Few events have
transformed the course of human history more swiftly and profoundly than the expansion
of early Islam and its conquest of much of the ancient world. Within twelve
years of Muhammad's death in June 632, Iran's long-reigning Sasanid
Empire had been reduced to a tributary, and Egypt and Syria had been wrested
from Byzantine rule. By the early eighth century, the Muslims had extended
their domination over Central Asia and much of the Indian subcontinent all the
way to the Chinese frontier, had laid siege to Constantinople, the capital of
the Byzantines, and had overrun North Africa and Spain. Had they not been
contained in northwest France by the nobleman Charles Martel at the battle of
Poitiers (732), they might well have swept deep into Europe. ''A victorious
line of march had been prolonged above a thousand miles from the rock of Gibraltar
to the banks of the Loire; the repetition of an equal space would have carried
the Saracens to the confines of Poland and the Highlands of Scotland,"
wrote the eighteenth-century British historian Edward Gibbon contemplating the
possible consequences of a Christian defeat in Poitiers. "The Rhine is not
more impassable than the Nile or the Euphrates, and the Arabian fleet might
have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of the Thames. Perhaps the
interpretation of the Qur'an would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and
her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of
the revelation of Mohammed.” (Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Pall of the Roman
Empire, 1978, Vol. 5, pp. 398-99.)
What were the causes
of this extraordinary burst of energy and the sources of its success? To
traditional Islamic historians the answer is clear and straightforward:
religious zeal and selfless exertion "in the path of Allah." The
problem with this view is that the Arab conquerors were far less interested in
the mass conversion of the vanquished peoples than in securing their tribute.
Not until the second and the third Islamic centuries did the bulk of these
populations embrace the religion of their latest imperial masters, and even this
process emanated from below in an attempt to escape paying tribute and to
remove social barriers, with the conquering ruling classes doing their utmost
to slow it down. Nor were the early conquests the result of dire economic
necessity, let alone "the final stage in the age-long process of gradual
infiltration from the barren desert to the adjacent Fertile Crescent, the last
great Semitic migration.” (Philip K. Hitti, History
of the Arabs, 1993, pp. 144-45. See also: M. A. Shaban, Islamic History: A New
Interpretation. Vol.1-A.D. 600-750, Cambridge University Press, 1971, pp.
14,24-25; Dominique Sourdel, Medieval Islam , 1983,
pp. 17-18. )
Far from a mass
migration of barbarian hordes in desperate search of subsistence, the Arab
invasions were centrally organized military expeditions on a strikingly small
scale. The celebrated battle of Qadisiyya (637),
which broke the backbone of the Iranian Empire, involved between six and twelve
thousand fighters, while the number of Arab fighters active in southern Iraq
was estimated at between two and four thousand men. There is no evidence of
whole tribes migrating into the Fertile Crescent during this period, or of the
poorer segments of Arabian society, the natural candidates for migration,
accompanying the invading forces, or of warriors taking their own families and
herds with them (apart from a few isolated cases). It was only after the
consolidation of the initial conquests that substantial numbers of Arab
colonists arrived in the newly acquired territories. (Fred McGraw Donner, The
Early Islamic Conquests, Princeton University Press, 1981, pp. 221-22, 268-69;
Hugh Kennedy, The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates, 2004, p. 58.)
This makes the
conquests first and foremost a quintessential expansionist feat by a rising
imperial power, in which Islam provided a moral sanction and a unifying battle
cry rather than a driving force. In the words of the eminent German historian
Theodor Noeldeke:
It was certainly good
policy to turn the recently subdued tribes of the wilderness towards an
external aim in which they might at once satisfy their lust for booty on a
grand scale, maintain their warlike feeling, and strengthen themselves in their
attachment to the new faith .... Mohammed himself had already sent expeditions
across the Roman frontier, and thereby had pointed out the way to his
successors. To follow in his footsteps was in accordance with the innermost
being of the youthful Islam, already grown great amid the tumult of arms. (Noeldeke, Sketches from Eastern History, 1892, p. 73.)
Throughout history
all imperial powers and aspirants have professed some kind of universal
ideology as both a justification of expansion and a means of ensuring the
subservience of the conquered peoples: in the case of the Greeks and the Romans
it was that of "civilization" vs. "barbarity," in the case
of the Mongols it was the conviction in their predestination to inherit the
earth. For the seventh-century Arabs it was Islam's universal vision of
conquest as epitomized in the Prophet's summons to fight the unbelievers
wherever they might be found. This vision, together with Islam's unwavering
feeling of supremacy and buoyant conviction in its ultimate triumph, imbued the
early believers with the necessary sense of purpose, self-confidence, and
revolutionary zeal to take on the region's established empires. "We have
seen a people who love death more than life, and to whom this world holds not
the slightest attraction;' a group of Byzantine officials in Egypt said of the
invading Arabs. (Abdel Rahman ibn Abdullah ibn Abdel Hakam, Futuh
Misr wa-Akhbaruha, Yale
University Press, 1922, p. 65.)
The Muslim
historian Abdel Rahman Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) expressed the same idea in a
somewhat more elaborate form: "When people possess the [right] insight
into their affairs, nothing can withstand them, because their outlook is one
and they share a unity of purpose for which they are willing to die.” (ibn
Khaldun, Kitab al-Ibar wa-Diwan
al-Mubtada wa-l-Khabar,
Beirut, 1961, Vol. 1, p. 278.)
Whether the conquests
were an opportunistic magnified offshoot of small raiding parties or a product
of a preconceived expansionist plan is immaterial. Empires are born of chance
as well as design. What counts is that the Arab conquerors acted in a typically
imperialist fashion from the start, subjugating indigenous populations,
colonizing their lands, and expropriating their wealth, resources, and labor.
Already Muhammad had skillfully couched his worldly objectives in divine terms,
as illustrated by such sayings as "Stick to jihad and you will be in good
health and get sufficient means of livelihood." (M. J. Kister,
Concepts and Ideas at the Dawn of Islam, 1997, p. 284.)
See our history of
the earliest period of Islam and it’s ramifications for today, case study: p.1,
p.2.
This fusion of the
sacred and the profitable was endorsed by future generations of Islamic
leaders. Abu Bakr, Muhammad's father-in-law and immediate successor (khalifa, or caliph), sought to lure the Arabs to his
campaigns of conquest by linking the call for jihad with the promise of
"the booty to be won from the Byzantines." (Ahmad ibn Yahya al-Baladhuri, Futuh al-Buldan, Cairo, 1957, Vol. 2, p. 149. )
So did Umar ibn al-
Khattab, who in 634 succeeded Abu Bakr in the caliph ate, as well as Ali ibn
Abi Talib, the Prophet's son-in-law and the fourth caliph (656-61).
