by Hugh Kennedy
There was more to come. If not for the respect Masūd had had for the caliph, he would have been forced to launch an attack on Baghdad itself. In fact, had it not been for his father’s death and the need to return east, ‘at the present time we would have been in Syria and Egypt’. The sultan explained that, although he was on good terms with the Buyid rulers of central and western Iran, they must be more vigilant in respecting the caliphate and restoring it to its former dignified state. Above all, they must protect the pilgrim route. The sultan’s subjects had been instructed to prepare for the hajj and had been promised that they would be accompanied by one of his commanders. If they did not protect the pilgrims the Ghaznevids would ‘act strongly’. For they were ‘answerable to God Most High since there has been imposed on [them] not only great power and prestige but also countless troops all fully equipped and ready for action’. The mixture of pious justification and military menace was clear. Sulaymānī agreed that all this sounded fair and reasonable and the sultan’s officials went to tell him, as he had not been present, everything that had been agreed.
With the business completed, it was time for the envoy to depart. The leading courtiers were assembled and the document pledging allegiance to the caliph, which had been drafted in Arabic, was translated into a Persian ‘as fine and delicate as a Byzantine brocade’. The Arabic version and the Persian translation were presented to Sulaymānī, who read them both out and agreed that the Persian was an accurate translation of the text and that he would commend it to the Commander of the Faithful. Then the sultan read the Persian version with great eloquence: ‘Amongst the monarchs of this house,’ the author tells us, ‘I have never known anyone who could read and write Persian the way he did.’ When he had finished, the royal inkstand was brought and he signed his name at the foot of both the Arabic and Persian texts. Then the grand vizier and the officials present wrote their signatures as witnesses. The Turkish commander of the army, Begtughdī, did not know how to write, so a courtier signed for him.
Then the question arose of the presents Sulaymānī was to take back with him to Baghdad. The grand vizier replied, perhaps rather surprisingly, that generous amounts of indigo for the caliph and the courtiers was the traditional gift, though where he got this idea from is not clear. In addition, of course, the envoy was to take all the gifts which had been presented at the mosque. The grand vizier also looked back to precedents. He said that he had read in historical accounts that when Caliph Mutamid had sent an envoy to Amr b. Layth the Saffarid on his accession a century and a half before, in 879, the envoy was sent back with a gift of 100,000 dirhams. When the envoy returned from the caliph, bringing with him the banner (liwā) which symbolized the conferment of office on Amr and a document from the caliph to that effect, he and his mission were given 700,000. This example was to be followed; Sulaymānī would be given 100,000 dirhams at this stage, but when he returned with the caliph’s signature, then he would be given whatever the sultan saw fit. The sultan agreed that this was sound sense.
Then a list was made of further gifts: generosity was one of the hallmarks of a powerful ruler. There were to be 100 pieces of high-value clothing, ten of them woven with gold thread, fifty containers of musk, 100 pastilles of camphor, 200 bales of linen of the highest quality, fifty excellent Indian swords, a golden goblet filled with pearls, twenty fine rubies from Badakhshan (in north-east Afghanistan, then part of the sultan’s domains), ten sapphires, ten Khurasani horses with satin brocade caparisons and head covers, and five valuable Turkish slaves. It was an eclectic list to say the least.
Then Sulaymānī was given personal presents, including riding animals and equipment and 100,000 dirhams for his personal use. On 9 January 1032 he finally set out, having spent some three weeks in Balkh. Typically for Masūd’s court, a spy was attached to his retinue to report back on everything which went on.
At the end of his long account, Bayhaqi appends copies of the Arabic letters which were exchanged at this point. To say they are grandiloquent would be an understatement; they are a masterclass in classical Arabic epistolary rhetoric. At the same time the substance and detail are quite limited. The caliph’s begins with a long, pious introduction about God’s favour to Muhammad and the caliphs and the inevitability of fate. Blessings are called upon his father and predecessor Qādir. Eventually he explains how he became caliph because of the designation by his father. He then held a general court at which the prominent members of the court, the supporters of the dynasty and religious figures, judges, religious lawyers and court witnesses all stretched out their hands to swear allegiance. Finally he praises Masūd for his qualities and his obedience and asks him to swear allegiance publicly through his envoy Muhammad Sulaymānī before calling down elaborate blessings on all concerned.
