Download PDF | (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization) Tayeb El-Hibri - Reinterpreting Islamic Historiography_ Harun al-Rashid and the Narrative of the Abbasid Caliphate-Cambridge University Press (1999).
248 Pages
The history of the early Abba¯sid caliphate in the eighth and ninth centuries has long been studied as a factual or interpretive synthesis of various accounts preserved in the medieval chronicles.Tayeb El-Hibri’s book breaks with the traditional approach, applying a literary-critical reading to examine the lives of the caliphs.By focusing on the reigns of Ha¯ru¯n al-Rashı¯d and his successors, al-Amı¯n and al-Mamu¯n, as well as on the early Sa¯marran period, the study demonstrates how the various historical accounts were not in fact intended as faithful portraits of the past, but as allusive devices used to shed light on controversial religious, political, and social issues of the period, as well as on more abstract themes such as behaviour, morality, and human destiny.
The tragedy of the Barmakids, the great civil war between the brothers, and the mih· na of al-Mamu¯n are examined as key historical moments which were debated obliquely and in dialogue with the earlier Islamic past.The analysis also reveals how the exercise of decoding Islamic historiography, through an investigation of the narrative strategies and thematic motifs used in the chronicles, can uncover new layers of meaning and even identify the early narrators.This is an important book which represents a landmark in the field of early Islamic historiography.
Tayeb El-Hibri is Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Acknowledgments
This book began as a study of the reign of the Abba¯sid caliph al-Mamu¯n and the pivotal political and religious transitions that accompanied his rise to power.Since its completion, however, the original objective which centered on biographical and historical goals has gradually changed toward the historiographical, exploring how medieval narrators constructed a particular memory of the early Abba¯sid caliphate within the broader frame of early Islamic history.I would like to thank various scholars who commented on the project in its initial stage, and showed wholehearted interest in the topic.Professor Peter Awn, Caroline Bynum, Olivia R.Constable, Nina Garsoian, and Mohammad Mbodj provided many useful and diverse comments.
The late professor Jeanette Wakin took a special interest in the project, and carefully read a draft of the manuscript, with her customary refinements of style, and was very eager to see it in print.Colleagues at the University of Massachusetts, especially Drs.Jay Berkovitz, Robert Sullivan, and Mary Wilson also provided encouragement and offered thoughtprovoking questions in various seminars. Conservations with Professor Lawrence Conrad on Islamic historiography were always especially enlightening and corroborated several tentative venues for evaluating the Abba¯sid texts.Equally important were discussions with Professor Elton Daniel on the relation between Arabic and Persian historiography and the state of the field.Dr.Ayman Fuad Sayyid saved me enormous time by clarifying from early on the state of publication of hitherto manuscript works, and pointed to different editions.
On the frontiers of style, thanks go to Ms.Janet Benton and Mary Starkey for copyediting the manuscript with care and interest.The prime debt, however, goes to professor Richard W. Bulliet who read and critiqued the work in various drafts, and was a source of continuous support.His thoughtful historical questions on a broad range of issues were especially inspiring, and convinced me that early Islamic history is far from being a closed topic.
Historical background and introduction
At its height in the ninth century AD, the Abba¯sid caliphate covered an extensive realm that stretched across the African and Asian continents, from the western reaches of Carthage on the Mediterranean to the Indus River Valley in the east, spanning prime regions over which the Greeks, Romans, Persians, and Turks had gone to war during the previous thousand years.This empire had come into existence as a result of of conquests that began under the early Islamic caliphate centered in Medina and its successor dynasty of the Umayyads (AD 661–750).But it was with the Abba¯sids that the process of social and cultural symbiosis and economic integration began to take root in this new state, giving shape to a new society characterized by the cohesive powers of a common language and currency and a unifying religio-political center. The Abba¯sids, partly due to their rise as a religious millennial movement, were more conscious of their universal pretensions to power than their predecessors had been.The new caliphs, kinsmen to the Prophet through the line of his uncle al-Abba¯s, held messianic titles that pointed to their spiritual gifts as ima¯ms and underlined their distinct historical role in guiding the mission of government.Titles such as al-Mans· u¯r, al-Mahdı¯, al-Ha¯dı¯, and al-Rashı¯d were variant expressions of their claims to a divine right to rule, as well as to their charismatic power, and this message was given poetic expression in the shape and definition that the Abba¯sids gave to their new capital.Baghdad, better known as “the City of Peace” (madı¯nat al-sala¯m) in the official parlance of the day, was built to be the ideal city of the new state.At the time of its origin in 762, it was built in a round shape with four gates, pointing midway between the cardinal directions, in a layout intended to reconcile cosmological conceptions of the disc of the heavens with the vision of the four quarters of the known world.The Round City encircling the palace of the caliph mirrored the rotation of the constellations about the fate of the world, making Baghdad a new symbolic center in political and religious terms.