"Sacrifice yourselves!" he told his troops on the eve of a crucial
battle against a contender to the caliphate. "You are under Allah's
watchful eye and with the Prophet's cousin. Resume your charge and abhor
flight, for it will disgrace your descendants and buy you the fire [of hell] in
the Day of Reckoning." And as if this religious prodding was not enough,
Ali added a substantial carrot: "Before you lie these great sawad [the fertile lands of Iraq] and those large
tents!" (Muhammad Muhi al-Din Abdel Hamid al-Mas'udi, Muruj al-Dhahb wa-Maadin al-Jawhar, University of Beirut, 1970, Vol. 3, pp. 126-27.)
The immediate
successor of Abu Bakr and Umar, Uthman ibn Affan,
another son-in-law of the Prophet and the third caliph, exploited expansion for
unabashed self enrichment. By the time of his
assassination in June 656, he had netted himself a fortune of 150,000 dinars
and one million dirhams in cash, and the value of his estates amounted to
200,000 dinars, aside from a vast herd of camels and horses. After the
conquests the Arabs used the imperial monetary systems of the vanquished
peoples. In 696 they minted their own gold coin, the dinar, followed two years
later by a silver coin, the dirham. Under the Umayyads the exchange rate was
ten dirhams for one dinar, rising during the Abbasid era to twelve dirhams per
dinar. (E. Ashtor, A Social and Economic History of
the Near East in the Middle Ages , 1976, pp. 81-84.)
This fortune paled in
comparison with the fabulous wealth amassed by some of Muhammad's closest
companions. The invested capital of Zubair ibn Awam
amounted to some fifty million dirhams and 400,000 dinars, and he owned
countless properties in Medina, Iraq, and Egypt. Talha ibn Ubaidallah,
one of the earliest converts to Islam to whom Muhammad had promised a place in
Paradise, was similarly a proprietor of numerous estates in Iraq and
Transjordan. He left, according to some authorities, 200,000 dinars and 2.2
million dirhams in cash, and his estates were valued at thirty million dirhams.
His investments in Iraq alone yielded him one thousand dinars per day. "I
will reserve comment on what is in the city I have captured:' Arm ibn aI-As, the conqueror of Egypt, reported to Umar upon the
occupation of the port town of Alexandria, "aside from saying that I have
seized therein four thousand villas with four thousand baths, forty thousand
poll tax-paying Jews and four hundred places of entertainment for the
royalty." He was peremptorily ordered to ship a year's supply of food to
Medina for the upkeep of the Muslim community, which he dutifully did.
(Muhammad ibn Saad, al-Tabaqat al-Kubra, Cairo, 1968,
Vol. 3, pp. 77, 157-58; Mas'udi, Muruj,
Vol. 3, pp. 50, 76-77; Ibn Abdel Hakam, Futuh Misr, p. 82; Ahmad ibn Abi Ya'qub
al-Ya'qubi, Tarikh al-Ya'qubi,
Beirut, Dar Beirut, 1960, Vol. 2, p. 154.)
It was during the
caliphate of Umar (634-44) that the Arabs made their greatest conquests and
institutionalized their absolute domination of the nascent Islamic empire. In a
move that was to have a profound and lasting impact on the course of Middle
Eastern history, Umar forbade the invading forces from settling on the
conquered lands, placing the whole empire in trust for the Muslim community. "Allah
has made those who will come after you partners in these spoils," the
caliph is reported to have said when asked to divide the Iraqi and Syrian lands
among the conquering Arabs. "Were I to divide these lands among you,
nothing will be left for them. Even a shepherd boy in San'a
[Yemen] is entitled to his share." (Ya'qub ibn
Ibrahim al-Kufi (Abu Yusuf), Kitab al-Kharaj, Cairo,
1933, pp. 23-24. See also: Lewis, The Arabs p.57; Michael G. Morony, "Landholding in Seventh-Century Iraq: Late
Sasanian and Early Islamic Patterns;' in A. L. Udovitch
(ed.), The Islamic Middle East, 700-1900: Studies in Economic and Social
History ,Princeton, 1981, pp. 135.)
Whether Umar actually
justified his action in these particular words or whether they were a later
attempt to legitimize an existing situation (it is common in Muslim tradition
to represent rules established after Muhammad's death as ordinances of Umar) ,
the decision effectively extended Muhammad's designation of Islam as the
cornerstone of the political order to the entire Middle East. This principle
would be maintained for over a millennium until the collapse of the Ottoman
Empire in the wake of World War I and the subsequent abolition of the
caliphate. On a more immediate level, Umar's decision enabled the continuation
of the conquests: had the vast majority of the Arabs settled on the conquered
lands, fighting would have ground to a halt. According to numerous traditions
about Muhammad's life, this fear had preoccupied the Prophet, who had reputedly
warned that "the survival of my Community rests on the hoofs of its horses
and the points of its lances; as long as they keep from tilling the fields;
once they begin to do that they will become as other men." (G. E. von Grunebaum, Classical Islam: A History 600-1258, 1970, p.
57.)
Umar resolved this
problem by devising a register (Diwan), which remunerated the fighters out of
the proceeds from the conquered lands and thus allowed them to continue
prosecuting war operations without worrying about their subsistence. There are
differing views about the origin of the Diwan. According to the prominent
ninth-century historian Ahmad ibn Yahya Baladhuri (d.
892), Umar probably borrowed the idea from the "kings of Syria,"
presumably the Byzantine emperors (Futuh, Vol. 3, p.
549). Muhammad ibn Abdus Jashiyari (d. 942) points to
Sasanid origin, as does the modern scholar Michael G.
Morony. (See: Jashiyari,
Kitab al- Wuzara wa-l-Kutab, Cairo, 1938, p. 17; Morony,
Iraq after the Muslim Conquest, Princeton University Press, 1984, p. 56.)
Last but not least,
since the umma at the time consisted almost exclusively of the conquering
Arabs, by proclaiming the empire an Islamic trust Vmar
institutionalized their position as the new imperial ruling class. Viewing
Arabs as superior to all other peoples and creeds, the caliph went to great
lengths to make Islam synonymous with Arabism. He achieved this goal in the
Arabian Peninsula by summarily expelling its Christian and Jewish communities,
in flagrant violation of the treaties they had signed with the Prophet. (Baladhuri, Futuh, Vol. 1, pp.
33-41, 76--83. A Jewish community nevertheless managed to survive in Yemen
until the 1940s.) Yet this option was hardly available in the vast territories
conquered by the Arabs, both because the populations involved were far too
large to make their expulsion practicable and because their tribute was
indispensable in enabling the Arabs to enjoy fully their privileges as
conquerors.
In these
circumstances, Umar contented himself with perpetuating complete Arab
domination of the empire. For him, there was only one ethnic group destined to
rule while all others were fated to serve and to toil as subject peoples. By
way of preventing assimilation and ensuring Arab racial purity he forbade
non-Arab converts to marry Arab women, sought to dissuade the Prophet's
companions from marrying Jewish women, though this was not prohibited by the
Qur'an, and pressured the many companions who did so to annul their marriages.