The sultan’s reply is equally rhetorical, full of fine phrases and short of information. He swears genuine and unshakeable allegiance to the caliph, his lord (sayyid), though exactly what this might entail is not specified. Certainly, there is no concrete mention of military or financial support. He takes the oath by the Qur’ān, as one might expect, but also by the Jewish Torah, the Christian Gospels and the Psalms of David, and he finishes by a very extended indemnity clause in which he states that if he breaks this oath all his possessions, including slaves, should be given to the poor and any wives he has or will marry should be irrevocably divorced. Finally he will make the hajj to Mecca thirty times, on foot, not riding.
The sultan received the caliphal investiture in the time-honoured fashion for all his subjects to see. But however much the caliph’s deed and banner meant to the Ghaznevids they could not save Masūd from his fate. In the middle of the celebrations, news arrived of Turkmen raids from the desert on the eastern frontiers of the Ghaznevid state and many of the soldiers who had attended the celebrations were ordered to march out and confront them. It was a sign of things to come. Within a decade, the Ghaznevid army had been defeated and driven out of Khurasan by the Turkmen under their Seljuk rulers, the sultan was dead and the power of his successors was reduced to a small area of northern and eastern Afghanistan. The caliph, for all his high-sounding rhetoric, was neither willing nor able to help him and his investiture counted for nothing when the Ghaznevids were faced with the uncouth military power of the Turkish nomads.
ABBASID CALIPHS AND SELJUQ SULTANS
The caliphates of Qādir and Qā’im mark a moment when the Abbasid caliphs tried to assert a spiritual leadership in the Islamic world. The issuing of Qādir’s Epistle, with its attempt to codify Sunni beliefs, the appointment of qādīs and the elaborate approval given to leaders such as Masūd of Ghazna were all signs that the caliphate mattered, but they were not signs of military power.
In the almost two centuries between the death of Qā’im in 1075 and the Mongol conquest of Baghdad in 1258, successive Abbasid caliphs worked and struggled to maintain their position in a political world of almost mind-boggling complexity. In 1058–9 Qā’im had survived an attempted takeover of Baghdad itself by a military adventurer acting on behalf of the Fatimid caliph of Egypt and, for the only time in history, the pulpits of Baghdad had proclaimed a Shiite caliph. The coming of the Turkish Seljuq rulers, with their commitment to Sunni Islam and clear hostility to the Fatimids, put an end to that danger, but the Seljuqs could be demanding protectors. Fortunately for the Abbasids, they did not seek to make Baghdad their capital, preferring to rule from Iranian cities like Isfahan, Nishapur and Merv, but they did want to control the city and constrain the caliph.
In 1092 both the great Seljuq sultan Malik Shāh and his all-powerful vizier Nizām al-Mulk died and the Seljuq family embarked on a pattern of civil wars which was to last almost the whole of the twelfth century and destroy their once powerful state. Increasingly, as had happened with the Buyids, the Seljuq warlords became dependent on the Abbasids, not the other way round. The caliphs could give their mandate to one prince and remove it from another. They also controlled Baghdad and through the twelfth century
built up what was effectively an independent state in southern Iraq, stretching from Takrit to the head of the Gulf. In Baghdad itself authority was divided, often uneasily, between the Dār al-khilāfa, the ancient palace of the caliphs, and the Dār al-mamlaka, the palace where the Seljuq military governor resided. Gradually the Abbasids began to recover some of the attributes of temporal sovereignty which their ancestors had enjoyed. The caliphs again had viziers to run an expanded administration and in 1125 Caliph Mustarshid (1118–35) led an army in the field against an aggressive prince of Hilla, who had attached himself to the Shiite cause. Caliph Muqtafī (1136–60) used his increased revenues to build up a new army recruited not from Turks but from Greeks and Armenians who had converted to Islam. The caliphs often set themselves up as protectors of Baghdad and its inhabitants against the warring bands of Turkish troops. They claimed the moral high ground in the city as well, championing Sunni against Shiite and closing down wine shops, often run by agents of the Seljuq princes.