As great an impact as this empire had on the fortunes of peoples and regions it ruled, however, we know few details about how it was administered and defended, what shaped the policies and motives of its caliphs, and how its subjects viewed their rulers.Medieval Arabic chronicles and literary sources provide us today with abundant anecdotal and narrative material about the lives of the caliphs, and historians have used these sources repeatedly to construct biographies of the caliphs.However, the intertwining lines of fiction and fact in these works have never been clearly separated.What did the narratives about the caliphs signify in their times? How did anecdotes convey various levels of thematic meaning? To what extent were literary tropes appreciated and detected by the medieval audience? These are some of the questions that the study of medieval Islamic historiography will gradually have to answer.This study represents an attempt in that direction.It explores the elusive nature of medieval Islamic narratives, and tries through a new reading of the sources to reposition our view of the classical intention behind the literary accounts, moving that intention from one providing direct chronology to one offering historical commentary and seeking the active engagement of readers and narrators, listeners and dramatizers.To set the stage, we shall examine here the historical background of the Abba¯sid caliphate, and survey those significant moments in its history that would color the memory of later historical narrative and contribute to the crafting of a particular spectrum of themes.We will then sketch in broad terms the method and approach of the present critique.
Historical overview
The Abba¯sid dynasty has traditionally been seen as arising immediately following the fall of the Umayyad caliphate in Damascus in the year 750.The Umayyad caliphate fell in the face of a popular revolution that swept its way from Khura¯sa¯n, the frontier province on the north-eastern border of the Islamic empire.Yet in reality it took the Abba¯sid family until at least the year 762 to consolidate its hold on power and push out other contenders to the throne.In the years that led up to the revolution the Abba¯sids had been one among several branches of the Prophet’s family in whose name the revolt was made that had seemed likely candidates for the new caliphate.Throughout the years of organizing the revolution the leadership issue remained open, partly because participants in the movement were united behind a slogan that ambiguously called for the succession of “one agreed upon [or worthy] of the house of Muh· ammad” (“al-rid· a¯ min a¯l-Muh· ammad”).2 Socially this was a complex revolutionary movement, for it brought together diverse segments of Khura¯sa¯nı¯ opposition, each harboring various reasons for challenging the Umayyads.The rebels were, however, united on at least two important points, which lent them unity until the moment of victory. The first was their deep sympathy for the plight of the Hashemite family, long persecuted at the hands of the Umayyads, and an attendant desire to vindicate the memory of the family’s fallen leaders; the second was their vision that this mobilization from Khura¯sa¯n was going to be a messianic movement that would usher in a new, righteous age, heralding both a political and a religious rebirth for the faith.Once chosen, the new Hashemite caliph was to preside over a millennial age that would bring about justice and prosperity. Various signs leading up to the revolution lent confidence that an age of religious redemption was destined to concur with that political change: the fact that the first call for this movement had taken place at the turn of the first Islamic century, a moment bearing significant cyclical connotation; and that members of the Hashemite family, thought of as holding the key to an esoteric religious knowledge, handed down in the Prophetic family, had been observing cosmic signs and finally determined that the hour had arrived for making the call (or dawa) for the revolution.These occurrences gave a unique dimension to the religious expectations of various followers.Further adding to these beliefs was a set of other portents that enhanced the followers’ commitment to their new cause.In the way the Hashemite family set about organizing the new religious-political mission, there seemed to be signs reminiscent of the early days of the Islamic faith.The Hashemites – from their distant bases in the western provinces, Ku¯fa, Medina, and Mecca, and the Abba¯sids, from al-H· umayma – had entrusted the responsibility for propagating the mission to a delegation of seventy Khura¯sa¯nı¯ deputies and propagandists. This evoked memories of the time when the Prophet received the loyalty of seventy followers in Medina, who came to form the kernel community of the new religion that eventually conquered Mecca.Just as the Prophet had once turned outside Mecca for supporters, his Hashemite descendants were now seen turning outside Arabia for new supporters.And the Qura¯nic verse that spoke of the Prophet’s preaching to Umm al-Qura¯ (“mother of cities”),3 once understood as referring to Mecca, was understood in the climate of the new times as a reference to the town of Marw, capital of the province of Khura¯sa¯n.4 Marw had become the organizing ground of the new ima¯ms, and the Khura¯sa¯nı¯s were now viewed as the new Ans· a¯r.5 Geographical significance played a role as well.The fact that the new dawa (“the call”) was initiated in Khura¯sa¯n, a region whose name meant “the land of the rising sun” and which was historically known as the area from which political movements were launched to revive the Iranian kingdom, now gave the enterprise an added symbolism.