He also settled the Arabs in garrison cities (Amsar),
in total segregation from the indigenous population, from where they administered
their newly conquered territories in a kind of inverted colonial rule similar
to that of the coastal outposts of the British Empire. Two large Amsar were established in Iraq, by far the largest site of
Arab colonization: Kufa, on the Euphrates River
southwest of the site that was to become the city of Baghdad, and Basra, at the
head of the Persian Gulf. In Syria the southern city of Djabiya,
home to the Ghassanid dynasty that had ruled the area
under Byzantine suzerainty, was chosen as the main camp of the Arab army, while
in Egypt the garrison city of Fustat was established
to become the province's capital until the foundation of Cairo in the late
tenth century. (Hava Lazarus-Yafeh,
Some Religious Aspects of Islam: A Collection of Articles, 1981, p. 14;
Patricia Crone, Slaves on Horses: The Evolution of the Islamic Polity,
Cambridge University Press, 1980, p. 30.)
To be an Arab in
Umar's empire was to be at the pinnacle of society. It meant paying a modest
religious tithe, which was more than compensated by the booty received in
accordance with the Diwan. No Arab, Vmar insisted,
could be a slave, either by sale or capture; on his deathbed he ordered that
all Arab slaves held by the state be freed. Even those Arabs outside the
peninsula who did not embrace Islam were considered by Vmar
his primary subjects, as illustrated by his readiness to incorporate the north
Iraqi Banu Taghlib tribe into the Arab army and to
place it on a similar tax footing to that of the Muslims, despite its refusal
to give up its Christian faith. (Baladhuri, Futuh, Vol. 1, pp. 216-18; Abu Yusuf, Kitab al-Kharaj, pp. 120-21; Wilfred Madelung, The Succession to
Muhammad: A Study of the Early Caliphate, Cambridge University Press, 1997, p.
74.) This stood in stark contrast to the heavy taxation levied on the rest of
the non-Muslim populations, or Dhimmis as they were commonly known. These
"protected communities" (the term was originally applied to Christians
and Jews, but subsequently expanded to other non-Muslim groups) were allowed to
keep their properties and to practice their religions in return for a
distinctly inferior status that was institutionalized over time. They had to
pay special taxes (regularized at a later stage as land tax, kharaj, and the more humiliating poll tax, jizya) and
suffered from social indignities and at times open persecution. Their religious
activities outside the churches and synagogues were curtailed, the ringing of
bells was forbidden, the construction of new church buildings prohibited, and
the proselytizing of Muslims was made a capital offense punishable by death.
Jews and Christians had to wear distinctive clothes to distinguish them from
their Muslim lords, could ride only donkeys, not horses, could not marry Muslim
women, had to vacate their seats whenever Muslims wanted to sit, were excluded
from positions of power, and so on and so forth. (Abu Yusuf, Kitab al-Kharaj, pp. 120-28, 138-49; C. E. Bosworth, "The
Concept of Dhimma in Early Islam;' in his The Arabs,
Byzantium, and Iran, 1996, pp. 37-51; Yohanan Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion
in Islam: Interfaith Relations in the Muslim Tradition Cambridge University
Press, 2003.)
Yet while this
institutionalized discrimination secured the Arabs' short term pre-eminence,
it also contained the seeds of their eventual decline and assimilation into the
wider regional environment. Unlike Muhammad's umma, where Dhimmis constituted a
negligible minority, in Umar's empire the Arab colonizers were themselves a
small island surrounded by a non Muslim and non-Arab
ocean, something that condemned their apartheid policy to assured failure. The
staggering magnitude of the conquests, together with Arab bureaucratic and
administrative inexperience, forced the victors to rely on the existing
Byzantine and Iranian systems for the running of their nascent empire, thus
leading to greater mingling with the indigenous populations. In their capacity
as the centers of government the Amsar quickly became
hubs of vibrant economic and commercial activity, while the growing numbers of
Arab colonists allotted plots of state lands (qata'l)
during the caliphate of Uthman, and in its aftermath relied by and large on the
indigenous population for their cultivation. With the intensification of
interaction between conqueror and conquered, the Arabs adopted
indigenous-especially Iranian-habits, manners, and ways of life. They embraced
the refined Iranian cuisine and wore Iranian clothes. Meanwhile the early
prohibition on Muslims from using foreign languages, as well as the prevention
of Christians from learning the Arabic language and using the Arabic script,
gave way to a growing sense of linguistic and cultural unity as the second
generation of Amsar residents tended to be of mixed
parentage and bilingual. On the other hand, Arabic penetrated the conquered
peoples to such an extent that at the beginning of the eighth century it had
evolved into the official imperial language.
The implications of
this move cannot be overstated. For one thing, by adopting the Arabic language,
the conquered peoples-Iranians, Syrians, Greeks, Copts, Berbers, Jews, and
Christians-placed their abundant talents and learning at the service of their
conquerors, thus leading to the development of a distinct Islamic
civilization. For another, the Arabization of the imperial administration
unleashed a process that blurred the distinctions between the Arab imperial
elite and the indigenous non-Arab populations and culminated in the creation of
a new Arabic-speaking imperial persona, a reincarnation of sorts of the old
Roman subject. The term "Arab" itself in Arabic usage was
subsequently restricted to the nomads. (Samuel S. Haas, "The Contributions
of Slaves to and Their Influence upon the Culture of Early Islam",Princeton:
PhD Thesis, 1942; Ira M. Lapidus, "Arab Settlement and Economic
Development of Iraq and Iran in the Age of the Umayyad and Early Abbasid
Caliphs," in Udovitch (ed.), The Islamic Middle
East : Studies in Economic and Social History, ed. A. L. Udovitch,
Princeton, pp. 177-207.)
This development,
however, was something that would take a century or two to materialize. In the
meantime, the Arabs frowned upon the growing numbers of non-Muslims knocking at
the gates of Islam in an attempt to improve their socio-economic conditions. As
far as they were concerned the vanquished masses had only one role in life: to
provide a lasting and lucrative source of revenue for their imperial masters,
and, since religion constituted the sole criterion for social mobility, they
were determined to perpetuate this state of affairs by keeping Islam a purely
Arab religion. Non-Arabs were thus allowed to enter the faith only through the
humiliating channel of becoming clients (Mawali, sing. Mawla) of the persons at
whose hands they had converted. A vestige of the legacy of pagan Arabia, where
clients were lesser members of an Arab clan (e.g., slaves and freed slaves
promoted to a position of clientage), this mode of conversion placed the new Muslims
in a position of institutional inferiority to their Arab co-religionists and
subjected them to blatant social and economic discrimination. Patricia Crone
argues that while pre-Islamic Arabia provided the general context for the wala (clientage) it did not provide the institution itself,
which derived its crucial features from Roman and provincial law. (Crone,
Roman, Provincial, and Islamic Law: The Origins of the Islamic Patronage,
Cambridge University Press, 1987, pp. 40-88.)
