abū Salama and arranged the public proclamation of an Abbasid as caliph.

  Abū’l-Abbās, known as Saffāh, was proclaimed caliph in the great mosque in Kufa. A public baya was held and large numbers came and touched hands with the new caliph in person to accept him as their leader. He began to preach, but had to step down when the fever from which he was suffering overcame him.

  What purports to be the text of this sermon has been preserved. Whether this is actually what was said we can never know, but it gives the fullest justification of caliphate which has come down to us from the early Islamic period, and serves as a real manifesto for the new dynasty. After praising God, Abū’l-Abbās explains that God has created the Abbasids, ‘the leaders of Islam, its cave and its fortress, and made us to uphold it, protect it and support it’. The sermon goes on to establish that the Abbasids are indeed ‘the kin of God’s Messenger. He created us from the ancestors of the Prophet, causing us to grow from his tree’, and follows with a number of quotations from the Qur’ān emphasizing the importance of the Family of the Prophet. Of course, the Abbasids could not claim, and never did claim, to be descended from Muhammad, but they argued that the Family of the Prophet was wider than his blood descendants. The sermon attacks the ‘Sabā’iyyah’, a derogatory term for those who claim that only the direct descendants of Alī and Fātima have any claim to the caliphate. Abū’l-Abbās then explains how, after the Prophet’s death, his companions took authority and ruled by mutual agreement, leading the conquests and distributing the ‘inheritance of the nations’ (the profits of the conquests) justly. Then the Umayyads came and appropriated the resources of the Muslims, ‘tyrannizing and oppressing those entitled to it’. God put up with them for some time, but then ‘He took revenge on them at our hands. . . . He vouchsafed our victory and established our authority in order to grant benefit to those who had grown feeble on the earth.’ Finally Abū’l-Abbās goes on to praise the people of Kufa for their steadfastness to the cause of the Family of the Prophet against the oppressors and he ends by promising them all a pay rise of a hundred dirhams. Then he stepped down because the fever made it impossible for him to go on.

  The new caliph’s place on the pulpit was taken by his uncle Dāwūd, who continues in a much more rhetorical vein:

  Now are the dark nights of this world put to flight, its covering lifted. Now light breaks in the earth and in the heavens, and the sun rises from the springs of the day while the moon ascends from its appointed place. . . . Rule has come back to where it originated, among the people of the house of your Prophet.

  He denies that the Abbasids are claiming the caliphate for reasons of financial gain: ‘We did not rebel seeking this authority to grow rich in silver and in gold, nor to dig a canal nor build a castle’, an implicit criticism here of Umayyad building and land-reclamation projects. He stresses that the Umayyads had taken the payments which rightly belonged to the Muslims of Iraq. But now things would be different:

  You are under the protection of God’s Messenger . . . and the protection of Abbās. We will rule you according to what He has sent down and treat you in accordance with His book and act with the commoner and elite among you following the practice of God’s Messenger.

  He then attacks the Umayyads for their impiety and tyranny: ‘God’s punishment came upon them like a night raid when they were sleeping [a classic trope of Bedouin poetry]. They were torn all to tatters, and thus may an oppressive people perish!’ After claiming again that he has restored the rights of the people of Kufa and Khurasan, he extolls this nephew the new caliph:

  He has made manifest among you a caliph of the house of Hāshim, brightening your faces and making you to prevail over the army of Syria, transferring the sovereignty and the glory of Islam to you. He has graced you with an imam [caliph] whose gift is justice and granted him good government. . . . So know the authority is with us and will not depart from us until we surrender it to Jesus son of Mary [at the end of the world], God’s blessing be upon him. Praise be to God, Lord of the universe, for that with which He has tried us and entrusted to us.1

  The sermon, or rather political speech, is a tour de force of Arabic rhetoric which also makes important points. According to Dāwūd, the Abbasids have come to power by God’s will and because they are of the Family of the Prophet (albeit not his direct descendants). They had avenged the wrongs done of the Family. He also stresses the fact that power has passed to the Kufan and Khurasani Muslims, away from the Syrians, and that they will now get their just rewards, including that hundred dirham pay rise. They will rule according to the will of God and the words of the Qur’ān: nothing more specific in terms of policy is mentioned.

  The moment of triumph was followed by a period of consolidation. Members of the extensive Abbasid family were appointed to lead armies and to govern the provinces of Iraq, Syria and Egypt. Most of the remaining members of the Umayyad family were rounded up and massacred, except for one who fled to North Africa and eventually to Spain, where he set up an independent Umayyad state which eventually became the caliphate of Córdoba. By the time Saffāh died, four years later in 754, the Abbasids had established their control over the entire Muslim world apart from North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula
.

  The coming of the new regime left many questions unanswered. Would the caliphate be hereditary in the Abbasid family? What, if any, would be the role of the Alids? Would the new caliphate be a military state as the Umayyad one had been, and would the Khurasani army simply take over the role that the Syrians had played under the Umayyads? All this remained to be decided.

  The new caliphate looked very different from that of the Umayyads. Black banners had been raised in the east to usher in the new era and two centuries later Muslim tourists in the city of Merv were still shown the house in which the first robes had been dyed black when the revolution first began. Black was to be the distinctive colour of Abbasid court dress for the next two centuries, and wearing it a sign of allegiance to the dynasty.