This encouraged the vision that the hour had finally arrived for a new dawn in Islamic history.6 The Abba¯sid claim for the ima¯mate on the grounds of kinship to the Prophet, however, was never secure.The Alids, direct descendants of the Prophet through his daughter Fa¯t · ima and her husband Alı¯ (the Prophet’s cousin), were their constant rivals.The Alids had even been the focus of opposition movements, during the first schism that brought the founder of the Umayyad dynasty, Mua¯wiya, in conflict with the fourth caliph, Alı¯.The conflict between Mua¯wiya’s descendants in Damascus and Alı¯’s sympathizers in Ku¯fa and H· ija¯z continued for decades afterwards, producing the famous tragedy of H· usayn in 661 at Kerbala¯ and later the fall of his grandson, Zayd b. Alı¯, at Ku¯fa in 740, and the fall of his son Yah· ya¯ in Marw in 743.These were not events easily forgotten, and they continued to resonate with bitter memories across the provinces and were of primary importance in turning the Hashemite family into a magnet for various social and political oppositions ranged across the east. Therefore the Alid family could, when it so desired, also call on a wide following of Arab and Iranian sympathizers.In 762, when the Abba¯sid caliph al-Mans· u¯r, believing the dust had settled and all was secure, set about sketching the perimeter of Baghdad, the Alids raised the most massive revolt they had ever organized.Muh· ammad al-Nafs al-Zakı¯yya (“the Pure Soul”), a descendant of al-H· asan who had long evaded accepting the Abba¯sid claim to power after the Umayyad fall, now came out in the open, rallied popular support in Medina, and claimed the caliphal title for himself.In a series of letters to al-Mans· u¯r, al-Nafs al-Zakı¯yya accused al-Mans· u¯r of having reneged on a baya, an oath of allegiance, that he, along with the leadership of the movement, had once given to the Alids during the underground phase of the revolution, and demanded al-Mans· u¯r’s allegiance.Muh· ammad al-Nafs alZakı¯yya, whose name, Muh· ammad b. Abdalla¯h, reminded many of the Prophet’s name and led some to claim that he physically resembled the Prophet, was still a child when the Hashemite patriarchs met in secret just outside Medina a few years after 719 (AH 100) to decide on their strategy, and reportedly swore allegiance to al-Nafs al-Zakı¯yya.Firm evidence that can corroborate the Alid claim on this baya is lacking, but the Abba¯sid arguments claiming an early right to the succession are no less a matter of debate. This said, one is inclined to suspect that the Abba¯sids may indeed have double-crossed the Alids.To appreciate the potential for confusion on this issue, one need only imagine the loose structure that characterized the formative years of the revolution.Spread out between Khura¯sa¯n, Ira¯q, and Arabia, the details of the propaganda were subject to miscommunication, as news was relayed in a secretive environment among various parties: from the Hashemite ima¯m to his chief propagandist in Khura¯sa¯n, on to a team of deputies who preached vague interpretations of the messianic dawa, and finally to a public that blurred the differences between Alid, Abba¯sid, and other family branches under the name of the eponymous ancestor of the Prophet’s family, Ha¯shim.7 How the Abba¯sids came to channel the loyalty of the Khura¯sa¯nı¯s to their branch is a complex topic whose details lie outside the purview of the present study.Suffice it to say that the Abba¯sids, with their strategic skill and cohesive relations with the Khura¯sa¯nı¯s in the early days of their rule, proved able to circumvent Alid political threats.Still, the revolt of Muh· ammad al-Nafs al-Zakı¯yya marked a turning point by showing a continuing contest over the goals and original intentions of the revolution.In Medina, it also showed the emergence of new levels of affinity between the leading descendants of the city’s traditional elite (members of the families of the early companions of the Prophet, Umar, Uthma¯n, and al-Zubayr) and the Alid rebel,8 as well as the affinity between religious traditionalists, such as the scholar Ma¯lik b.Anas, and this particular Alid movement.9 In Bas· ra, al-Nafs al-Zakı¯yya’s brother, Ibra¯hı¯m, who raised another revolt almost simultaneously against the Abba¯sids, was to rally an even greater following and find similar support among jurists such as Abu¯ H· anı¯fa.10 Whether these new alliances in Medina and Bas· ra were indicative of broader regional and new social affinities is not clear from the sources.Yet despite these alliances the Abba¯sids were able to prevail, albeit with difficulty.The new regime, it had become clear, was able to marshal military and economic resources in this critical contest with the Alids, and the Khura¯sa¯nı¯s were, for the moment, largely backing the Abba¯sid cause in a way that tilted the balance. These tensions between the Alids and the Abba¯sids formed one of many challenges that plagued the rise of the Abba¯sids.Others included an internal debate within the Abba¯sid family over questions of succession, as the caliph al-Mans· u¯r pressured his cousin, I ¯sa¯ b. Mu¯sa¯, to give up his claims for succession in favor of al-Mans· u¯r’s son, al-Mahdı¯, on whom the caliph placed great hopes of consolidating the line of succession and stabilizing Abba¯sid rule. Another even more menacing issue was the resurgence of some Iranian eschatological currents, which started to surface following the arrest and downfall of the famous commander Abu¯ Muslim.Abu¯ Muslim, a Khura¯sa¯nı¯ commander in charge of the Abba¯sid military apparatus in Khura¯sa¯n early in the Abba¯sid era, had played a key role in mobilizing Iranian support in the years leading up to the revolution.His identity and roots are shrouded with a terrific aura of myth and legend, but much of this is indicative of the enormous impact he had on