The Early Abbasid Caliphate

A Political History

Hugh Kennedy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317358060
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The early Abbasid Caliphate was an important period for Islam. The dynasty, based in Baghdad, ruled over a vast Empire, stretching from the Indus Valley and Southern Russia to the East to Tunisia in the West; and presided over an age of brilliant cultural achievements.

This study, first published in 1981, examines the Abbasid Caliphs from their coming to power in 750 AD, to the death of the Caliph al-Ma'mun in 833 AD, when the period of Turkish domination began. It looks at the political history of the period, and also considers the social and economic factors, showing how they developed and influenced political life.

The work is designed as a unique introduction to the period, and will prove invaluable to all students involved with Islamic, Byzantine and Mediterranean history and culture.

1 THE GEOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND

The early Abbasid caliphs ruled a vast area;¹ 6,500 kilometres as the crow flies, from their eastern frontier on the banks of the Indus to the western borders in Tunisia, and 3,000 from the Yamani capital at San‘a’ to the capital of Arab Armenia at Bardha’a, near the Caucasus. This area was marked, then as now, by great contrasts of climate, physical geography and population. The usual image of the Middle East is of an area of hot, sandy deserts and palm-fringed oases and such places do exist. But there are also fertile river valleys, grain-growing prairies, upland meadows and the mountains on which the snow never melts. There were areas of dense population and teeming urban life but these were often separated by vast areas of sparsely inhabited desert or difficult mountain passes. This geographical pattern had a profound affect on the workings of government and political life. It was very difficult for the caliphs to exercise real authority over the deserts and mountains, where population was too scattered and communications too difficult to allow their representatives to control the situation. The picture was further complicated by the fact that Arab settlement and the spread of Islam was very uneven. There were areas like Iraq, Syria and parts of Khurasan, which had been heavily settled, others like Egypt and most of western Iran, where the Arabs and Muslims were still a small ruling elite, and others still, like Armenia, Tabaristan and much of Transoxania, where local leaders continued to exercise their traditional powers, paying little more than nominal allegiance to the caliphs. This government was very patchy; the densely populated areas of large towns and settled agriculture were the centres of Abbasid power; the limits of the caliphate were the foothills of the mountains and the last villages before the desert began.

Iraq was the centre of the caliphate and, even before Baghdad was founded, it was the Sawad which provided much of the wealth on which Abbasid power was based.² The Sawad, or Black Land, was the name given to the vast area of irrigated land, stretching south from Baghdad to the sea, which is watered by the Tigris and Euphrates and their tributaries and canals. Here the wealth came from the harvests of wheat, barley, dates and other fruits which could be produced in abundance by the warm climate and careful husbandry. The key to this prosperity lay in the irrigation system. This was based on canals radiating from the rivers. It is one of the fortunate peculiarities of the area that the Euphrates is a few metres higher than the Tigris at an equivalent point. This meant that canals could be led from one river to the other, distributing water to the fields which bordered them. The waters of the two great rivers are heavy with silt, which, as the current becomes slower towards the sea, settles on the bed of the stream, so that, in time, the river or canal becomes higher than the surrounding countryside. In many ways this is beneficial; it means that no pumps are needed to bring the water from canal to field, since it can be done by gravity. But, at the same time, this can be a menace; if the banks are not properly maintained or the spring floods too violent, then the banks will burst, causing widespread inundations. The system is not a static one which can be left to look after itself. It changes constantly; canals become silted up and new ones have to be built to replace them and, if water is left to evaporate in pools beside the watercourses, it will leave deposits of salt which will, in time, render the land infertile. The irrigation of the land needs constant, dedicated labour. In turn, this needs organisation and security. From the kings of Sumer and Akkad on, rulers of the area co-ordinated the efforts of their subjects to develop and maintain this system. Insecurity was fatal, since the system needed long-term planning and investment; if the government were in chaos or the landowner felt no long-term commitment to the land, then decay would inevitably set in. It did not need a Mongol invasion to destroy the prosperity of the area; lack of active maintenance and repair would do that just as effectively.

Umayyad and early Abbasid rulers continued the traditions of their great predecessors in this endeavour. Members of both ruling houses and their favoured subjects spent large sums in restoring and extending canal systems and bringing land into cultivation.³ It was expensive, but it was a worthwhile investment and could bring vast profits to their fortunate owners. The period of the civil war after the death of Harun, on the other hand, must have been one of destruction and decay and it is possible that it saw the beginning of the decline of the prosperity of the area, which is so marked in the succeeding centuries. The decline of the agricultural system also meant the decline of the caliphate based on its resources.