In many cases the
Mawali failed to escape their excessive tributes or even ended up paying higher
taxes than before. They could not inherit equally, were denied the material
benefits of Islam, and were treated with such contempt that in certain
neighborhoods an Arab risked social ostracism merely by virtue of walking down
the street in the company of a Mawla. Even the pious caliph Umar II (717-20),
who attempted to equalize the Mawali's standing, was reputed to have taken a
dim view of Muslims and Mawali intermarrying, and forbade Mawali from selling
their lands to Muslims. Little wonder that this state of affairs turned the
Mawali into an embittered and disgruntled group whose actions were to shake the
empire to its core before too long. (Ignaz Goldziher,
Muslim Studies, 1967, Vol. 1, pp. 101-36; Crone, "Were the Qays and Yemen of the Umayyad Period Political
Parties?" Der Islam, Vol. 71, No. 1, 1994, p. 24.)
The Mawali were by no
means the only disaffected group. From the start, the Islamic order had been
beset by the perennial tension between center and periphery that has plagued
imperial powers from antiquity to the present day. Muhammad's success in
unifying most of the peninsula under a single authority may have been without
parallel in Arabian history, but it was still far from complete. Many tribes
regarded their inclusion in the umma as a personal bond with the Prophet that
expired upon his death, not least since Muhammad had refrained from designating
a successor and had emphasized time and again his irreplaceable historical role
as the Seal of the Prophets.
They therefore
refused to acknowledge Abu Bakr's position as caliph and suspended their
tribute payments and treaty relations with the umma in what came to be known in
Muslim tradition as the ridda, "the
apostasy." This, however, is something of a misnomer. The urge for
secession was predominantly political and economic rather than religious: some
of the rebels failed to repudiate their Islamic faith while others had joined
the umma as tributaries without embracing Islam. Some of the rebellious tribes
were headed by self-styled prophets offering their own brand of religious
belief, but for most the revolt represented an atavistic attempt to exploit the
sudden weakening of the central government in order to free themselves from the
less savory aspects of their subjugation (notably the payment of taxes), if not
to end this status altogether. (Baladhuri, Futuh, Vol. 2, pp. 131--49; Elias Shoufany,
AI-Rida and the Muslim Conquest of Arabia,Toronto
University Press, 1973. )
Abu Bakr's
suppression of the revolt and his successful extension of Muslim control to the
entire peninsula thus signified the first triumph of the imperial order over
the centrifugal forces of tribal separatism. This was not achieved, though,
without the massacre of the foremost rebellious faction-the central Arabian
confederates of Banu Hanifa headed by the self-styled
prophet Masalma ibn Habib-in a grim foretaste of
countless such violent confrontations between the center and periphery
throughout Islamic history. (Muhammad ibn Jarir
al-Tabari, Tarikh al-Rusul wa-I-Muluk, Cairo, 1966, Vol. 3, pp. 287-301.)
Indeed, no sooner had
the umma weathered the storm attending the demise of its creator than it
experienced yet another peripheral backlash that culminated in the murder of
its supreme ruler: the caliph Uthman, who in 644 had succeeded Umar. Enforcing
central authority over disparate provinces has been an intractable problem for
most empires even in modern times, let alone for classical and medieval
empires with their far less advanced means of communication and control. The
stability of these early empires depended to a large extent on the existence of
powerful governors capable of maintaining law and order within their domains
while deferring to their imperial masters. This was especially pertinent for
the nascent Arab-Muslim empire, where the age-old Arab traits of particularism
and individualism had been suppressed but not totally extinguished and where
clans and tribes not only remained the real units of social activity but
paradoxically grew in weight and importance. Unlike pre- Islamic times, where
tribes were relatively small units and their perennial squabbles were of a
localized nature, the post-conquest migration and colonization in garrison cities
brought many tribes into close contact with each other and created far larger
leagues and alliances. The best known of these were the Qays
and the Yemen, whose bitter enmity was to plague the region for centuries.
(Julius Wellhausen, The Arab Kingdom,University of
Calcutta, 1927, pp. 68-70. Muhammad Shaban argued that the Qays-Yemen
rivalry was essentially political rather than tribal, but Patricia Crone comprehensively
demolished his thesis. See Shaban, Islamic History, Vol. 1, pp. 120-21; Crone,
"Were the Qays and Yemen of the Umayyad Period
Political Parties?")
Umar, who was keenly
aware of this reality, sought to foster an overarching imperial unity that
would transcend the traditional tribal system and ensure Medina's continued
domination. He did this by cultivating a strong provincial leadership
comprising the Prophet's companions and prominent commanders of the early
conquests, and by encouraging the nomadic tribes that participated in the
campaigns to settle in the Amsar where they could
more easily be monitored by the central government. But this system, which
worked reasonably well initially, began to falter after Umar's death as Uthman
attempted to tighten his grip on the empire and to catapult his Umayyad clan,
and the Quraish tribe more generally, into a position of imperial preeminence.
Unlike Umar, who had
allowed the conquering commanders to govern the territories they had occupied, Uthman
vested all key posts in the hands of his family members, many of whom abused
their appointments for selfenrichment. This nepotism
earned the new caliph hostility from all quarers.
The Medinese elite resented its growing
marginalization in the running of the empire, while the provincial leadership
was incensed by Uthman's efforts to increase the central government's share in
the distribution of local revenues, most of which had hitherto been retained in
the provinces. These grievances were further exacerbated by the temporary halt
of the conquests in the early 650s and the attendant reduction in the spoils of
war on the one hand, and the continued influx of Arab colonists into the
provinces on the other, which further strained their economic and financial
resources.
Things came to a head
in January 656 when disgruntled elements in Egypt seized Fustat,
prevented the governor from returning from Medina, and issued a call for the
removal of Uthman. A few months later, several hundred malcontents left Egypt
for Medina, converging on the way with similarly disaffected groups from the
Iraqi garrison cities of Kufa and Basra. The startled
caliph accepted most of the demands put to him, including the dismissal of his
Egyptian governor, and the group set out to return to Egypt, only to intercept
a message sent in Uthman's name ordering the governor to deal harshly with the
rebels. Viewing this as a blatant act of betrayal, the enraged Egyptians
returned to Medina, where they laid siege to Uthman's residence. Ignoring the
caliph's emphatic denials of having anything to do with the secret message,
they murdered him on June 17,656. (Mas'udi, Muruj, Vol. 3, pp. 87-90; Martin Hinds, Studies in Early
Islamic History (Princeton: Darwin, 1996), pp. 1-55; Hugh Kennedy, "The
Financing of the Military in the Early Islamic State;' in Cameron, The
Byzantine, and Early Islamic Near East 1992, pp. 361-78.)
