3

The ‘Abbāsid Caliphs

132–923/750–1517

1. The caliphs in Iraq and Baghdad 132–656/749–1258

2. The caliph in Aleppo, Ḥarrān and northern Syria 659–60/1261

3. The caliphs in Cairo 659–923/1261–1517

The ‘Abbāsids acquired the caliphate through what might be considered from one aspect as a power-struggle between rival Meccan families, since they stemmed from the family of the Prophet’s uncle al-‘Abbās, of the Meccan clan of Hāshim; and because of this descent they were able to claim a legitimacy in the eyes of the orthodox Sunnī religious classes which the Umayyads had lacked. Even so, during the first century of their power the ‘Abbāsids had to contend with frequent revolts of the ‘Alids, descendants of the two sons of ‘Alī, al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn, who were grandsons of Muḥammad and whom their partisans the Shī‘a considered as having a better title to the caliphate and imamate, one based on a specific act of divinely-inspired designation by the Prophet. In self-defence, the apologists of the ‘Abbāsids stressed the superiority of descent through males over descent through females (since the ‘Alid claim was through Muḥammad’s daughter Fāṭima), and the caliphs themselves soon adopted a system of honorific titles (alqāb, sing. laqab) when they each ascended the throne, a practice unknown to their Umayyad predecessors; these titles proclaimed dependence on God and claimed divine support for ‘Abbāsid rule. The theocratic nature of the new dynasty’s power was gradually emphasised in other ways, and the orthodox religious institution enlisted as far as possible on the side of the ‘Abbāsids. Spreading into the sphere of practical government, there were also influences from the older Persian traditions of divine rulership and statecraft; for the ‘Abbāsid Revolution, while in origin an Arab movement, began on Persian soil and took advantage of certain Persian discontents. The shifting of the capital from Damascus in Syria to Iraq, eventually to Baghdad, symbolised the new eastward orientation of the caliphate, and over the next centuries Persian material and cultural practices and influences became increasingly evident within it.

The Islamic empire had virtually reached its full extent under the Umayyads, and, under the early ‘Abbāsids, the borders of the Dār al-Islām were almost static. Only a few of the caliphs distinguished themselves as military commanders in the field – al-Ma’mūn and al-Mu‘taṣim led successful expeditions into Anatolia against the Byzantines – and in the tenth and early eleventh centuries it was the Muslims who were forced on to the defensive by the vigorous Greek emperors of the Macedonian dynasty. Already in the ninth century, the political unity of the caliphate began to dissolve. A branch of the Umayyads, a priori hostile to the ‘Abbāsids, ruled in Spain (see below, no. 4), and North Africa was in general too distant to be controlled properly. Such lines of governors as the Ṭūlūnids in Egypt (see below, no. 25) and the Ṭāhirids and Sājids in Persia (see below, nos 82, 70) still behaved as faithful vassals of Baghdad, but their existence nevertheless paved the way for largely autonomous dynasties on the far eastern fringes of the Persian world, like the Sāmānids of Transoxania and the Ṣaffārids of Sistan (see below, nos 83, 84), who forwarded taxation to Baghdad only rarely or not at all. The effective authority of the ‘Abbāsids became reduced to central Iraq, above all, in the tenth century, when an aggressive political Shī‘ism triumphed temporarily over a large part of the central and eastern lands of the caliphate. The Fāṭimids seized first North Africa and then Egypt and southern Syria (see below, no. 27), setting themselves up in Cairo as rival caliphs. In Iraq and western Persia, the Daylamī Būyids rose to power (see below, no. 75), entering Baghdad in 334/945 and reducing the ‘Abbāsids to the status of puppets, with almost nothing left save their moral and spiritual influence as heads of Sunnī Islam.

The situation was saved for the ‘Abbāsids and for Sunnī orthodoxy in general by the appearance in the Middle East in the eleventh century of the Turkish Seljuqs (see below, no. 91), but the Seljuqs, while upholders of the Sunna from the religious point of view, did not intend to let the political power of the caliphs revive to the detriment of the sultanate which they had just established. It was only in the twelfth century, when the family solidarity of the Great Seljuqs was impaired and their authority thereby enfeebled, that the fortunes of the ‘Abbāsids began to rise under such vigorous caliphs as al-Muqtafī and al-Nāṣir. This recovery in the effective power and moral influence was, however, cut short by the Mongol cataclysm, and in 656/1258 Hülegü’s Mongol troops murdered the last ‘Abbāsid caliph to rule in Baghdad (see below, no. 133).