At the time of the Abbasid Revolution, the Sawad supported three major cities. The most important of these was Basra. The wealth of the city was derived as much from commerce with the Gulf regions and Sind as from the agricultural hinterland. Though founded as an Arab garrison town, it had rapidly acquired an economic raison d‘être, in addition to its military role, and had taken over the commerce of previous ports on the site.⁴ The position of the second great city, Kufa, was less healthy. This had been founded on the western border of the cultivated area and, while communications with the Arabian peninsula were of prime importance, its position was a good one. However, the site had none of the commercial possibilities of Basra. Such evidence as there is suggests that it was much the less prosperous of the two in the years following the revolution, a fact which may account for the constant discontent in the city, and the foundation of Baghdad as an alternative centre in the area effectively sealed its fate. The third city, Wasit, had been founded as a Syrian garrison town to control Iraq. Naturally, it lost this role after the revolution but it still remained a town of some size.

On its western borders, the Sawad is met immediately by the desert; the trees stop and the sand and stones of the wilderness begin abruptly. In the east, however, the land rises slowly to the foothills of the Zagros and, in two areas, the mountains give rise to rivers which irrigate fertile plains. In the south is Khuzistan, the ancient kingdom of Elam. Here the warm winter climate and the water from the mountains mean that intensive agriculture has always been possible. In early Islamic times, the area was also famous for its textiles. The largest city and political capital was at Suq al-Ahwaz, usually known simply as Ahwaz. Arab settlement seems to have been limited in this area and, despite its evident prosperity, its people played little part in political events.

The other fringe area was the Diyala valley. Here, again, a river from the mountains provides irrigation for the plains between the Tigris and the beginning of the hills. From earliest times, the Diyala valley was an outpost of Mesopotamian civilisation, and in early Abbasid times this importance was increased by its position on the all-important main road from Baghdad to Khurasan. The area was too close to Baghdad to develop a major urban centre of its own; the towns of the district, Nahrawan, on the great canal of that name, and Hulwan, in a strategic position at the entrance to the first of the Zagros passes, were never more than local market centres and there was no provincial capital.

The traveller going north or west from Baghdad had two choices of route. He could either go due north along the Tigris or in a more westerly direction by the banks of the Euphrates. Whichever way he chose, he would soon notice a change in landscape and patterns of settlement. The flatness and fertility of the Sawad and its criss-cross of water courses are replaced by a barren, stony area where the desert approaches the river banks. Here the settlements were small and sparse (at least before the foundation of Samarra) and the irrigated land beside the rivers too small to support a large community. Yet, further up the Tigris, the traveller would find the land changing again. The barren, rocky hills would be replaced by rolling, soil-covered plains. If he were lucky enough to be travelling in spring he would find the land covered with grass, flowers and the green shoots of the crops (much less advanced than in the Sawad) and he would see in the distance the gleam of the snow on the mountains of Kurdistan. He would probably be heading for Mosul, the largest city of the area. Mosul was a comparatively new town but, as Baghdad was the successor to Babylon and Cteisphon, so Mosul was the successor of Nineveh and Nimrud. Before the coming of Islam, there had been a small settlement here but, after the Muslim conquest, when Jazira ceased to be a frontier area and became instead a great grain-producing district, the fortunes of Mosul improved dramatically and it replaced Irbil and Nisibin as the main centre. The city was a centre of Arab settlement and both a market town for the agricultural area which surrounded it and a trading city with connections in many parts of the Islamic world.

The agriculture in the plains of Assyria around Mosul was quite different from that of the Sawad,⁵ as it was largely dry farming, relying on rainfall rather than irrigation for the water supply. This meant that the land was less intensively farmed and less potentially wealthy but the system was more resilient. The highly developed agriculture of the Sawad needed constant maintenance and investment, the rainfall agriculture of the plains of Mosul, Jazira and northern Syria did not and, as a consequence, was less vulnerable to political disturbances and upset. Not all the farming here was grain-growing; there were fruit trees in favoured irrigated areas or near banks of rivers, like the Zab, and there was sheep-raising on the fringes of the desert and the foothills of the mountains. It was a country of small villages, many of them Christian, and monastic life was still thriving, especially in the mountains of the Tur Abdin, which bordered the plains to the north. There were also Arabs leading a nomadic or semi-nomadic life, who often preferred living as Kharijite brigands, existing off protection money paid by the villages and small towns of the plains, to paying taxes and accepting the authority of the government.

The traveller leaving Mosul for the northeast soon found himself in a very different landscape. The open plains of Assyria are replaced by forbidding mountains, communications are difficult and the settlements often very isolated in remote upland valleys. This was the homeland of the Kurds⁶ and, although we hear very little of them in the early Abbasid period, we can be certain that they were, then as now, determined to retain their traditional customs and independence and there is no record of the Abbasids attempting to exercise real control over the area.

Northwest from Mosul, the traveller could follow the course of the Tigris, by Balad and Nisibin, to Amid (Diyarbakr). From Amid he could reach the remote Muslim outposts on the Armenian frontier, Shimshat, Akhlat and Qaliqala (Erzerum). Despite Arab forays, however, these uplands were essentially under the control of the Armenian princes, with whom the Arab governors had to establish a working relationship if they were to be successful. The country was comparatively poor and remote, the mountains bleak and the climate very severe. In the whole area, from Lake Van north to the Black Sea, there was scarcely an Arab settlement.