the success of the revolution.Although to the Arab supporters of the revolution he represented an efficient military commander, in the east Abu¯ Muslim seems to have been himself a center of religious and political gravity among Khura¯sa¯nı¯s, who saw in him a regional political champion and even a prophetic reincarnation of earlier messianic figures.All this was a source of anxiety for the absolutist caliph al-Mans· u¯r, who feared that the commander might either break away or support another pretender to the throne, whether an Alid or an Abba¯sid.Abu¯ Muslim was thus removed from the scene through a careful plot that lured that commander from the east to Baghdad.In the period that immediately followed, the fall of Abu¯ Muslim passed without repercussions.However, in Khura¯sa¯n several years afterward, a new wave of rebels, known as the Abu¯ Muslimiyya, emerged, harboring a great reverence for the memory of Abu¯ Muslim and challenging the caliphate. Combining a yearning for messianic renewal with social and cultural visions of change that centered on Iran, the rebels seemed to threaten both the caliphate and Islam itself.The lost Iranian commander, these movements asserted, had gone into occultation and would later reemerge in a messianic movement.Others believed that Abu¯ Muslim’s soul had transmigrated to another messianic figure, who was going to lead another Khura¯sa¯nı¯ rising against the Abba¯sids in due course.11 There is no definitive religious label for the ideologies of these movements, except to say that they were a reflection of syncretistic traditions that blended ideas from Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, and Islam, and were still fermenting in the unstable social and political climate of the post-revolutionary era.12 In many ways, these political challenges to Abba¯sid rule were conflicts not just over the definition of legitimization, but over the ability of a central authority located in one city, Baghdad, to exercise control over the social, economic, and religious life of the provinces.Questions about how the provinces were to be internally ruled, where the tax revenues would go, and whether the caliph could extend a single set of laws to all the provinces, kept flaring up in new ways and expressions.In this regard, the challenge to the Abba¯sid was no different from those facing other dynasties to establish central rule, whether before or after them, in the Near East.Despite the challenges, the Abba¯sids proved to be resilient survivors.As a family they succeeded in developing solidarity and commitment to defending their collective interest against their opponents, such as the Alids.Various family members accepted the succession line drawn by al-Mans· u¯r down to his son, al-Mahdı¯, and to the latter’s sons, al-Ha¯dı¯ and al-Rashı¯d.In turn, the caliphs always trusted members of their family to assume the most sensitive political and gubernatorial responsibilities.Ruling positions in provinces such as Egypt, Syria, H· ija¯z, Bas· ra, Ku¯fa, and Jazı¯ra were routinely assigned to members of the family, and their privileges also included occupying the ceremonial office of leading the pilgrimage caravan to Mecca.This new pattern of administration showed a marked departure from the Umayyads, who had relied mostly on tribal allies and protégés to assume a variety of posts. Beyond their internal affairs, the Abba¯sids concentrated their efforts on building a cohesive monarchal institution based on a structured hierarchy of political and military clientage rooted in the memory of the revolution.The revolution not only marked the beginning of a political era, but also defined a moral and historical link among the empire’s political elite.Descendants of those who had participated in the revolution now formed a socio-political class referred to as either Abna¯ al-Dawla, Abna¯ al-Dawa, or al-Abna¯ (the sons).Their loyalty to the regime was based not merely on economic privilege or expectations of military advantage, but on a shared relation to a key historical moment, and from that to a direct affinity to the state.This was a new experiment in Islamic political history whose roots cannot be traced to any similar model from the Byzantines or Sasanians.But although it seems to have fostered strong bonds of military loyalty, it may have had the disadvantage in the long run of drawing sharp lines between itself and other military and administrative classes and groups (particularly in the provinces) that sought to assimilate in the political rubric of the dynasty, but could not because they lacked this historical linkage with the revolution. These problems of social assimilation, provincial control, and millennial effervescence were felt most severely by the Abba¯sids in Khura¯sa¯n, where political expressions took a range of forms and came in varying intensity. However, the roots of Khura¯sa¯n’s religio-political challenge and complexity stretch farther back than the Abba¯sids, into Sasanid times, and have a lot to do with the frontier nature of this region, straddling the borders of several empires and a range of autonomous principalities around the Oxus River Valley (Transoxiana).Locked in a diverse geo-political zone, Khura¯sa¯n faced the influence of its neighbors on social, economic, and religious levels. Alliances between Khura¯sa¯nı¯s and the Central Asian principalities were therefore not uncommon, and could at any time accelerate into a conflict among greater powers.In 751, when the region of Fergha¯na went to war with the province of al-Sha¯sh (Tashkent), Fergha¯na turned to China for help, while the ruler of al-Sha¯sh turned to the Abba¯sid governor of Khura¯sa¯n.The incident escalated into a military confrontation between the Abba¯sids and the Chinese along the T· araz River.This was the episode usually remembered as the occasion on which the Arabs obtained the