Caliphate

by Hugh Kennedy

  The Abbasids developed a very distinctive style of court dress, something which, as far as we know, was unknown under the Orthodox and Umayyad caliphs. Apart from black robes, one of the features was a hat called a qalansuwa. We have no clear or realistic depictions of this headgear, but it seems to have been a tall, conical hat, sometimes supported on the inside by sticks to prevent it collapsing. People remarked that it looked like a tall black jar. The qalansuwa was of Persian origin. It had been elite wear in the late Sasanian court and was adopted or revived by the Abbasids. Like court dress through the ages, the most important features of it were that it was impractical and expensive, therefore indicating high status. It was also uncomfortable: one story tells of a courtier returning from the palace to his house and throwing off court dress in relief only to have to put it on again when he was summoned back by the caliph. When the caliph Amīn dreamt that the wall on which he was sitting was attacked by one of his enemies, the fact that his black qalansuwa fell off was an indication of the disasters which were to follow. The qalansuwa appears to have been abandoned at the beginning of the tenth century, along with many other features of what had by then become traditional Abbasid court style. It is also at least possible that it is the ultimate origin of the camelaucum, the tall, conical papal tiara which seems to appear in the eighth and ninth centuries.

  Another innovation of the new regime was the giving of caliphal titles, called laqab. The Orthodox caliphs and the Umayyads had simply been known by their given names, Umar, Uthmān, etc. The first Abbasid caliph seems to have been given the title Saffāh, meaning either ‘the Generous’ or ‘the Blood-shedder’, though it is not clear that he bore the title in his own lifetime. His successor Mansūr certainly was known by his title rather than by his (very common) given name of Abd Allah. Every subsequent Abbasid caliph was given a title. These names usually meant ‘Victorious’, ‘God-guided’ or similar meanings. Among the thirty-seven Abbasid caliphs who reigned before 1258, no name was ever used twice. This led to the invention of more and more elaborate, and sometimes virtually unpronounceable, verbal forms to ring the changes.

  This pattern was adopted by other dynasties which claimed the caliphal title. The Fatimids in Tunisia and later Egypt used titles from the beginning and the Fatimids have both a Mansūr and a Mahdī among their earliest caliphs. When the Umayyads proclaimed their caliphate in Córdoba in 929 they too chose such titles, as did the later Almohads in the west. Even if caliphs, like some of the later Abbasids, were virtually powerless and commanded little or no respect, they always had high-sounding official names.

  The formality of court life was emphasized by its architectural setting. There had never been any question that the Abbasids would not base themselves in Iraq. Khurasan, the homeland of the troops who had brought them to power, was too remote to be an effective capital and clearly Syria was out of the question. Iraqis had always looked to the Family of the Prophet for political leadership, even if they usually understood these to be Alids rather than Abbasids. There were good economic reasons too for basing the caliphate in Iraq. Until the tenth century Iraq was the richest and most productive area of the Muslim world. The regime would be stronger and more secure for being able to take advantage of this prosperity.

  The second Abbasid caliph, Mansūr, began the construction of the first royal city in Islam specifically designed for the performance of monarchy. Baghdad was founded in 762 as a deliberate act of policy by the caliph. In the twelve years which followed the change in regime the Abbasid court moved around from one site to another in central Iraq before settling on the site of the small village of Baghdad. Mansūr chose the site because of its position at the hub of the waterways of Iraq. The Tigris and Euphrates are closest together here and the two rivers were connected by a network of canals. Grain could come from the plains of the Jazira and dates from Basra, all by river. This access to river transport allowed the city to expand way beyond the resources of its immediate hinterland.

  Mansūr created a striking setting for his caliphate in an impressive round city, surrounded by high walls pierced by four gates. At its centre was a great mosque and a palace surmounted by a tall dome. At the beginning this seems to have been a city with markets and tradesmen, but it soon became a court city, the residence of the ruler and his entourage and security services, the guard (haras) and police (shurta). Outside the walls, on both banks of the Tigris, a thriving metropolis grew as the people came from all over the caliphate to offer goods and services to the court and the well-paid soldiers and bureaucrats. The caliph allowed his favourite courtiers to make fortunes by developing land for the construction of markets and residential quarters. Mansūr’s original city lay on the west bank of the Tigris, but he encouraged his son and heir, Mahdī, to build on the east bank and here too there were mosques and palaces. A masonry bridge over the swift-flowing river was out of the question so three bridges of boats were constructed. As well as these there were countless small boats on the river and the connecting canals. It must have seemed like a Middle Eastern Venice. By the middle of the ninth century Baghdad seems to have had a population of around 500,000, though of course no statistics were kept, and it may well have been the most populous city on the planet.