There were also advances on the international stage. In 1086 the new Almoravid ruler of Muslim Spain and Morocco, Yūsuf b. Tashfīn, who had just inflicted a major defeat on King Alfonso VI of Castile, was advised by the religious lawyers that ‘It is proper that your authority should come from the caliph to make obedience to you incumbent on all and sundry.’ So he sent an envoy to Caliph Mustazhir, Commander of the Faithful, with a large gift and a letter in which he mentioned the Frankish territories which God had conquered (at his hands) and his efforts to bring victory to Islam, and he also requested investiture with rule over his lands. A diploma granting him what he wished for was issued from the caliphal chancery and he was given the (newly invented) title of Commander of the Muslims. Robes of honour were also sent to him and he was greatly delighted with this.4 In 1229 the ruler of Delhi, Iltutmish, requested investiture from Caliph Mustansir (1226–42). He was granted the title of Great Sultan and confirmed in all his possessions. The document was solemnly read out in a vast assembly and from then on Iltutmish put the caliph’s names on his coins. His successors followed his example.5 It is worth noting that neither Spain and Morocco nor northern India had ever been ruled by the Abbasids at the height of their political power.
In 1097 the first Crusaders, known to the Muslims as Franks, marched from France and other areas of western Europe and appeared in the Middle East. In 1099 they conquered the city of Jerusalem, holy to Muslims as well as Christians and Jews, and made it the capital of a new Latin Christian kingdom. Other Crusader principalities were created in the following decades in Tripoli, Antioch in the north of Syria, and even distant Edessa (Urfa in southern Turkey), until the whole of the eastern coast of the Mediterranean was ruled by these infidel intruders. For almost 200 years there was a Frankish military presence on the coastal areas of Syria and Palestine, an infidel presence in the heart of the Dār al-Islam. It would seem that this was an obvious opportunity for the Abbasid caliphs to seize the initiative and to lead, or at least coordinate, the Muslim response. Muslims at the time certainly thought so and groups of refugees from the occupied cities made their way to Baghdad in the hope of attracting caliphal support. In the event, no caliph participated actively in the campaigns or ventured far from Baghdad. None of them seems to have been prepared to take the leadership of Muslims or to undertake the traditional caliphal role of defending Islam against non-Muslim enemies. In hindsight it can perhaps be seen as a lost opportunity to revive the ancient role and prestige of the office. Instead the caliphs gave their blessings, but not much more, to those military leaders who attempted to combat the invaders. The great Saladin, ruler of Muslim Syria and Egypt from 1174 until his death in 1193, proclaimed that he was leading the Muslims in jihād, as the servant of Caliph Nāsir (1180–1225), but relations between the two men were generally cool and cautious, both sides being careful not to antagonize the other while not cooperating in any meaningful way. In a letter Saladin sent to Frederick Barbarossa, emperor of Germany, when he knew that Frederick was joining the Third Crusade, he threatened that ‘If we instruct the Caliph of Baghdad, God save him, to come to us, he will rise up out of the high throne of his empire and he will come to aid our excellence’6—but he was ‘calling spirits from the vasty deep’: at no time did the caliph stir himself.
