3 Islamic Empire and Disintegration

Islamic Empire and Disintegration

Order, Disorder and the Umayyad Caliphate | More Expansion, 689 to 717 CE | The Pro-Peace Caliph, Umar II | Power for the Abbasids and Death for Umayyads, 720-50 CE | The Abbasids, a Golden Age and Disintegration to 1055 CE 

The Old Succession Problem and More Civil War...

In the late 670s the aging caliph Mu'awiyah nominated as his successor the son of his favorite wife, a Christian. That son was Yazid, and the nomination was confirmed by the consultative body Mu'awiyah had created from leaders of the Arab tribes. Helping Yazid's succession was his having been a heroic figure in the assault against Constantinople, and perhaps also some bribery.

Mu'awiyah died in 680, and a few prominent people were among those who did not accept his son's succession. One opponent was Abdullah ibn Zubayr from Medina. He had a following among those who disliked Umayyad rule and resented the shift of power from Medina to Damascus. Also opposed to the son, Yazid, were three men who believed that if power were to pass from father to son they had more right to rule than did Yazid. One of the three was the eldest surviving son of Ali, a man by the name of Hussein. Another was the son of the former caliph Abu Bakr. The third was the grandson of the former caliph Umar. Moreover, there was opposition to Yazid from those who believed that he was insufficiently pious.

In Kufa, supporters of Hussein invited him to make their city his capital, and they offered to fight for him. Hussein leftMecca and led a small band of relatives, his harem and a horde of followers that included some Bedouin tribesmen. Yazid sent a force of Syrian troops toward Kufa. Hussein was warned that a battle against the Syrians was hopeless. His Bedouin supporters abandoned him, leaving him with just seventy fighting men. The Syrians and Hussein met at the city of Karbala twenty-five miles northwest of Kufa. Hussein was determined to die fighting. One by one his warriors, including two of his sons and six brothers, were slaughtered, as was Hussein.

The heads of Hussein's men were sent as trophies to Damascus. Hussein's head was returned to be buried with his body at Karbala. Hussein became a Shia martyr. At Karbala the Shia built their holiest of shrines. And into modern times the day of Hussein's death would be commemorated as a day of grief.

In Medina and Mecca, Zubayr won additional support from those outraged by the deaths in Muhammad's family. Yazid tried reconciliation, but those from Medina who visited Yazid denounced upon their return the godless luxury they had found in Damascus. Yazid sent 12,000 Syrian troops against Medina and conquered the city in August, 683. Many nobles of the Quraysh tribe were annihilated in the process, and the surviving leaders of Medina's rebellion were executed

The rebellious Zubayr had relocated in Mecca, and there he was recognized as leader. For two months, beginning in September 683, Yazid's army besieged Mecca. Rocks from catapults fell into the sacred Kaaba. To the horror of believers, the Kaaba caught fire, burned to the ground, and the sacred Black Stone split and fell from its socket.

In November the leader of Yazid's army learned that Yazid had died. The leader of the Syrian forces offered Zubayr his allegiance and the caliphate if he would promise to take no vengeance regarding previous warfare and if he would rule from Damascus. Zubayr refused the latter condition. The Syrians then lifted their siege and returned toSyria, where conflict erupted over who was to be Yazid's successor.

In Damascus, Yazid was succeeded by his son, a sickly nineteen-year-old, who died a few weeks later, leaving no successor to the Umayyad dynasty. From Mecca, Zubayr won support that extended across much of Arabia, while the senior member of the Umayyad clan, Marwan, took power for the Umayyads in Damascus. A great battle was fought in 684 at Marj Rahit, a little to the east of Damascus, the Syrian army winning and Marwan allowed to hold on to power in Syria. He extended his rule through Palestine to Egypt, persuading Arab tribesmen in Egypt to change their support from Zubayr to himself. The plague bacillus that had killed 40 percent of Constantinople in the 540s had reappeared as a conquering pandemic in maritime towns along the Mediterranean and inland into Gaul. It was perhaps the disease that ravaged England in the mid-600s, and it came again to Syria where it killed the Marwan on May 7, 685, nine months after he had become caliph.

Marwan was succeeded by his son, Malik. The civil war raged for seven more years, until 692, when the Syrian army killed Zubayr and overran Mecca. Malik was to be caliph for twenty years, ruling by force of arms rather than consensus.