  The Madinat al-Salam (City of Peace), as the capital was officially known, served as a model and inspiration for later caliphal capitals, notably Cairo. God’s caliph should have a residence which reflected his power and wealth for all to see. It was essential for the caliphate to have strong economic as well as political and religious foundations. Only then could the caliph reward his faithful followers and pay an army to ward off the attacks of rivals and defend the frontiers as well as funding such public displays of piety as the hajj and the kiswa (the great cloth which covered the Kaba and which was renewed every year). Without a strong economy, the caliphate would lack the power and awe without which it would not be able to perform its functions of leadership and enforcement. The Abbasid caliphate and the city of Baghdad were closely linked: when the caliphate declined, the city did too.

  Mansūr was not just the chief architect of the city, he was also the chief architect of the political structure of the state. Anyone who had supported the revolution imagining that it would begin a new era of government by pious and humble members of the Family and their advisers was in for a big disappointment. Mansūr constructed a state caliphate which was very similar to that of the Umayyads. The caliph was an autocrat who ruled through a powerful and well-paid military. The ruling family was given the most prestigious governorates and allowed to make vast fortunes. Mansūr even employed some of the army chiefs who had served the Umayyads before, although he was unwilling to tolerate any potential rivals. Abū Muslim, the great general and organizer of the revolution, was clearly one such potential rival. Persuaded to leave his Khurasani stronghold and come west to Iraq on his way to the hajj, he was lured to the caliph’s camp (this was before the building of Baghdad) and separated from his loyal troops. Then, in the presence of the caliph, he was killed by the palace guards and his body rolled up in a carpet in a corner of the royal tent while his head was displayed to his followers. The man to whom the Abbasids owed so much was brutally slain when he seemed to be a challenge to the power of the regime, much as the first Fatimid caliph in Tunisia killed the missionary who had brought the Berber troops to support him. Abū Muslim’s name went down in history as a victim of ungrateful tyrants, but Mansūr remained caliph, his authority strengthened.

  Mansūr was also deeply suspicious of the Alids, knowing, as did everybody else, that they had a better claim to represent the Family of the Prophet, and he used his security forces to keep them under close surveillance. In 762, just as he was involved in the construction of Baghdad, one of them, Muhammad b. Abd Allah, known as ‘the Pure Soul’, a descendant of the Prophet seeking to rule in the city of the Prophet, launched a bid to establish a caliphate in Medina. Mansūr was having none of it and used his powerful army to crush the rebellion by force and
kill its leader.

  Mansūr was succeeded by his son and heir, Mahdī, who had been designated by his father. The Abbasids never adopted a formal policy of hereditary succession, but in fact this is what it amounted to. Not necessarily the eldest, but certainly one of the sons or brothers of the reigning caliph would be chosen and the baya would be arranged among the leading men of the state to confirm it. The right of the caliph to nominate his heir seems to have been generally accepted, though there were vigorous and sometime violent disputes about which of the sons should be selected. The choice of the name is significant. Mahdī had been used, especially in early Shiite circles, to denote the rightly guided, almost messianic figure whose role it would be to lead the faithful to salvation. The Abbasids here were trying to pre-empt the Shiite challenge by arguing that the Mahdī was the real ruler now, not some figure to be hoped and yearned for at some undetermined future date. Whereas Mansūr had seen his role as the enforcer of Abbasid rule, Mahdī seems to have tried to develop his claim to be a spiritual guide. In his personal life he did not drink alcohol, though he made no efforts at general prohibition. In his public life he played the Muslim ruler, taking measures against Christians and the Sabian pagans of northern Syria and building mosques. He persecuted a group known as the Zindīqs, who seem to have been dualist heretics (who believed in two gods, one good and one evil). A number of them were executed, a rare example of the caliph defending Islamic orthodoxy with violence. He also tried to conciliate the Alids, inviting them to court and giving their supporters in Medina positions in the army. No doubt some were pleased, but these were hardly revolutionary measures and certainly not enough to win over the diehards for whom the Abbasids could never be the real leaders of the Family.