It was also during the Crusades that western Europeans began to hear about caliphs and the word begins to appear in Latin and Old French. Authors tried to compare the authority of the caliph with that of the pope over the Latin Church. The Arabic chronicler Ibn Wasil, who had spent some time at the Hohenstaufen court in southern Italy in the early thirteenth century, commented: ‘According to them [the Franks], the Pope in Rome is the khalīfa of the Messiah and the one acting in his place. He has the right to ban and to permit . . . He crowns the kings and nominates them. Nothing is done on their Holy Law [sharīa] except with his consent. He has to be a priest.’7 There were some similarities. Both ruled over a small state, the popes in Rome and the caliphs in Baghdad, but aspired to a spiritual leadership over a much wider area. Both could provide legitimacy by granting investiture to newly established rulers, as Mustazhir did to the Almoravid Ibn Tashfīn and Gregory VII did for Rudolf of Swabia in 1080. But there were many more differences. The popes, from Gregory VII to Innocent IV (1073– 1216), built up a commanding authority over the western Church which enabled them to summon councils, decide doctrine and have a major influence on the choice of bishops throughout western Europe. The caliph, by contrast, had no authority over doctrine and little if any influence in the choice of qādīs or other religious leaders outside Baghdad and the immediately surrounding area.
In one way the twelfth century did see an expansion of the caliph’s theoretical authority. In 1171 Saladin conquered Egypt, putting an end to the Fatimid caliphate, and one of his first actions was to arrange that the sovereignty of the Abbasid caliph be proclaimed from the pulpits of Cairo. The long years of struggle for power and influence in the Muslim world between the Sunni Abbasids of Baghdad and the Shii Fatimids of Cairo were brought to a close: there was now only one caliphate, the Abbasid, with universal pretensions—even if these meant little in practical terms.
None of the caliphs of the twelfth century had the opportunity or perhaps the personality to develop the sort of reputation that great rulers of the early Abbasid period, such as Mansūr, Hārūn al-Rashīd or Ma’mūn, had enjoyed, but some of them at least had a reputation for good government in their own area around Baghdad. Of Mustazhir (d. 1118) it was said:
He was (God be pleased with him) gentle and noble in character. He loved to shower benefits on people and do good. He was eager to perform pious acts and good deeds. His efforts were appreciated and he never refused a favour that was asked of him.
He showed great trust in those he appointed to office, not hearkening to any slanderer nor paying attention to what such a one might say. Capriciousness was unknown to him, nor did his resolution wilt under the urging of those with special interests.
His days were days of happiness for his subjects, like festive days, so good they were. When he heard of that, he rejoiced and was very happy. When any sultan or deputy of his set out to harm anyone, he did all he could to condemn and prevent it.
He had a good hand and his minuting of documents was excellent. No one came near him in that, which showed his rich culture and wide learning.8
He was also, and unusually for a ruler of his time, something of a poet:
‘The heat of passion melted what had frozen in my heart
When I stretched forth my hand for the formal farewell.
How shall I fare along the path of patient endurance,
Seeing my paths over the chasm of love to be cords?
A new moon whom I loved has broken his promise
After my fate had fulfilled what it promised.
If I break the compact of love in my heart
After this, may I never behold him more.’
It is interesting to reflect on the love interests of cal
iphs and other elite figures as revealed in their poetry. It would apparently have been out of the question for any caliph to write poetry to a free woman. Early Abbasid courtiers and rulers could express their love for unfree singing girls, who might be slaves but who were, at least in the land of poetry, coquettishly free to reject their master’s advances. In the more austere and military world of the twelfth century the singing girls are distant memory. Only the handsome young man is a proper and decent subject for a caliph’s passion.
We have a revealing account of how the Abbasid caliph appeared to an outside visitor in 1184 in Ibn Jubayr’s Travels.9 Ibn Jubayr was an Andalusi (from Muslim Spain) and a pious but keen observer. He made the hajj from his distant homeland and after he had completed his pilgrimage made a sort of grand tour through Iraq, Syria and the Crusader states before boarding an Italian ship in Acre to take him home. As a secretary working for the government of the Almohad caliphate, one might have thought that he would dismiss the Abbasid caliphate. In fact, he is interested and respectful, although he reserves his real admiration for Saladin, then preparing for his epic struggle with the Crusaders.
