Abbasid Dynasty
The Abbasid Dynasty was a powerful Islamic caliphate that ruled from 750 to 1258, with its capital in Baghdad. It is known for its significant contributions to Islamic culture, art, and science, as well as for its establishment of a sophisticated administrative system. The dynasty's rule saw the flourishing of Islamic civilization and the preservation and translation of classical Greek texts.
6 Key excerpts on "Abbasid Dynasty"
eBook - ePub- Arthur Goldschmidt Jr., Ibrahim Al-Marashi(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Artistic and intellectual creativity flourished as a result. The political history, as you now know, was turbulent—a chronicle of palace coups, bureaucratic rivalries, and rural uprisings. Islam did not efface ethnic differences. Indeed, Muslim unity was turning into a polite fiction. No dramatic revolt toppled the Abbasids. Though their power ebbed in the ninth and tenth centuries, their accumulated prestige and wealth enabled them to outlast most of the usurper dynasties. They went on producing caliphs in Baghdad until 1258, then in Cairo up to 1517. But dry rot had begun during the golden age of Harun al-Rashid and Ma’mun. Indeed, the political unity of the umma had ended when the Umayyads had retained Spain in 756. During the late ninth and tenth centuries, various Muslim dynasties took control of parts of North Africa, Syria, and Persia. Finally Baghdad was captured in 945 by a Shi’a dynasty called the Buyids, and the Abbasids ceased to be masters even in their own house. The Abbasid decline mattered less than you might imagine. As the caliphate waned, other types of political leadership emerged to maintain and even increase the collective power of the Muslim world. New institutions sustained the feeling of community among Muslim peoples, now that the caliphate could no longer do so. Our next three chapters will treat these trends in greater depth....
eBook - ePub- Thomas W. Arnold(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Under the Umayyads Arab nationality had been predominant ; the habits and usages of the old heathen Arab culture before the rise of Islam had flourished unchecked. The Umayyad Caliph had distributed his favours among the members of the Arab aristocracy to the exclusion of others, and the narrow tribal sympathy which was shown by the members of the reigning house was one of the circumstances that weakened their authority and paved the way for the revolt of the Abbasids. It was under the Abbasids that the decline of the empire set in. The year 800, the date of the coronation of Charlemagne in Rome and the establishment of the Holy Roman Empire, may be taken as the culminating point of the prosperity of the Abbasid empire, though a prince of the Umayyad family, who had fled to Spain, had already made that country a separate kingdom in 756, and North Africa from 800 practically became an independent kingdom under the governor who founded the Aghlabid dynasty and made his post hereditary in his family. One province after another rapidly made itself independent, Egypt and Syria were cut off from the empire, and separate dynasties were established in Persia. By the tenth century the authority of the Abbasid Caliph hardly extended beyond the precincts of the city of Baghdad, and the Caliph himself was at the mercy of his foreign troops, for the most part of Turkish origin, lawless and undisciplined. The Caliph Muqtadir (908–932) was twice deposed, and at the end of an inglorious reign, marked by drunkenness, sensuality, and extravagance, was killed in a skirmish with the troops of one of his generals ; his head was stuck upon a spear, and his body left lying on the ground where he fell. The degradation to which the Caliphate had sunk during this reign was signalized by the great schism which established a rival Caliphate in the Sunni Church...
- Jessica A. Coope(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- University of Michigan Press(Publisher)
...The Abbasids in particular responded by taking on more Islamic trappings, emphasizing the caliph’s role as amīr al-mu’minīn. At the same time, however, the late Umayyads and the Abbasids took steps that distanced them from those they ruled, by increasingly adopting a remote, Persian or Byzantine style of rule, which signaled that they were imperial as well as religious leaders. The Abbasids’ move to mercenary and slave armies meant that they had troops who were often more efficient and loyal than the armies raised by the dīwān system, but it also broke an important tie between the governed and those in power. Although the Abbasids officially ruled until the Mongols sacked Baghdad in 1258, they in fact became primarily figureheads in the mid-tenth century, when competing Muslim groups pushed them out of power. Ironically, the spread of Islam was another reason for the failure of Abbasid rule. Caliphs made much of their title of commander of the faithful, but Islam does not finally have much place for a largely secular imperial government. Muslims accepted that someone had to carry out the practical function of government, but those functions came to be seen increasingly as separate from religious leadership. The religious life of the ummah flourished outside of the courts. 60 Many of the same processes affected Umayyad rule in al-Andalus, including the gradual conversion of the subject population to Islam, the dynasty’s adoption of elements of imperial governance, and the switch from an army commanded by Arab aristocrats and based on the traditions of the early conquests to a mercenary and slave army. Like the Abbasids, the Umayyads in al-Andalus were gradually pushed out of power. Under Caliph al-Hāshim II (r. 976–1009), the caliph’s chamberlain or ḥājib, Muḥammad Ibn Abī ‘Āmir al-Mu‘āfirī al-Manṣūr, became the de facto ruler...