More Expansion, 689 to 717 CE

Berber tribes had taken advantage of Islam's civil war by attacking Arab enclaves in North Africa. In 689 they overran the Muslim outpost at Kairawan and massacred the retreating Arabs.

After the caliph Malik defeated Zubayr and the civil war ended, war resumed between the Muslims and Constantinople. The caliph, Malik, beginning in 694, turned his attention Islam's advance westward across North Africa. He sent his Syrian army against the Berbers and against Constantinople's hold on Carthage and Tunis. From the harbor at Tunis, Constantinople's navy fled to Sicily. European landowners also fled. Then Malik's military overcame Berber resistance. Malik's forces captured the legendary Berber warrior queen, Kahinah, who had long been an obstacle to Arab imperialism in North Africa.

In 699 the Arabs extended their rule in North Africa as far west as Tangier. Arab imperialism had been launched with the intention of being an elite caste garrisoned in conquered areas. There had been no interest in converting the conquered to Islam. The Arabs left local landowners, chiefs and headmen as authorities in their villages, subservient of course to the conquerors – an ages-old method of imperial administration. And for the sake of order, Islam's caliph sent governors to the conquered areas to oversee the collection of taxes and to supervise the distribution of pay to the occupying Arab warrior elite.

In the year 700, Islam was poised for more expansion. And just as Romans had not foreseen the change that empire would bring to their city, the conquering Arabs continued to ignore the change that would accrue from their conquests. The caliphs in Damascus had been pursuing a policy of maintaining the identity of the conquerors by keeping them segregated from the conquered, including the conquered who had converted to Islam. But, by the year 700, non-Arab Muslims outnumbered Arab Muslims, and despite resistance from Arab leaders, non-Arab Muslims would become a greater force within Islam.

In the early 700s Caliph Malik sent his Syrian army to consolidate his power in Mesopotamia. The last years of Malik's life were generally peaceful. His reign since 685 came to an end with his death in 705, and was succeeded by his son, Al-Walid. Walid has been described as continuing the effective rule characteristic of his father and as having developed a welfare system, built hospitals, educational institutions and measures for the appreciation of art

While Constantinople's empire was on a road of diminution, Walid continued the conquests that took Islam's empire to its farthest extent in the east. In response to the plundering of Arab ships by pirates near the mouth of the Indus River, the Muslims launched an expedition with six thousand horses and equal number of camels, through southern Persia and into the southern Indus Valley. Muslim armies stationed in Khurasan went northeast, overrunning the cities ofBukhara and Samarkand and further northeast to what is now China's border.

In 711, from around Tangier in North Africa, an army of about 7,000 Berbers and 300 Arabs crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and began a conquest of Spain, made easy by disunity there. Spanish towns opened their gates to the conquerors, and Jews welcomed them as liberators.

Four years later Al-Walid died, at 46, with stability allowing his younger brother, Sulayman, the former governor of Palestine, to become the new caliph. Sulayman, saw absurdity in Islam having conquered from Spain to China while nearby Constantinople had not yet been conquered. He believed that victory over Byzantium would end the prolonged and exhausting campaigning. In 716 he sent his army and navy to begin another siege at Constantinople. The great city was imperiled again. Sulayman's forces were unable to penetrate Constantinople's fortifications. A shorter and more direct route to the heart of Europe than through Spain was thereby blocked. Sulayman left his forces just outside Constantinople, and there they continued to wear down and to grow weaker. Angry, while on a pilgrimage to Mecca, Sulayman invited his courtiers to try their swords on four hundred persons recently captured during the fighting at Constantinople, and the courtiers beheaded them as Sulayman looked on. Sulayman consoled himself with food and women. Then suddenly, in he died, and his rule passed to another Umayyad – his cousin Umar II.

The Pro-Peace Caliph, Umar II (717-20)

Umar II became caliph in 717. He changed the policy of previous caliphs and sought to put the empire on a Muslim rather than a strictly Arab basis. He accepted the fundamental equality of all Muslims, Arab and non-Arab, and he promulgated new laws to that end.