Uthman's murder was
much more than a tactical victory of provincial strongmen over their lawful
ruler. It signified the periphery's ultimate triumph by heralding the permanent
shift of the imperial center of gravity away from Medina, indeed from the
Arabian Peninsula, to the Fertile Crescent. Within months of his election,
Uthman's successor to the caliphate, Ali ibn Abi Talib, decided to make Kufa the center of his operations. This was apparently an
ad hoc decision, deriving from the need to suppress an uprising in Basra by a
group of distinguished Meccans who blamed the new caliph for his predecessor's
murder. Yet what was conceived as a temporary move was to acquire permanence.
Having defeated the renegades, Ali encountered a further and far greater
challenge to his authority which forced him to stay in Kufa.
Mu' awiya ibn Abi Sufian,
the long-reigning governor of Syria and Uthman's cousin, refused to recognize
the validity of Ali's appointment and demanded vengeance for the slain caliph.
In late July or early August 657, after a few months of intermittent
skirmishes, Ali confronted his challenger at the site of Siffin,
on the right bank of the Euphrates near the Syrian border. As the battle went
the caliph's way, the Syrians hoisted copies of the Qur'an on the points of
their lances to demand that the dispute be decided through arbitration rather
than war. Under tremendous pressure from his followers to give peace a chance,
Ali, who suspected a trick, begrudgingly accepted the proposal, and the two
armies departed for home. (Mas'udi, Muruj, Vol. 3, pp. 120-54; Hinds, Studies, pp. 56-66.)
This proved to be a
mistake. Not only were the arbitrators to rule against Ali, putting him on a
par with his challenger and thus implicitly rejecting the validity of his claim
to the caliphate, but he was also confronted with widespread desertions by his
followers. Foremost among these was a group that came to be known as Kharijites
(those who "went out" or "seceded"), who opposed the
arbitration on the ground that "decision is with Allah alone" and
claimed that in accepting this process the caliph had not only forfeited his
right to the title but had effectively excluded himself from the community of
believers. Ali managed to reduce them in a bloody engagement in July 658,( Mas'udi, Muruj, Vol. 3, pp.
155-63.) but was unable to arrest the steady disintegration of his authority
and was forced to watch from the sidelines as Mu' awiya
added Egypt to his possessions and made repeated incursions into Iraq. Shortly
afterward the Syrian governor openly staked his claim to the caliphate, and
there is little doubt that Ali would have suffered the ultimate ignominy of the
loss of supreme office had he not first been murdered by a Kharijite on January
24,661. His eldest son, Hassan, quickly renounced his right to the throne in
favor of Mu' awiya, who was now hailed as caliph and
the empire's new master.
From his newly
proclaimed capital of Damascus Mu' awiya presided
over the foundation of Islam's first imperial dynasty by having his son, Yazid,
succeed him to the throne. This proved a shrewd move that allowed Mu'awiya's Umayyad family to retain power for the next
ninety years and established the principle that was to dominate Middle Eastern
political life up to the early twentieth century, and in some parts of the
region to the present day. In one fell swoop the umma was transformed from
''Allah's Community" into an ordinary empire. Although Islam retained its
position as the empire's pre-eminent organizing principle and its rallying
point for further expansion, with the Umayyad monarchs styling themselves as
''Allah's caliphs" and portraying their constant wars of expansion as a
"jihad in the path of Allah” this was largely a facade that concealed what
was effectively a secular and increasingly absolutist rule. (Patricia Crone and
Martin Hinds, God's Caliph: Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 4-11; I. Goldziher,
S. M. Stern (Editor), Muslim Studies, 2005 Vol. 2, pp. 40--41.)
The Umayyad caliphs
adopted a lax attitude toward Islamic practices and mores. They were said to
have set aside special days for drinking, specifically forbidden by the
Prophet, and some of them had no inhibitions about appearing completely nude
before their boon companions and female singers. (F. Harb,
"Wine Poetry;' in Julia Ashtiany et al, Abbasid
Belles-Lettres, Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 224.)
Little wonder that
Islamic tradition tends to decry the Umayyads for having perverted the
caliphate into a "kingdom" (mulk), with the
implicit connotation of religious digression or even disbelief. Moreover, the murder
of Uthman had irrevocably changed the rules of the game. Three decades after
the creation of the umma as a divinely ordained community answerable directly
to Allah, the seemingly inextricable link between religious and temporal power
was abruptly severed. So long as Muhammad was alive, this was inconceivable. He
was Allah's Apostle, the true theocratic ruler. To defy him was to defy Allah
Himself. Abu Bakr and Umar could claim no such religious prowess, yet by
basking in the Prophet's reflected glow they managed to sustain the umma as a
working theocracy, although Umar took care to emphasize the temporal aspects of
his post by assuming the title "Commander of the Believers", Amir al-Mu'minin. (Thomas W. Arnold, The Caliphate, 1967, pp.
31-33.)
Once the sanctity of
the caliphate had been violated, its uninterrupted retention and natural
transition could no longer be taken for granted. During the next millennium
this coveted post would incessantly be contested by force of arms, making a
mockery of the categorical prohibition of internecine fighting among Muslims
underlying Muhammad's universal vision of the umma. The Umayyads themselves
succeeded in maintaining their position mainly through reliance on physical
force, and were consumed for most of their reign with preventing or quelling
revolts in the diverse corners of their empire. Mu'awiya
had attempted to wrest the caliph ate from Ali, and while his nineteen years
on the throne (661-80) were characterized by relative calm and stability owing
to his formidable political and administrative skills, his son and heir, Yazid
I, faced widespread disobedience on several fronts. Particularly threatening
was the revolt by Abdallah ibn Zubair, son of a prominent companion of
Muhammad, who refused to acknowledge the validity of the Umayyad line of
succession and sought to establish himself as caliph. Ibn Zubair was supported
in his endeavor by the people of Medina, who withdrew their allegiance from the
caliph and circulated damning stories about his alleged religious and personal
indiscretions, including his propensity for wine and singing girls and his
obsession with his pet monkey, which was constantly by his side and to which he
gave the dignified title of Abu Qays. When Abu Qays was accidentally killed, the caliph was inconsolable.
He gave the monkey a state funeral and had him buried in accordance with Muslim
rites. (Von Kremer, The Orient under the Caliphs, Calcutta, 1856 pp. 163-64.)
These tales were but
the tip of a huge iceberg of resentment within the traditional Islamic ruling
elite over the shift of the imperial center to Damascus. This elite consisted
initially of the small circle of Muhajirun who
migrated with the Prophet to Medina and the local Ansar. These were the people
who spread Muhammad's message and enforced his authority throughout the
peninsula, whose opinion he sought on matters of import, and who enjoyed the
material benefits of the umma's steady expansion.