eBook - ePubReligious Ideology and the Roots of the Global Jihad
Salafi Jihadism and International Order
- J. Turner(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
...Previously, it had been necessary to do so or risk dissent and a crisis of legitimacy from those who would side with the opinion of the companions. Additionally, the Ulema had yet to be formed, which in the future would serve as an institutionalised form of religious legitimacy. 15 The result was a dynasty that was vulnerable to constant challenges on religious grounds that it had little means to fend off, even though it still continued in practice to uphold religious law and traditions. 16 Critics, however, maintained that the Umayyad’s ruled over a kingdom, as opposed to a caliphate that could be understood to be sanctioned by Islam. 17 5.2The Abbasid Dynasty and its competitors The Abbasids that followed the Umayyads were more successful at articulating the relationship between political power and religious legitimacy, aided by the development of sharia and religious scholars. Their prestige as rulers was further supported not just by the successful devel opment of religious feeling, but also by the contradictory material luxury and opulence of the caliphs. 18 Even during the height of Abbasid rule, power was in many ways limited to the urbanised areas. Control in the central regions lay in the hands of local dynasties who continued to support the authority of the caliph. 19 Relations between the ruler and the remote countryside were too distant to require expression in terms of religion. However, the caliph’s power was accepted, providing it remained distant from local affairs. 20 By the end of the reign of the al-Mansur in 775, Abbasid rule was firmly established and the empire unified, with the exception of Umayyad-controlled Spain. 21 However, in the tenth century the Abbasid Caliphate began to be challenged by competing claims. In 932 the Buyids occupied the Abbasid Capital of Baghdad...
eBook - ePubAfghanistan
A Military History from the Ancient Empires to the Great Game
- Ali Ahmad Jalali(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- University Press of Kansas(Publisher)
...6 Decline of the Abbasid Caliphate and the Rise of Local Muslim Dynasties, 921–1215 ad The rise of the Tahirid dynasty in Khorasan coincided with the decline of the Abbasid Caliphate’s control over the empire’s peripheries as the thrust of Arab projection of power declined in the middle of the eighth century. The decline gave way to the rise of autonomous local dynasties that, over the course of time, regarded the “Commander of the Faithful” more as a spiritual leader than as a temporal overlord. The waning of the political power of the caliphate notwithstanding, the religious influence of the office became more prominent. The caliph was regarded as the heir of the Prophet, whereupon the authority of the most powerful monarchs cowered before his hallowed grandeur. He was able to legitimize the authority of local monarchs and expansion of their power in the Muslim world or to delegitimize them. Thus, local independent rulers used the caliphs’ blessing as an instrument of legitimacy in their competing schemes for expansion. The process of political fragmentation was furthered by the simultaneous weakening of the center and the strengthening of the peripheries. On the one hand, local governors appointed by the caliph grew too powerful to be dictated to by the center. On the other hand, the vacuum created by the waning control of Baghdad was filled by local leaders who led successful uprisings or asserted independence. In Afghanistan, the former case was exemplified by the rise of Tahirids (821–873) and Samanids (819–999), the latter case by the Saffarids (861–1003). The emerging local dynasties that based their rights only on the sword often saw building and maintaining large armies as their path to survival within a volatile political environment...
eBook - ePub- Masudi(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Amusingly, all the information he supplies about Mas'udi and his works is wrong. One has only to think of a European contemporary of Mas'udi – say the compiler of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle — to guage the immense advantages the Muslim historian enjoyed. Not only did he have access to books by previous writers – even Greek and Persian in translation – but he was able to travel freely and even at times gain access to official archives. It was not until the Renaissance that European historians were able to work under the sort of conditions Mas'udi took for granted. He also had the advantage of working within a recognized tradition that already enjoyed a wide audience. The sophisticated reading public of Baghdad and Cairo could appreciate Mas'udi's lively blend of dynastic history, anecdote, and general encyclopedia. Although the Golden Age of Abbasid literature was over, the spirit of Jahiz and the scholars associated with the translation of Greek science into Arabic lives on in Mas'udi. He is intellectually part of that world; the pages of the Meadows of Gold are pervaded with the tolerance, humour and intellectual curiosity of early Abbasid times. At the same time, in this volume, Mas'udi chronicles the slow decline of the dynasty under which Baghdad had become the intellectual capital of the world. The Caliphs become increasingly shadowy, pawns in the hand of ambitious viziers and the Turkish guard and finally, with the coming of the Buwaihids, they lose whatever fragments of personal power they had. It is a sad and moving tale, but the decline in the political power of the Abbasids did not as yet coincide with a decline in cultural life. It rather led to a shift away from Iraq towards Syria, Egypt, North Africa and Spain, where other dynasties attracted ambitious scholars and writers. Historical writing among the Arabs had reached a high level in the generation just before Mas'udi's own...