Many Arabs themselves had been changing from a tribal and clan orientation to a more urban or cosmopolitan outlook. They were mingling with non-Arabs. Arabs in what had been conquered territories were abandoning their old role as occupation soldiers and were taking civilian occupations, and those who had converted to Islam were adopting the Arab language. What had been garrison centers were becoming cities, while those who had not converted remained bound to their ancient heritages.

The second siege of Constantinople began in the summer of 117. It had been initiated by his predecessor, Sulayman (r 715-17), and it failed. Umar wanted peace, and in August 718 he withdrew Islam's forces from around Constantinople. He discouraged raids against peaceful nations and made peace with all he could. He believed that he and other Arab leaders should live up to Islamic ideals. He disbanded his harem and began practicing frugality. Umar tried to address economic grievances. He made his wife give her jewelry to the public treasury.

Umar attempted reconciliation with the Shia, and he supported assimilation between Muslim Arabs and those who had converted to Islam, believing that Islam should bind the empire together. He urged conversion to Islam despite the loss this would bring in tax revenues.

His fervor for Islam and his new policy of integration had a downside for Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians. Those who did not convert were given restrictions. Christians and Jews would not be allowed to hold public office. They were to be prohibited from wearing turbans and would be required to wear clothing that identified them as Christians or Jews. They could ride only packhorses, and they had to ride without a saddle. They could erect no new places of worship. And Jews were ordered to cut their forelocks.

Power for the Abbasids and Death for Umayyads, 720-50 CE

Umar II died in 720 at the age of thirty-nine, after less than three years as caliph. He was followed by another son of Malik (caliph from 685-705). This was Yazid II, and with Yazid it was a return to pleasure and self-interest. Yazid enjoyed luxury. He is accused of having been more interested in music and poetry than he was in the Koran. Yazid reversed Umar's reforms and returned to a policy of economic inequality and segregation between Arabs and non-Arabs. Mesopotamians, Berbers, Egyptians and Shia who did not want a return to the old ways, were embittered.

Under Yazid, anti-Umayyad groups began collecting influence. Christians were disturbed by his order in the year 723 that all Christian images, pictures and icons, in churches, marketplaces and homes be destroyed. The following year he died of tuberculosis and another of Malik's sons, Hisham, 33, younger by four years

succeeded him.

Expansions over the last forty years had by now left the Arabs with greater wealth. Grants of money and land had been accruing to members of the Umayyad clan, to Muhammad's family and to various other Arab leaders. The wealthy owned more slaves. But the rise in affluence was accompanied by the state doing more good works. Grants were given to popular poets, and money was spent on improving conditions in Islam's cities – cities that had been growing rapidly. New mosques, roads and hospitals were built, creating employment. A pony express now connected Damascus with distant points in Islam. And money was allocated for subsidies to the blind and the chronically sick, in keeping with the Koran's call for helping the poor

Hisham is described as ruling effectively, giving a rebirth to reforms, of being a patron of the arts, building more schools and overseeing the translation of numerous literary and scientific masterpieces into Arabic. He is described as impressing others with his simplicity and honesty. He died after 19 years of rule, in 743, at 52, from another toxic bacterial attack little understood at the time: diphtheria.

Hisham was succeeded by his nephew, Walid II, who was favored by those wanting to continue imperial expansion. He has been accused of being a shallow bon vivant, a handsome man who neglected rule, who spent much of the state's money and pursued pleasures that included drink and debauchery at his desert retreats. From among the ruling Umayyad family a conspiracy arose against him, which was joined by some generals from Syria's army – an army tired of constant campaigning. In 744 Walid was assassinated. He was succeeded by Yazid III, who was the choice of the Syrian generals. Yazid III promised to keep the Syrian troops in Syria and to rule the empire without relying on them – perhaps an impossibility. Then late that same year Yazid III died. And the disgruntled Umayyad governor of Armenia, Marwan, arrived in Damascus with his army and assumed power, taking the title Marwan II.

Marwan tried to enforce his rule across the empire by military force. But the good will he needed to rule was lacking. Across the empire the frustrations of non-Arab Muslims were made worse by their seeing themselves as belonging to an older and more highly developed cultural tradition than that of the Arabs. Many of the conquered were still converting to Islam – incidentally saving themselves from the extra taxes applied to non-Muslims. Those who converted to Islam were in theory full citizens of the great Islamic community, but not so in practice. Outside of Syria, Arabs and non-Arabs were still attending different mosques. Arab warriors, veterans and government officials formed an aristocratic caste which others could not enter. In some towns an Arab might be ostracized by his fellow Arabs if he were seen walking with a non-Arab Muslim.