Following the conquest of Mecca in 630 this group was dramatically and swiftly
expanded through the incorporation of Muhammad's Quraish tribe, as the Prophet
sought to harness the organizational and administrative skills of his kinsmen
to the service of his continued expansion. Much to the resentment of Muhammad's
companions, this process gained considerable momentum during the wars of the ridda attending the Prophet's death, when Abu Bakr was
forced to rely on the alignment between the Quraish and the Taif-based tribe of
Thaqif as a springboard for reasserting Islamic
domination over the rebellious tribes.
Umar restored the
political pre-eminence of the early believers by appointing some of them to key
positions in his nascent empire and, more importantly, by using precedence in
Islam as the chief criterion for remuneration from the proceeds of the
conquests. Yet during the caliphate of Uthman the Quraishis
regained their predominant position to the detriment of the Ansar and the Muhajirun. These early believers (and their descendants)
were particularly incensed by the meteoric rise of the Umayyads, who had long
been at the forefront of the Meccan opposition to Muhammad and who joined Islam
only after its ultimate triumph. They therefore sided with Ali in his
confrontation with Mu' awiya, and quickly challenged
the legitimacy of Umayyad dynastical claims upon the demise of its founding father.The traditional Islamic aristocracy was fighting a
rearguard action. Its commanding position in the imperial order of things had
irrevocably been lost. An expeditionary force sent by Yazid routed the rebels
and sacked Medina for three full days. (M. J. Kister,
"The Battle of the Harra," in Miriam
Rosen-Ayalon, ed., Studies in Memory of Gaston Wiet,
1977, pp. 30-50.)
It then proceeded to
lay siege to Mecca, where Abdallah ibn Zubair and his supporters had barricaded
themselves in, but failed to take the city, and in November 683 was forced to
return to Syria following the caliph's death. As Yazid's youthful and sickly
successor Mu'awiya II proved to be a nonentity, Ibn
Zubair quickly proclaimed himself caliph and asserted his authority throughout
much of the empire. It was only after the accession of another branch of the
Umayyads, headed by Marwan ibn Hakam, that the dynasty managed to reclaim its
lost territories. In July 684 the Yemen tribe, associated with the new Umayyad
caliph, defeated the rival Qays, aligned with Ibn
Zubair, in a particularly bloody battle near Damascus. Shortly afterward Marwan
recaptured Egypt, only to die a few months later in April 685. It thus fell to
Marwan's able son and designated successor, Abdel Malik (685-705), to complete
the suppression of the revolt. This was achieved in November 692, with the
occupation of Mecca and the killing of Ibn Zubair. (Mas'udi,
Muruj, Vol. 3, pp. 282-301, 315-19; Ya'qubi, Ta'rikh, Vol. 2, pp. 255-68;
G. R. Hawting, The First Dynasty of Islam: The
Umayyad Caliphate AD 661-750 , 1986, pp. 46-57.)
Iraq constituted the
hard core of violent anti- Umayyad opposition. It was there that most Arab
colonists had settled during the conquests, especially in the large garrison
cities of Kufa and Basra, where they subsisted mostly
on government stipends from the war spoils. Having enjoyed unprecedented
pre-eminence as the imperial center during Ali's brief tenure, Iraqis resented
the shift of the caliphate to Damascus and their attendant relegation to a position
of subservience to Syria, which, they feared, would deprive them of their fair
share of the spoils. This sentiment was further exacerbated by such factors as
intertribal rivalries, personal and dynastical ambitions, and religious radicalism.
The substantial numbers of Syrian forces permanently deployed in Iraq to
enforce the regime's authority only served to sharpen anti-Syrian sentiments
and to reinforce Iraqis' distinct sense of local patriotism. Especially
powerful and astute governors were required to keep the Iraqi province in check
and even then matters often necessitated mass physical repression. Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, who ruled the area for twenty years
(694-714), was the epitome of such single-minded ruthlessness. "I see
heads that are ripe for plucking, and I am the man to do it; and I see blood
between the turbans and the beards," he famously told the people of Kufa upon his arrival in the city. (Mas'udi,
Muruj, Vol. 3, pp. 331-32.) He made good on his
threat. When many Iraqi Arabs, who had become accustomed to settled life,
refused to participate in the campaigns of expansion, Hajjaj
summarily beheaded the draft dodgers. When the number of Mawali and Dhimmis
flocking to the towns in search of socio-economic advancement rose so high as
to threaten a substantial drop in government revenues from agricultural
produce, Hajjaj took draconian measures to discourage
conversion and to drive the new converts back to their villages, including
having the names of their villages branded on people's hands to prevent them
from returning to the towns. One of his favorite modes of torture was to apply
hot wax to his victims' naked bodies. This was then pulled off till the flesh
was all lacerated, following which vinegar and salt were poured on the wounds
until death ensued. (Jurji Zaydan,
History of Islamic Civilizations. Part 4: Umayyads and Abbasids, trans. D. S. Margoliouth , 1907, p. Ill.)
Hajjaj's heavy-handed policy failed to prevent the Iraqi
cauldron from repeatedly boiling over. The appalling conditions of the East
African black slaves known as Zanj sparked a protracted revolt in Basra, while
the weakening of the local Iraqi dignitaries (Ashraf) resulted in a number of
uprisings, some of which were suppressed only with great difficulty. (Abd
al-Ameer Abd Dixon, The Umayyad Caliphate: A Political Study , 1971), Chapter
5.)
Yet it was the
activities of two radical religious movements-the Kharijite and the Shiitethat constituted the most dangerous and intractable
source of turbulence. Both viewed the Umayyads as opportunistic latecomers to
Islam who had unlawfully usurped and perverted its most cherished institution.
But while the Shiites advocated the vesting of the caliphate in the Prophet's
family, or more specifically in the house of the slain caliph Ali (their name
originated in the designation Shiat Ali-the faction
of Ali), the Kharijites acknowledged no authority but that of the Islamic
community, which could elect or disown any caliph who went astray.
Foreshadowing radical twentieth-century Islamic thinkers, they considered
themselves the only true Muslims and had no scruples about shedding the blood
of fellow co-religionists, for it was against these "heretics" alone
that they waged the holy war. In the late 680s and early 690s one of their
sects managed to occupy parts of Arabia (Bahrain, Yemen, Hadramawt) from where
it harassed the caravan trade in the peninsula. Another sect controlled the
former Iranian provinces of Khuzistan, Fars, and
Kirman, using them as a springboard for repeated attacks on the city of Basra.
They were eventually suppressed, but as late as the mid-740s Kharijite uprisings
throughout Iraq were still causing the authorities a real headache. Their
influence reached as far as the Maghreb, where in the 740s the indigenous
Berber population temporarily drove the Arabs out of the area, raised the
Kharijite banner, and even chose its own local Amir al-Mu'minin.