secret of papermaking from Chinese prisoners and transmitted it to the west.The battle that took place had gone in favor of the Abba¯sids, which put an end to Chinese influence in the area,13 but in later years, particularly in the reigns of al-Amı¯n and alMamu¯n, new actors, such as Tibet, were to appear on the scene again.14 Buddhism may also have played a major role in bringing about this cultural affinity between Khura¯sa¯n and Transoxiana.Buddhism, a religion that went through phases of wide support in Sasanid Persia and the Fertile Crescent from the third century AD, had strongly colored the ethical worldview of Manichaeism.Furthermore, we know that a number of Buddhist religious centers had flourished in Khura¯sa¯n, the most important of which was the Nawbaha¯r (“New Temple”) near the town of Balkh, which evidently served as a pilgrimage center for political leaders, who came from far and wide to pay homage to it.15 The Barmakid family, which took a role in the dissemination of the Hashemite dawa in Khura¯sa¯n during the revolution and later occupied center stage as vizirs and bureaucrats in the court of the caliph Ha¯ru¯n al-Rashı¯d, were originally the chief priests of the Nawbaha¯r of Balkh, and were connected through marriage ties with neighboring princes in Transoxiana.16 The religious, social, and political prestige that the Barmakids commanded, therefore, were a key reason why the Abba¯sids turned to them for support.And this cooperation was cemented when the caliph al-Mahdı¯ and his vizir Yah· ya¯ al-Barmakı¯ each had his son nursed by his opposite number’s wife.As a result Ha¯ru¯n al-Rashı¯d and Jafar al-Barmakı¯ became milk brothers, a bond that affirmed a Perso-Arab partnership in power. The east continued to command the greatest share of Abba¯sid attention, and the caliphs attempted various experiments for establishing effective administration over Khura¯sa¯n, including a strict phase under the Abna¯ commander, Alı¯ b. I ¯sa¯ b. Ma¯ha¯n, and a lenient phase under the stewardship of al-Fad· l b.Yah· ya¯ al-Barmakı¯, both during the reign of al-Rashı¯d.Our evidence is sparse about the details of various Abba¯sid administrations in Khura¯sa¯n, but toward the end of his life, al-Rashı¯d appointed his son alMamu¯n as governor of Khura¯sa¯n.The caliph’s idea was a new method in Abba¯sid government, and the rationale behind it lay in al-Mamu¯n’s ties to maternal kin in the east.Al-Mamu¯n was the son of a Persian concubine, and the caliph hoped this could appeal in due course to Persian cultural and political sensitivities while al-Mamu¯n could bridge Khura¯sa¯n’s administration under the direct control of Baghdad.There was little time to judge the efficacy of this new experiment, since the caliph al-Rashı¯d soon died, in 809, while on a campaign in Khura¯sa¯n.He left behind al-Mamu¯n in Marw, and another son, al-Amı¯n, who now acceded to the caliphate in Baghdad. The events that soon followed the death of al-Rashı¯d were to be of critical importance in Abba¯sid history, as a conflict ensued between the brothers alAmı¯n and al-Mamu¯n.As relations deteriorated and the crisis over succession escalated into a civil war, al-Amı¯n found support among the Abna¯, while alMamu¯n was aided by a new group of Khura¯sa¯nı¯ supporters led by the Sahlids, former protégés of the Barmakids, and the Ta¯hirids, a leading family in the area of Bu¯shanj and Hera¯t.The overarching dispute over the throne also parted sympathies down the provinces, as various towns declared their loyalty to one of the brothers, thereby leading to a conflict within the provinces too.Al-Amı¯n’s forces gradually lost ground to al-Mamu¯n’s armies and, in 813, T· a¯hir b.al-H· usayn, al-Mamu¯n’s commander, advanced on Baghdad. After a siege that lasted nearly a year, his troops took the city by force.In the midst of the chaos and turmoil that followed, al-Amı¯n was taken prisoner and, probably at T· a¯hir’s command, was secretly put to death, an event that would have lingering political ramifications.Al-Mamu¯n, meanwhile, was declared caliph in Marw and continued to reside in Khura¯sa¯n, giving no indication of a desire to return to Baghdad.It was only years later, in 819, when he found conditions of protracted political chaos and instability still brewing in Ira¯q, that he returned with his entourage, reestablished the old capital as his center, and set about reorganizing the foundations of the state and reuniting its fragmented authority in the provinces.Al-Mamu¯n proved to be a far more systematic planner of policies in Baghdad than he was in Khura¯sa¯n.He carefully pursued a policy of recentralization, revived Abba¯sid defenses on the Byzantine frontier, and reorganized the military in a way that diversified the state army to include more Persian troops, and later included the beginning of a Turkish-slave military system.But by far the policy that has been most associated with his name is known as the mih· na, or religious trial/inquisition, when he tried to impose the doctrine of the createdness of the Qura¯n espoused by the Mutazila school of speculative theology on the traditional circle of h· adı¯th scholars. Al-Mamu¯n died in 833, in the midst of a Byzantine campaign.His successor, al-Mutas· im, continued many of his policies.He kept up state support for the mih· na, maintained a substantial role for the Persian political elite (such as the T· a¯hirids in the east), and further expanded the Turkish-slave military system.He also founded the city of Sa¯marra¯ which, as his new capital, was intended to accommodate the burgeoning Turkish army, but which may also have been meant to distance the caliphal court from the traditionalist opposition of Baghdad as the new regime pursued a controversial religious policy. Baghdad had been a city of the Abna¯ and maintained residues of political hostility to the successors of al-Amı¯n.