The first three centuries of ‘Abbāsid rule (eighth to eleventh centuries AD) saw the full flowering of mediaeval Islamic civilisation. Literature, theology, philosophy and the natural sciences all flourished, with fertilising influences coming in from Persia and the Hellenistic and Byzantine cultures. Economic and commercial progress was widespread, above all in the older, long-settled lands of Persia, the Fertile Crescent and Egypt, and trade links were established with outside regions like the Eurasian steppes, the Far East, India and black Africa. Despite political breakdown at the centre and tribal and sectarian violence during the tenth and eleventh centuries, this progress in the material and cultural fields continued, and it was in this regard apt for the Swiss orientalist Adam Mez to designate the tenth century that of the ‘Renaissance of Islam’. Within the northern tier of the Middle East, incoming Turkmen nomads and subsequently-established Turkish dynasties brought extensive changes in such spheres as land utilisation and economic life, but were largely absorbed into the cultural and religious fabric of Islam; it was the Mongols, for several decades fierce enemies of Islam and bringers of a steppe way of life alien to the settled agricultural economies of the Middle East, who dealt more serious blows to the economic and social stability of Iraq and the Persian lands.

The Baghdad caliphate was thus extinguished by the Mongols, but soon afterwards the Mamlūk sultan of Egypt, Baybars (see below, no. 31, 1), himself decided to install a caliph, and invited Aḥmad al-Mustanṣir, an ostensible uncle of the last ‘Abbāsid of Baghdad, who had been held prisoner there but had been then released by the Mongols, to Cairo (659/1261), This caliph led an army in an unsuccessful bid to reconquer Baghdad, possibly dying in the attempt and certainly disappearing from further mention. Meanwhile, a further ‘Abbāsid, who seems genuinely to have been a descendant of al-Mustarshid, had in this same year been proclaimed caliph at Aleppo, with the backing of the Amīr Aqqush, as al-Ḥākim, subsequently installed in Cairo in 661/1262. The establishment of a caliph in Cairo served to legitimise Mamlūk rule and to increase Mamluk prestige in places as far apart as North Africa and Muslim India, and it was a moral weapon in the warfare against the Crusaders and the Mongols; furthermore the caliphs continued, as they had done in late ‘Abbāsid Baghdad, to act as heads of the Futuwwa or chivalric orders. But they had no practical power in the Mamlūk state, and there was certainly no idea of a division of power with the sultans. The last caliph, al-Mutawakkil III, was carried off to Istanbul in 923/1517 by the Ottoman conqueror Selīm the Grim, but the story that he then transferred his rights in the caliphate to the Turkish sultans is a piece of fiction originating in the nineteenth century.

The advent of the ‘Abbāsids in 132/749 saw a general elevation of the ruler’s status and a formalising of the court ceremonial surrounding him, possibly as a reflection of the increased permeation of Persian cultural influences into ‘Abbāsid society mentioned above. Whereas the Umayyad caliphs had been content with their simple names as ruling designations, from the accession of al-Manṣūr onwards, the ‘Abbāsid caliphs adopted honorific titles expressing divine support for their rule, for example al-Mahdī ‘the divinely-guided one’ or emphasising the ruler’s leading role in implementing God’s plan for His world, for example al-Qā’im ‘he who arises, undertakes [something]’ or al-Ẓāhir ‘he who makes prevail’, usually with a complement such as li-dīn Allāh ‘to/for God’s religion’ or bi-amr Allāh ‘in the furtherance of God’s affair/command’. Once the unity of the caliphate began to dissolve and provincial dynasties arose, lesser, local rulers began to emulate the caliphs and adorn themselves with high-flown, sonorous titles of this type, not infrequently ludicrously at variance with the actual significance of the bearers of them.

Lane-Poole, 6–8, 12–13; Zambaur, 4–5 and Table G; Album, 11–13.

EI² ‘‘Abbāsids’ (B. Lewis).

D. and J. Sourdel, La civilisation de l’Islam classique, Paris 1968, chs 2 and 3, 61–126.

D. Sourdel, ‘The ‘Abbāsid caliphate’, in The Cambridge History of Islam, I, 104–39.

H. Kennedy, The Early Abbasid Caliphate: A Political History, London 1981.

idem, The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphs. The Islamic Near East from the Sixth to the Eleventh Century, 124–99, with genealogical table at p. 404.

T. Nagel, ‘Das Kalifat der Abbasiden’, in Haarmann (ed.), Geschichte der arabischen Welt, 101–65.

P. M. Holt, ‘Some observations on the ‘Abbāsid caliphate of Cairo’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental [and African] Studies, 47 (1984), 501–7.

S. Heidemann, Das Aleppiner Kalifat (A. D.1261). Vom Ende des Kalifates in Bagdad über Aleppo zu den Restaurationen in Kairo, Leiden 1994.