"They strove most openly and decisively for the Kingdom of God, and also
most fiercely for a pitiless Utopia;' wrote a prominent student of Islam. They
renounced success; their only wish was to save their souls. They were content
to meet death on the battlefield, and with it pardon in the sight of God; they
sold their lives for the price of Paradise. In spite of this, perhaps because
of it, they often overcame great armies, and for a time were the terror of the
Muslim world, and although they always were only a small sect, still they could
not be extirpated. (Wellhausen, The Arab Kingdom, p. 65; W. Montgomery Watt,
Islamic Political Thought, Edinburgh University Press, 1968, pp. 54-63; Abd
Dixon, The Umayyad Caliphate, Chapter 6; Shaban, Islamic History, Vol. 1, pp.
95-98, 100-10, 150-52.)
The Shiites might not
have been as fanatic as their Kharijite counterparts, but they had a far more
profound and lasting impact, not least since they could stake a real claim to
the caliphate based on descent from the prophet's family. As they saw it, the llmma should be headed by a prodigious spiritual leader, or
imam, possessing superhuman religious knowledge and interpretative powers, who
would also act as the community's political leader, or Amir al-Mu'minin. The caliph Ali was the last person to have held
both titles, while Mu'awiya and subsequent Umayyad
rulers were (unlawful) secular practitioners of power rather than religious
authorities, and it was for the restoration of this dual power to the Alid family that the Shiites pined. (M. A. Shaban, The
Abbasid Revolution, Cambridge University Press, 1970, pp. 138-49.)
As early as 671 Mu'awiya was confronted with a pro-Alid
revolt in Kufa. This was summarily suppressed, but
nine years later Hussein, son of Ali and the Prophet's daughter Fatima, was
lured by his Kufan supporters to stake a claim to the
caliphate. The Umayyad governor uncovered the plot and intercepted Hussein's
party. After a short battle, in which he received no support from the Kufans, Hussein fled to the small town of Karbala where he
soon found himself under siege. The governor called upon him to surrender but
Hussein, believing in his inviolability as the Prophet's favorite grandson,
remained defiant. He was killed in the ensuing battle, on October 10,680, and
his head was sent on a platter to Damascus after being paraded in Kufa. (Mas'udi, Muruj, Vol. 3, pp. 248-59; Ya'qubi,
Ta'rikh, Voi. 2, pp.
243-47.)
Hussein's death was
to prove a watershed in the history of Islam. It helped cement the small group
of Ali's followers into a significant and cohesive religious movement; Hussein's
grave in Karbala was to become the most revered site of pilgrimage for all
Shiites. His day of martyrdom (Ashura, the tenth day of the Arabic month of
Muharram) is commemorated every year in the most emotional way. More
immediately, the Karbala massacre led to a revolt by Mukhtar ibn Abi Ubaid,
scion of a distinguished Thaqifite family, under the
slogan "Vengeance for Hussein." Having driven Ibn Zubair's governor
from Kufa and established himself as the city's
master, Mukhtar proclaimed Muhammad ibn Hanafiyya,
Hussein's half-brother, not merely a caliph but also a Mahdi, the "rightly
guided one" or "redeemer;' who would transform society and establish
a reign of justice on earth. This was a powerful and novel idea that struck a
deep chord among Kufa's disenfranchised masses and
was to provide a lasting source of inspiration for numerous revolutionary
groups and individuals throughout the ages. It nevertheless failed to save the
day for Mukhtar. He was killed on April 3, 687, and thousands of his followers
were slaughtered in cold blood after laying down their weapons. Initially the
commander of the victorious forces wanted to execute only the non-Arab
prisoners of war but was dissuaded by some of his aides who argued that this
contradicted Islam's universalist spirit. "What kind of religion is
this?" they reasoned. "How do you hope for victory when you kill the
Iranians and spare the Arabs though both profess the same religion?"
Impressed by the force of this argument, the commander ordered that the Arab
prisoners be beheaded as well. (Tabari, Ta'rikh, Vo!.
6, pp. 115-16. See also: ibid. pp. 45-114; Ya'qubi, Ta'rikh, Vo!. 2, p. 307; Mas'udi,
Muruj, Vo!. 3, pp. 272-73. For discussion of the
revolt's long-term legacy see S. H. M. Jafri, Origins and Early Development of
Shi'a Islam, 1979, pp. 235-42; M. G. S. Hodgson, "How Did the Early Shi'a
become Sectarian?" Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 75,1955,
pp. 4-8.)
Notwithstanding its
short duration and limited geographical scope, Mukhtar's revolt had
far-reaching historical consequences. By demanding the restoration of the
caliph ate to the Prophet's family and equating such a move with a return to
"the Book of Allah and the Sunna [practice] of his Prophet;' Mukhtar
introduced a powerful political and religious concept that was to become the
main rallying cry of the anti-Umayyad revolution. By endorsing Ibn Hanafiyya as head of the Muslim community Mukhtar extended
the range of potential Hashemite contenders to the caliphate who had hitherto
been confined to descendants of Ali by his wife Fatima (or Fatimids as they are
often called). This opened the door to other members of the House of Muhammad,
such as the Abbasids, descendants of the Prophet's paternal uncle Abbas, to
style themselves as the rightful caliphs. (Farouq Omar, The Abbasid Caliphate,Baghdad: National Printing and Publishing, 1969,
p. 61; M. Sharon, Black Banners from the East: The Establishment of the Abbasid
State-Incubation of a Revolt , 1983, pp. 105-07.)
No less important,
after the suppression of the revolt a group of surviving veterans reconstituted
themselves into a small clandestine movement that maintained close contact with
Ibn Hanafiyya, and after his death (sometime between
700 and 705) passed their loyalty to his son Abu Hashem. Widely known as the Hashemiyya, this group was to initiate the revolution that
would sweep the Umayyads from power. Precisely when and how the Abbasids
managed to harness the Hashemiyya to their cause is
not entirely clear. According to the traditional Arabic version, shortly before
he died in 716 or 717, Abu Hashem transferred his right to the imamate, which
he had inherited from his father, to Muhammad ibn Ali, then head of the Abbasid
family. The two had allegedly grown close to each other while living in
Damascus, where the sonless Abu Hashem came to regard the younger Muhammad as a
son and groomed him for his future role as imam.( Akhbar
al-Dawla al-Abbasiya wa-fihi Akhbar al-Abbas wa- Waladihi (Beirut: Dar al-Tali'a li-I-Taba'a wa-I-Nashr, 1971, pp. 173-91.)