Many non-Arab Muslims were embracing the dissident Shia branch of Islam. Respect for rule from Damascus had deteriorated to the point that it was no longer widely recognized. Even in Syria rule by the Umayyads had come into question. Among Muslims across the empire the feeling had arisen that the Umayyads had strayed too far from Muhammad's teachings.

It was another time that integration won over segregation. An integrated rebel army of Arab and non-Arab Muslims from Khurasan headed for Damascus, picking up support along the way. Abbas, a descendant of the paternal uncle of Muhammad, was declared caliph. Abbas promised a new era of concord, happiness and just rule in strict accordance with God's law. The rebel army and Marwan's army clashed in Mesopotamia, and the rebel army was victorious. Marwan II fled south through Palestine and into Egypt, where he was overtaken and beheaded. Damascus and other Syrian cities and towns fell to the rebel army without much of a struggle. The graves of the Umayyad caliphs were opened and their corpses burned – except for the pious Umar II, still seen by many as a good caliph.

An uncle of Abbas, Abdallah b Ali, riding high on the success of the revolt, invited eighty princes from the Umayyad clan to a banquet. But this was not to be the gesture of respect and reconciliation that the guests expected. During the banquet a signal brought executioners rushing into the room who clubbed to death the Umayyad princes. The victims were then covered with a leather carpet, those still dying groaning as the host and his Abbasid friends finished their meal.

The Abbasid: a Golden Age and Disintegration,750 to 1055 CE

The Abbasid Caliphate at its greatest extent,around 850 CE

The new line of caliphs would be from the family of Abbas, known as the Abbasids. And in 750 the capital of Islam moved from Damascus to what had been a small Christian village on the west bank of theTigris River, near the ruins of the old Persian capital, Ctesiphon, a town with a Persian name: Baghdad.

The Abbasids began ruling with a show of Islamic piety, and they spoke of reform. They gave prominence in state affairs to Islamic theologians and to experts in Islamic law. They built a skilled bureaucracy and professional army, manned to a large extent by those who had helped the Abbasids to power. Much of the military was Persian. And at the Abbasid court were Persian refinement and urbanity. There were also Persian titles, Persian wives, mistresses, wines and Persian garments – while Arabic remained as the language of Islam. In the holy cities of Medina and Mecca asceticism remained an ideal, but luxury and the pursuit of pleasure were fact.

With an increase in trade the Islamic empire going into the 800s was having its "golden age." Islam had no scorn for the merchant as did Christians and Confucians – Muhammad himself having been a merchant. Caravans connected Aden, Syria and Egypt, and they connected Baghdad to India and China. Muslim trade by sea dominated the Mediterranean and extended across the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean to the Far East. The Indian Ocean was becoming a great trade route. Arab merchants were a familiar site in India. Muslim traders and mariners were spreading their language and religion to Southeast Asia. In the 800s, residing in Guangzhou China were over 100,000 Arabs, Persians and Jews who had voyaged across the Indian Ocean on Muslim ships. Muslim merchants were as far north as Korea.

At Baghdad, the Tigris River was 750 feet wide. At Baghdad's docks and wharves were hundreds of ships: warships, trading vessels including Chinese junks and pleasure boats. It was the time fictionalized in the adventures of Sinbad the Sailor in A Thousand and One Nights drawn from reports of actual voyages made by Muslim merchants.

Disintegration

But the economic success and recent expansion was not to serve help unification of the empire. Islam's empire was headed toward the same fate as other empires: it was disintegrating. Islam's empire was too vast for control from any one center. Grumbling and disrespect for those in power was common throughout history. The promises of the first Abbasid caliphate were empty, and in the far reaches of Islam's empire grumbling was encouraged by the distance to Baghdad.

The Abbasids had not fundamentally changed the course of Islamic civilization. No protection of rights of individuals was written into law. The Abbasids were as autocratic as the Umayyads had been and worse. In addition to trying to wipe out Umayyad lineage, they suppressed their Shiite and Khorasani former allies. They surrounded themselves with pomp and shielded themselves from the public by a wall of officials and eunuchs. Under the Abbasids there was an increase in centralization of power. What tribal democracy had existed under the Umayyads disappeared.