In Sa¯marra¯, al-Mutas· im (833–842) maintained a strong grip on his new military elite, as did his son and short-lived successor, al-Wa¯thiq (842–47).But soon after, the authority of the caliphate began to give way to an assertive and factional military.The Turkish-slave military system had been founded to serve the function of directly guarding the caliph’s political interest.In particular, al-Mamu¯n had drawn on their support, after the erosion of Arab tribal military support in the western provinces during the civil war, to recentralize the provinces and cope with new threats cropping up on the empire’s borders, such as the syncretistic Mazdakite revolt of Ba¯bak al-Khurramı¯ in Azerbayjan and the Byzantines in Asia Minor.Having served its original purposes, the Turkish military now became an idle army, with a layer of officeraristocracy that lived off its vast estates in Sa¯marra¯ and Mesopotamia and turned to manipulating the caliphs and state policy.
The succession of alMutawakkil, the inexperienced son of al-Mutas· im, indicated a suspicious shift from al-Wa¯thiq’s succession line that was brought about purely by court intrigue.It was a sign of things to come. Al-Mutawakkil tried various methods to alleviate the caliphate’s political weakness, the most notable of which was to end the mih· na program and realign state affinity with the traditionalist orthodox scholars; at one point he even contemplated shifting the capital to Damascus to escape the local military strongmen.Although a major achievement, the caliph’s new religious policy failed to gain the caliphate the popular political support al-Mutawakkil had hoped for.Over the course of the mih· na, the traditionalist scholars had gradually developed a degree of social solidarity.As they found themselves threatened by the state and by other religious ideas, they set themselves apart from the caliphate, forming a new focal point of religious legitimization.The caliphate, having lost the meaning of its original political legitimization – which dated to the revolutionary era – through years of civil war and stormy arguments over the mih· na, could claim only a vague and shadowy credibility with the public.And it had become deeply vulnerable to military manipulation in Sa¯marra¯.The massive amounts the caliphs expended on building the city, the plans for which apparently continued to multiply because of a colossal mistake made in the original urban planning,17 along with the need to keep the salaried troops content, eventually broke the caliphate’s finances, leaving al-Mutawakkil and successive caliphs vulnerable. Al-Mutawakkil’s assassination in 861 by a military clique of palace conspirators paved the way for a stream of weak caliphs, mostly his children, who tried various alliances with military strongmen to extend some semblance of new political authority.In the end their efforts proved futile.Scarcely would a caliph, such as al-Musta¯n or al-Mu ı tazz, succeed in eliminating the dominance of one commander when a new pattern of alliance among other commanders would force him to give in to their influence.
The tragedies of these caliphs have been commemorated in a singularly detailed fashion in the accounts of T· abarı¯.Intensely vivid and focused on intrigues within the palace, the story harbors a breath of suspense that is all its own, as we see one caliph’s (al-Muhtadı¯’s) last attempt to escape the palace and rally public support, then pursued by his military commanders, he is shown scaling buildings and jumping across rooftops to hang on to his life.Ha¯ru¯n’s days were now gone and forgotten.With Sa¯marra¯ we face a scene of chaos and political decline, a tragic story whose picture is magnified in the weathered outlines and ruins of that city on the Tigris today. The story of the early Abba¯sid caliphate has been the subject of extensive examination in recent years, with most tending to focus on the social background of the Abba¯sid revolution and the era of consolidation of Abba¯sid rule.18 Since the extant accounts on the caliphate date to a period after the Abba¯sid rise to power – indeed, after a series of critical transitions had occurred, including the civil war, the mih· na, and the return from Sa¯marra¯ to Baghdad – historians repeatedly find themselves facing the multiple challenge of trying to read through biases that accumulated over time, with successive episodes tinging the original memory of how things really happened.Official Abba¯sid tampering with the representation of the events that paved their rise to power, for example, makes the story of the family’s emergence seem like a tendentious one.Hagiographic prophecies surrounding their rise, sympathetic portrayals of leading family members, and the forging of historical legitimization through linkages with pious and prophetic ancestors are some of the factors that cloud the historian’s path of analysis.The fact that the Abba¯sids had to go through great trouble to argue their claims against the Alids and to defend al-Mans· u¯r’s consolidation of the succession within his family, for example, shows us that they were responding to other historical voices that have long since vanished, but not before leaving their mark on the process of historical formulation.In this context, the recent research of J.Lassner is particularly noteworthy for the way it has uncovered various forms of Abba¯sid hagiography that show an active Abba¯sid propagandistic position in the narration of the revolution’s history.19 Most of our accounts on the Abba¯sids, however, are not specifically hagiographic, and neither are they always linked to the revolution.In such a situation, narratives, with their matter-of-fact tenor, can seem to reflect the survival of an original historical account, one that was either too great to be forgotten or somehow that seeped through the wreckage of wars, allowing us the odd testimony of a surviving member of the former political elite, a wandering palace guard, or a retired singer.