Yet more recent
research shows that it was not until the early 740s that the Abbasids, who
resided at the time in the small village of Humayma
in southern Transjordan, managed to gain control over the activities of the Hashemiyya. It has even been suggested that such control
was never achieved and that the Abbasids rode to power on the back of the Hashemiyya's successful revolution. (Elton Lee Daniel,
Iran's Awakening: A Study of Local Rebellions in the Eastern Provinces of the
Islamic Empire, 126-227 A.H. University of Texas, 1978, Part 1; Daniel
The Political and Social History of Khurasan under Abbasid Rule 747-820
,Bibliotheca 1slamica, 1979, Chapter 1; Patricia Crone, "On the Meaning of
the Abbasid Call to al-Ridda;' in C. E. Bosworth et
al eds., The Islamic World: From Classical to Modern Times: Essays in Honor of
Bernard Lewis, Princeton,1989, pp. 95-111; Saleh Said Agha, The Revolution
Which Toppled the Umayyads: Neither Arab Nor Abbasid, 2003, pp. xxxiii-xxxvi.)
By this time, the Hashemiyya had established a firm foothold in the vast frontier
province of Khurasan, at the northeastern tip of the empire in Central Asia
(comprising territories that are today parts of Iran, Mghanistan,
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan). The province was uniquely suited for
this revolutionary endeavor, and not only because of the widespread sympathy
felt there for the unfortunate Mukhtar and for the Alid
family more generally. It was in Khurasan that the apartheid wall built by the
Arabs was being most comprehensively demolished and a mixing of colonizer and
colonized was taking place. Unlike Iraq, where they had been settled in
garrison towns, in Khurasan the Arabs were dispersed among the local population
as a small and assimilating minority. They used Iranian servants, married local
women, embraced Iranian habits and forms of dress, observed local festivals,
and even adopted the Persian language for everyday use. In short, the Arabs
developed a Khurasani identity that largely
obliterated ethnic and tribal distinctions and made them feel at one with the
indigenous population and sympathize with its cause. Moreover, these,
colonists, who had mostly arrived from Iraq, brought with them a deeply
entrenched hostility toward the Umayyad dynasty, which they did not fail to
spread among their Iranian neighbors. Nor were the local Iranians hostile to
the Arab colonists. Their daily lives were hardly affected by the nominal
change of imperial masters since the existing Iranian rulers were left in place
in return for the payment of tribute. There was no pressure to convert to Islam
and the physical safety of the general population was significantly enhanced
since the Arabs provided a better defense against external attacks by the
neighboring Turkish tribes than had the declining Sasanid
Empire. Paradoxically, .the most intractable grievances emerged among the
Iranian converts, disillusioned with the lack of improvement in their lot, and
among the assimilated Arab colonists, who had lost their privileges as members
of the ruling class and were forced to accept the authority of non-Arab,
non-Muslim local rulers to whom they had to pay taxes. This created an
explosive alliance of underdogs, both Iranians and Arabs, expressed in largely
Shiite terms and aimed against the discriminatory imperial order. (Shaban, The
Abbasid Revolution, pp. xv, xvi, 156-57; M. Sharon, Revolt: The Social and
Military Aspects of the Abbasid Revolution, 1990.)
The timing of the
revolution could not have been more opportune. By the early 740s the empire was
clearly in the throes of over-extension. From their first days on the throne
the Umayyads had relied on constant campaigning in order to keep the restless
Arab tribes preoccupied and to ensure a steady flow of booty, on which the imperial
economy was heavily dependent. It was during their reign that the empire
reached the farthest frontiers of its expansion: the western lands of the
Maghreb and Spain were conquered, together with vast territories in Central
Asia and India, and the Muslims knocked at the gates of Constantinople and
burst deep into France. With the passage of time this policy of expansion
increasingly taxed the empire's human and financial resources. Umar II, who
recognized this reality, made preparations to relinquish the Arab conquests in
Central Asia, which he deemed unworthy of the heavy expenditure of men and
resources required to hold them against the Turks and the Chinese. (C. E.
Bosworth, "Byzantium and the Arabs: War and Peace between Two World
Civilizations," in his The Arabs, Byzantium, and Iran, p. 64.)
But his premature
death prevented the implementation of this dramatic shift in thinking, and
Hisham ibn Abdel Malik, who ascended the throne in 724, spent his nineteen-year
reign in constant, and mostly futile, campaigning throughout his empire. This
shattered the professional Syrian-Yemeni army, which had served as the mainstay
of Umayyad rule since Mu'awiya's days. By the time of
the Abbasid revolution, the once-formidable military district of Damascus had been
reduced to a few thousand troops, and the situation in the neighboring Syrian
provinces was not much better. To make things worse, the depleted Syrian army
was spread thin across the empire, which further reduced its ability to protect
the regime. At the time of Hisham's accession, there were Syrian troops only in
Syria, Iraq, the Caucasus, and probably to a very limited extent in northern
India. By the end of his reign, Syrian troops had almost completely disappeared
from Syria itself and had instead been deployed in virtually every single
province, from the Chinese frontier to Spain. (Khalid Yahya Blankinship,
The End of the Jihad State: the Reign of Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik and the
Collapse of the Umayyads, State University of New York, 1994, pp. 224, 236.)
Next the Yemenis
sought to goad Walid II, who in February 743 succeeded Hisham, into
far-reaching reforms that would equalize the position of the Mawali in the
imperial order. As the caliph refused to do anything of the sort, they had him
murdered only fourteen months after he took office and installed Yazid III in
his place. This turned out to be a catastrophic move, which led in short order
to the collapse of the Umayyad dynasty. Yazid died after a mere six months on
the throne and was succeeded in December 744 by Marwan II, who peremptorily
expelled the Yemeni leaders from Syria. This reopened the Pandor
a's box ofYemeni-Qaysi rivalry. In no time Syria was
rocked by a string of uprisings while in Iraq the Yemenis collaborated for the
first time with Shiite and Kharijite insurrections. These were all suppressed
with great brutality, yet left the regime extremely vulnerable to the brewing
revolution in the east, which now enjoyed the support of Khurasan's Yemeni
tribes. In June 747 a young and obscure Mawla by the name of Abu Muslim, sent
to Khurasan a year earlier to organize the revolution, raised the Abbasid black
banner. By February 748 he had occupied the Khurasani
capital city of Merv. Some ten months later, on
November 28, 749, Abul Abbas, son of Muhammad ibn Ali, was proclaimed the first
Abbasid caliph in Kufa's great mosque. In a
last-ditch attempt to save his throne, Marwan summoned his loyalists for the
final battle, only to suffer a crushing defeat by the vastly outnumbered
Abbasid armies on the left bank of the Greater Zab, a tributary of the Tigris,
on January 25, 750. Vanquished but not broken, the indefatigable Marwan fled
from place to place in a vain effort to rally support. He eventually surfaced
in Upper Egypt and in early August 750 made his last stand. His head was sent
to Abul Abbas and his tongue was reportedly fed to a cat. (Tabari, Ta'rikh, Vol. 7, pp. 437-43; Ali ibn Muhammad ibn Athir, al-Kamil fi-l- Ta'rikh,
Beirut, 1995, Vol. 5, pp. 417)
For updates
click homepage here