  Mahdī was killed comparatively young, apparently in a hunting accident, in August 785. He had already nominated two of his sons as heirs, with the intention that they should succeed one after the other. The Umayyads had made similar provisions. Given the trouble that these complex arrangements gave rise to, it is curious that caliphs persisted in them. It was a classic recipe for family strife. No doubt part of the reason was the need for ‘an heir and a spare’. At a time when men frequently died young and suddenly, it was important to have watertight arrangements to secure a smooth transition of power within the dynasty, not allowing outsiders to make mischief. There also seems to have been a desire to accommodate different factions at court. Each son who was named heir would attract a constituency of supporters who would want to make sure that their man succeeded and the reigning caliph may have wanted to give many different groups a stake in the future of the dynasty. What history did show, however, was that such arrangements were, to say the least, problematic because, almost inevitably, the new caliph would wish to nominate his own son to succeed instead of his brother and would be urged to do so by his courtiers and army officers.

  Mahdī nominated two of his sons and it was only the sudden and, some suggested, suspicious death of the eldest in September 786 after a reign of little more than a year which prevented violent strife. Even in this short period he had begun to make moves to nominate his own sons. In the event the younger brother, Hārūn, who would be called Hārūn al-Rashīd, was able to succeed without open opposition in 786.

  HĀRŪN AL-RASHĪD AND HIS SUCCESSORS

  Hārūn al-Rashīd could be described as the greatest caliph of them all. Certainly, in terms of popular imagination, he has a presence and name recognition that none of the others have attained, even rulers like Mansūr who were arguably much greater leaders and politicians. He is, for example, the only one of the Abbasids who is generally known by his given name as well as his title. Any book on the caliphate has to investigate the man and his reputation.

  Hārūn’s reputation as a great and mighty ruler is to some extent a product of the disasters which followed his death—disasters that were largely, it must be said, of his making. The long civil war between his sons, and the catastrophic effect this had in Baghdad, meant that his reign was looked back on as a sort of golden age before things started to go wrong. It was a period and environment in which some of the greatest classical Arabic poets of all time, including Abū Nuwās (d. 813) and Abū’l-Atāhiya (d. 825), to name only two, were writing. It was also the time when the glittering and cultivated Barmakid viziers (from Ar. wazīr, meaning chief adviser) held court, and when their power was brutally destroyed by caliphal decree, some said by caliphal whim, it became a proverbial example of the arbitrary power of rulers and the unavoidable workings of fate. This all feeds into the Arabian Nights image of Hārūn.

  The Nights, as they have come down to us, date from the later Middle Ages, but they are a product of many centuries of evolution. One strand is a series of narratives about the Abbasid court and in particular the court of Hārūn. Though they are clearly not strictly historical, they give a lively and vivid image of how the Abbasid court at its height was imagined by subsequent generations. A typical story begins with the caliph summoning his vizier Jafar the Barmakid one night and saying, ‘I want to go down to the city to ask the common people about the governors who have charge of them, so as to depose any of them they complain about and promote those to whom they are grateful.’2 And so the adventure begins with the two of them, accompanied by the general factotum and executioner Masrūr, meeting a poor old fisherman who recites a poem about his misfortunes, and one improbable event follows another. The caliph is often shown as the symbol of stern but fair justice, who can put anything right with his commands, but also as a man who enjoys jokes, disguise, wine-drinking, poetry and the company of women, both his beloved wife Zubayda and a number of slave girls who strive to please him. He is accompanied by a small caste of actors, Jafar and Masrūr, the crafty judge Abū Yūsuf and the outrageous poet Abū Nuwās, who were real historical people of the age, but we should not imagine that the events are historical. Instead this world of rich fabrics, chests of gold dinars, exquisite food and wine and beautiful women and boys testifies to the grip the Abbasid court held on the popular imagination, for, as the princess-storyteller Shahrazad says at the end of one such narrative, ‘Where is such generosity to be found now, after the passing of the Abbasid caliphs, may Almighty God have mercy on them all?’3 And not just in the Middle East. It was the nineteenth-century English poet Alfred Lord Tennyson who coined the phrase ‘the golden prime of Harun al-Rashid’ to describe this period. Many people nowadays who want to see the return of a caliphate must have, at least at the back of their minds, the image of Hārūn as a stern but just autocrat, ruling Muslims with a benign if sometimes heavy hand.