It is not surprising, in such an atmosphere, that many have found it both plausible and feasible to sift through the corpus of medieval Islamic narratives and come out with a range of historical studies. The way that historical accounts were often reported in chains of transmission, in the isna¯d model, further strengthened the image of reporters’ reliability.Sources as varied as T· abarı¯, Yaqu¯bı¯, Jahshiya¯rı¯, and Masu¯dı¯ have therefore been plundered for information about the political, economic, and administrative affairs of the empire.Based on data from narratives preserved in these sources, historians have built elaborate historical syntheses, ranging from political histories to studies of the Abba¯sid bureaucracy or the economic history of the caliphate.Implicitly, however, all of these efforts have rested on the unstated methodological assumption that we have reliable criteria for separating myth from fact, which in fact we do not.Such schools as those of J.Wellhausen and L.Caetani, which debated the veracity of the historical reporting in the first century of Islam on the basis of regional currents of historical transmission, based on critiques of the testimonies of such wellknown narrators as Sayf b. Umar (d.796), Abu¯ Mikhnaf (d.774), Umar b. Shabba (d.812), and al-Mada¯inı¯ (d.839),20 become somewhat obsolete when we come to the Abba¯sid narratives, because the pool of narrators becomes entirely different.
The problem of Abba¯sid narrators lies in the fact that they were largely a group of people not well known for their scholarly role in historical transmission or redaction.Accounts of the reigns of al-Rashı¯d, al-Mamu¯n, and alMutawakkil, for example, are usually based on the testimony of people associated with the court in each of these eras.This consistent dependence on contemporary reporters makes for a rapid shift in the identity of reporters from one reign to the next and undermines the approach that emphasizes schools of transmission.The notion that T· abarı¯’s chronicle preserves within it “books” of former scholars who transmitted accounts orally and eventually surfaced disparately in T· abarı¯’s text can scarcely be substantiated from the vantage point of Abba¯sid historiography.Indeed, the mystery of historical reporting is further compounded by the fact that, although the above-mentioned list of scholars, who are best known for their accounts about the era of the Ra¯shidu¯n, shows that they lived well into the Abba¯sid period and were contemporary with its events – with some even having been associated with the Abba¯sid court – they seem completely absent from the circle of historical reporters.The absence of these scholars from the ranks of Abba¯sid narrators, combined with the nature of the reports attributed to a diverse range of new figures, impels one to theorize that these names were on occasion contrived, as an extension to the literary-tropological puzzle carried out mostly within the narrative content itself, as we shall see below. The present study breaks with contemporary studies on the Abba¯sids in that it is not concerned with establishing one or another picture of historical fact.Nor does it seek to build social, political, and religious interpretations on the basis of the chronicle’s information.Rather, it adopts a literary-critical approach to reading the sources, based on a new set of propositions and assumptions aimed at establishing an originally intended meaning in the narratives.
The starting point of the discussion rests on the view that the extant Abba¯sid historical narratives were not intended originally to tell facts, but rather to provide commentary on a certain political, religious, social, or cultural issue that may have derived from a real and controversial historical episode.Narrators writing before and during the era of T· abarı¯ crafted the literary form of qis· s · a or khabar (narrative report), often with the intention of discussing the controversial results of a political, social, or moral point.21 As noted in the earlier sketch of the background of Abba¯sid rule, there were numerous issues that would have opened up to a plethora of opinions: the relation between the Abba¯sids and the Alids, between Khura¯sa¯n and Baghdad, questions over dynastic succession, and, later, religious problems associated with the policies of the caliph al-Mamu¯n, and political problems connected with the rise of the Turkish military system in Sa¯marra¯.This is in addition to discussions of ideals of political rule, ethical behavior, and theoretical questions about the nature and direction of historical change. Discussion of these issues took place in conjunction with the focus that narrators accorded to analyzing human behavior.There is an intricate detail that we sometimes see in the portraits of certain historical personages which highlights the existence of a historiographic current that is not merely descriptive. The transformation of the human condition, mood, and beliefs were questions that were discussed, both within the scope of religious parameters and with attention to secular moral values, two spheres that were seen as interacting in shaping the plot of human history.Important political and military personalities, such as the caliphs, did get extra attention in many stories in the chronicles, but this focus was related not to their political importance as much as to their individual characters, and to how they dealt with a range of ethical, political, and historical challenges.There were complex considerations involved in the choice of historical characters, and this subject was intimately tied to the dramaturgical roles these actors assumed in the sweep of various plots that made up Abba¯sid history.