There was a choice of route for the traveller setting out from Baghdad to Syria. The most direct was the Euphrates road through Anbar and Hit to Raqqa but, probably because supplies were easier, the longer route through Mosul and across the plains of the northern Jazira was often preferred, especially by armies. Whichever way he chose, he was likely to pass through Raqqa, on the Euphrates, an important political and military centre under the early Abbasids as well as an entrepôt for the grain of Jazira. From Raqqa west by Balis, the Euphrates valley was more fertile and the road led from the westernmost point on the river to Manbij and Aleppo. There was another important route from Raqqa, the one taken by troops heading for the Byzantine frontier, which led north, through Saruj, Harran or Ruha (Urfa, Edessa) to the strategic crossing place on the Euphrates, at Sumaysat (Samosata). From here, the main frontier outposts of Malatya, Hadath and Mar‘ash were easily accessible.

Aleppo was the cross-roads for northern Syria in the way that Mosul was for northern Iraq. This had not always been so. In the Umayyad period, the main centre in the area was at the old Roman city of Chalcis, now called Qinnasrin, but, in the early Abbasid period, this was gradually superseded. Like Mosul, the town was surrounded by rich agricultural land with enough rainfall to make it good grain-growing country and the area was famous, then as now, for its pistachio nuts. From Aleppo, a road led west to Antioch, a town much reduced in size and importance since its days of glory under the Roman Empire. Continuing northwest, over the Amanus mountains, the traveler would reach the hot coastal plain of Cilicia. Protected by the Taurus from northerly winds and watered by the twin Sayhan and Jayhan rivers, this area had been fertile and well-populated under the Byzantines, but it was now frontier territory and remained a no-man’s-land through most of the Umayyad period. The early Abbasids began a policy of advancing settlement and Muslim garrison towns were established at Massissa, Adhana and Tarsus. North of Tarsus lay the narrow defile of the Cilician Gates, one of the main crossing points into Byzantine territory.

Syria and Palestine is an area of widely differing landscapes and patterns of settlement, lacking the geographical unity of Egypt or the Sawad. The fertile plains around Ramla, the hills of Jerusalem and Tiberias, the rugged and impenetrable mountains of the Lebanon and the steppe-lands of the Syrian desert were all inhabited by different communities with different customs, and the spread of Islam had been very uneven.

The complex physical geography and differing climatic zones meant that there was very little unity between the different cities and provinces of Syria and Palestine. The cities of the coast had declined rapidly in importance since classical times. We hear little of Beirut, Tyre, Sidon or Caesarea; Mediterranean commerce was negligible and the sea was the scene of constant struggles between Arab and Byzantine. Without commerce to bring prosperity, such towns had only a limited role as centres for naval activity. Inland, however, the situation was different. The largest and most prosperous cities of the area, in the early Abbasid period, lay along the fringes of the desert. Going south from Aleppo, the traveller would cross fertile country, dotted with villages and small towns, until he reached the Orontes at Hama. Here he could turn off east to Salamiya, favoured and developed by the Syrian branch of the Abbasid family, or he could go on south to Hims, one of the most important cities of the area. Nothing has survived of early mediaeval Hims, but frequent mention in chronicles makes it clear that it was a busy and often turbulent centre, its citizens often opposed to the Abbasid regime. South from Hims, the road skirted the edge of the desert to reach Damascus. Like all the most successful cities of the area, Damascus was both a commercial centre and the capital of a fertile agricultural district. The waters of the Barada emerging from the anti- Lebanon mountains are meticulously divided, first among the quarters of the city, then among the gardens and orchards of theghuta, stretching away to the east. In Damascus, much of the old city remains and we can still feel the contrast which would be apparent to the early Abbasid traveller, between the noisy heat and animation of the suqs and the magnificent tranquillity and spaciousness of the Umayyad mosque in their midst. But Damascus in this period was in eclipse politically and we hear more about the men of Hims than we do of its citizens. Of the mountainous areas of the Lebanon the sources tell us next to nothing. We can only presume that the local Christian inhabitants kept themselves to themselves in their mountain villages and had little contact with the outside world. The modern area of Palestine and Jordan was divided into two provinces. Urdunn, or Jordan, to the north,...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• A Note on References
• Abbreviation
• A Note on Diacriticals
• Glossary of Arabic Terms
• Tables and Maps
• Introduction
• The Geographical Background
• The Origins of the Abbasid Revolution
• Saffah: The Laying of the Foundations
• Mansur: The Years of Struggle
• Mansur: The Consolidation of Power
• The Reigns of Mahdi and Hadi
• Harun Al-Rashid
• The Great Civil War: I
• The Great Civil War: II
• Ma'mun: An Age of Transition
• Patterns of Provincial Power
• Alid Rebellions in the Early Abbasid Period
• A Note on the Sources
• Some Suggestions for Further Reading
• Bibliography
• Index