  It is a hard image to live up to and the historical Hārūn al-Rashīd, as far as we can recover him, did not always succeed. He was an inexperienced youth when he succeeded his brother after the latter’s unexpected death. In his first years he was guided by his mother Khayzurān (Slender Reed). Khayzurān was the first of a number of powerful women who exercised enormous power as queen mothers guiding their young sons, and Hārūn was her favourite son.

  The rich and glamorous Barmakid family also attempted to guide the young Hārūn. Their literary and philosophical salons were home to much of the cultural and intellectual activity that made the Baghdad of Hārūn so famous. Their story also illustrates the diversity of the Abbasid court, which attracted intelligent and ambitious people from all over the Muslim world and did not discriminate against non-Arabs or people from the remotest provinces. Far from being Arabs, they came originally from the ancient city of Balkh, now in northern Afghanistan. The family were hereditary priests and guardians of a great Buddhist temple, whose remains can still be seen outside the ruined city walls. At the time of the Abbasid revolution they, like many other Khurasanis, joined the cause, converted to Islam and rapidly rose in the ranks of the Abbasid administration, not as soldiers but as accountants, perhaps making use of the newly imported Indian mathematical notation which was now being studied in the Muslim world and which we now know as Arabic numerals.

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p; In the next generation Yahya the Barmakid became a major figure at court, acting as tutor and mentor to the young prince, while his son Jafar became his close friend and constant companion. When Hārūn succeeded as caliph, the Barmakids came into their own, and their generous patronage of poets and thinkers often overshadowed that of the caliph himself. It was a magnificent but perilous position and, after some fifteen years of this tutelage, Hārūn seems to have tired of them. One day, apparently out of the blue, though many know-alls claimed that they had seen it coming, he ordered the arrest of the family, including the old and revered Yahya who had done so much for him, and, even more shocking, the immediate execution of Jafar. We are given poignant accounts of how the young man, on confronting the executioner Masrūr, his former companion in adventure, assumes that there has been a mistake and then, when Masrūr persists, begs to be allowed to see Hārūn to plead for his life. The caliph was unrelenting, absolutely refusing to speak to his old friend, and the next day Jafar’s head and body were displayed for all to see on the main bridge of boats which united the two sides of the city, a spectacle for the common people to gawp at. It was a terrifying demonstration of arbitrary power: the court of the caliphs was a place of luxury and entertainment, and a potential source of vast wealth, but it could also be a place of danger and sudden death. For centuries after, moralists could point to the tragic events as perfect warning against ‘putting your trust in princes’.

  In two aspects Hārūn did fulfil the duties of the caliphal position more assiduously than any of his predecessors or successors: the leading of the summer expeditions against the Byzantines and that of the hajj. The expeditions against the Byzantines were the only campaigns in which the Abbasid caliphs participated. It was an opportunity for the caliph to show himself as the military leader of the Muslims. His army would be clearly visible in the frontier provinces of Syria and the Jazira and volunteers would come to join from all over the Islamic world. It was also the period when traditionalists like Ibn Mubārak (d. 797) were establishing the religious theory and legal basis of jihād. The caliph’s actions were consistent with a growing body of opinion among ordinary Muslims. In June 806, for example, he is said to have assembled 135,000 men, regulars and volunteers, and though we should treat such large numbers with some scepticism, this was clearly a very significant expedition and triumphantly showed the caliph as the Commander of the Faithful. He wore a qalansuwa with the words ‘Warrior for the Faith and Pilgrim’ (ghāzī, hajj) embroidered on it for all to see.4