The drama of personal lives was intertwined with the political prospects of the state, and the former had as much influence as the latter in signaling the fortunes of the caliphate and the fate of the community, and in setting the stage for diverse trajectories of historical tragedy. From an initial glance, the surviving corpus of Abba¯sid narratives already reveals a number of curious aspects that invite suspicion.One unusual aspect in the structure of these narratives is the disproportionate emphasis given to the discussion of the affairs of Khura¯sa¯n.The interaction between Baghdad and Khura¯sa¯n is a story told in far greater length than is anything involving other provinces, such as Syria, Egypt, or Arabia.Other oddities include the disproportionate emphasis on certain conflicts.The four years of the succession crisis between the children of Ha¯ru¯n al-Rashı¯d, al-Amı¯n and al-Mamu¯n, for example, are recounted in rich, anecdotal detail.Yet numerous years in the chronicles get no more than a scanty page of annalistic points on the appointments of governors and brief mentions of certain rebellions and wars.The relationship between the Alids and the Abba¯sids is also recounted with particular interest by reporters, and we are often guided through tragic moments of Alid rebellion in a way that reflects a distinct melancholic mood. Against the backdrop of such a carefully structured agenda of topics laden with intentional historical views, one grows suspicious of an even wider spectrum of narratives.The extensive discussions accorded to the relations between the caliph and his vizirs, between vizirs and commanders, and between commanders and rebels invite one’s suspicion about their motives, even if independently these discussions may not have seemed to be fictional fields of historical play.In this regard, the career of the Barmakids and their tragedy in the reign of al-Rashı¯d have long loomed large in the imagination of modern scholars.What lay behind their initial favor with the court, and how they later came to be estranged from the caliph so quickly, have never ceased to be a mystery.This unevenness in the historical material cannot be justified as accidental or as the result of the survival of those reports deemed most worthy as historical documents.There surely must be a logic behind the choices made some time in the ninth century to transmit records about certain issues and controversies, to provide a range of reports about those moments and not others.
The successive chapters of this book will be devoted to exploring the motives and intentions that lay behind the composition of these narratives. Complicating the reader’s ability to discern the various sources of voices in the text is the way narrators of different persuasions chose to articulate their views.In an attempt to restrict the scope of circulation of these messages and commentaries, narrators often resorted to complex stylistic forms to express their views.Figurative language and patterns of allusion involving pun, metaphor, irony, symbolism, and symmetrical construction seem pervasive in the text and underscore one’s sense of a conscious historical intention.Our focus on unlocking these stylistic forms, however, will not aim solely at probing the medieval aesthetic of literary composition.Rather, we shall focus on the nuances of the text and its broader organization, in the hope of gauging broader systems of historical interpretation that are anchored in the vital issues of the time, and of determining how these interpretations cut across the disparate narratives. Decoding the historical texts, as this study will show, involves the dual task of tracing the line of meaning and establishing linkages across eras, regions, and systems of thought.The plot of certain stories occasionally penetrates, sequentially or sporadically, within a coherent historical phase across fragmented narratives.Equally, however, the line of meaning tends to break out of the anticipated historical order, intruding in an intertextual manner on other histories (biblical, Sasanid, Ra¯shidu¯n, or Umayyad), depending on a linkage of character, motif, moral, or puzzle.Such elliptical potentialities, although hypothetical from a modern perspective, would have been intelligible to a classical audience.With the appropriate level of immersion into the cultural, political, and religious signs of the age, and with a sensitivity to the issue of debate and a feel for the fabric of expression, one can recognize the intended roads of meaning.Although on occasion ambiguous, these texts do form a cohesive array of narratives that were meant to be read in a specific way, even when that way is in itself indeterminate. An additional issue one needs to account for is that of multiple narrative references.One frequently finds that different accounts bear different levels of literary and thematic suggestiveness.
The same anecdote or narrative could form an anchor for several more limited compositions.Readers attuned to the hierarchy of meaning committed all these accounts to memory and probably reflected on them as a vital and immediate literary culture.Repetition of exposure to particular texts was therefore as expected as was the crafting of newer pieces of historical representation.Since the Abba¯sid narratives no longer hold the photographic spot in collective memory that they once did, and since the present approach will require repeated reference to certain narratives to show the various types of suggestiveness, I have given certain names to specific narratives deemed central in the order of the Abba¯sid historical material.By referring the reader to the anecdote title, I have hoped to avoid repeating the description of the anecdote involved.Anecdotes and narratives as such will function as tableaus of personalities, events, and settings.Their importance lies as much in their central theme as in their detail and in subsequent responsive attempts at dialogue and rearrangement. Since this approach has the tendency to gravitate more to a literary framework, one that would make stylistic aspects predominate as the guiding categories of analysis, and as a result may compromise its historical framework, I have chosen to make the historical personalities or families the focus of the study: the caliphs as texts, as it were.
This method is guided partly by the fact that the sources focus on individuals and their behavior more systematically than on any other angle, and also by the fact that the progress of their plots (i.e., the temporal realization of certain goals within the stories) is bound, sooner or later, to be reflected in ways affecting the lives of others (although more abstract concepts such as the state, the community, or the spirit of an institution can also form likely targets).The reader will come to notice how this approach is applied as we focus on the portraits of the caliphs.The conceptual frame of the study will emerge in the conclusions drawn from this new reading of the problematic narratives.
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