Slavery was very much alive. Slaves served preeminent roles in administration and a variety of public affairs. To avoid having to recruit warriors from tribes, the Abbasids, from the early 800s, regularly employed people of slave origin as soldiers and some as officers.

Rebellions

t various times and at various places in Persia, people revolted against the imposition of Islam into their religious lives. As early as the year 767 a rebellion arose led by a man named Muqanna, who preached a combined doctrine of Islam and Zoroastrianism and led thousands against the Abbasids, robbing caravans and destroying mosques. The caliph Mahdi sent armies against him on several occasions and defeated him within five years.

Rebellion by orthodox Muslims also occurred. By the year 800, Spain and north Africa west of Egypt were free of control from Badhdad – under the rule of an Umayyad prince. In Baghdad itself the son of a Turkish slave woman, Mu'tasim, took power as caliph in a coup in 833. He used Berber and Turkish slaves and mercenaries as bodyguards. These guards rose in number to four thousand, and their meanness and abuse of the people of Baghdad provoked so much hostility from the public that Mu'tasim, in 836, moved his court to Samarra, seventy or so miles up the Tigris River. Four years later, Mu'tasim's troops captured and executed another rebel leader, Babak Khorramdin, ending a 34-year Persian rebellion against Islam.

During Mu'tasim's reign as caliph, slave officers gained influence at court – as eunuchs often had in China. Mu'tasim fell in October 841. He died in January 842 and was succeeded by his son, then another son in 847.

After Mu'tasim, officers of the guard gained in power. In 861 they murdered the second son, the caliph Mutawakkil, and made his son caliph. A few assassinations later – in the 880s – the caliph and his powerful guards returned to Baghdad, and there, into the next century, the Turkish officers of the guard continued to make and unmake caliphs.

While officers of the guard ruled in Baghdad, the empire's economy weakened, and across the empire respect for the Abbasid caliph fell to new lows. There had been a rebellion in Azerbaijan. There had also been a great slave revolt at the salt mines near Kufa, the slaves killing hundreds of thousands of citizens in the area.

Meanwhile, since 788 an independent Shia state had arisen in North Africa near Tangier. In 909 that Shia rebellion spread eastward to Tunis, where the Shia freed their leader, Said ibn Husayn from prison and declared him caliph. Husayn began a dynasty called the Fatimids, claiming descent from Muhammad's daughter Fatima. Husayn changed his name to Ubaydullah al Mahdi – Mahdi signifying prophesied redeemer of Islam. From his base in North Africa he extended his rule to Sicily and then to Egypt, where the Abbasids had never been popular, and Cairo became his new capital. In 929 Rahman III in Cordoba (Spain) declared himself caliph, and now there were three caliphs: the Umayyad in Spain, or Hispania, the Shiite in Cairo and the Abbasid at Baghdad.

During the first half of the 900s the Fatimids expanded their empire into Palestine, southern Syria and to Medina and Mecca. An army of a Shia family called the Buwayhids, from just south of the Caspian Sea, occupied Baghdad in 945. They kept the Abbasids as figureheads, while the Abbasids clung to what prestige they could with their nominal position as caliph and successors of Muhammad.

Contributing to the fragmentation was a group of devout believers in Islamic monotheism in Lebanon who had broken with others in the 800s, to become known as the Druze (Druse), who addressed their prayers to the Fatimid caliph.

After the year 1000, Christian forces began to reconquer the Iberian peninsula (Hispania) and Sicily. And whole tribes of Turks were moving through Transoxiana and into Persia. It was much like the disintegration of the Roman Empire. The Islamic empire was fragmented in loyalties and unable or unwilling to rally to defend its frontier against invasion. The Turks conquered much of Persia and then much of Mesopotamia, including Baghdad in 1055, and from the Fatimids the Turks took control of Syria and Palestine.

The Turks were quick learners. They adopted Persian culture, and they converted to Islam. But, with all the upheaval, the empire's trade with China had come to an end and trade with Europeans had declined. The coins that had been numerous in the 800s and 900s diminished in the eleventh century, and soon these coins disappeared.