By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers
The Consequences Of The Umayyad
Caliphate
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.” 1
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.” 2
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.3
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.4
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.5
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.” 6
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." 7
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." 8
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!" 9
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.10
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.11
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." 12
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." 13
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.14
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.15 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.16
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.17 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.18
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.19
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.20
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.21
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.22
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.23
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.24
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 17,656.25
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.26
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, 27 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.28
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.29
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.30
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.31
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.32
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.33
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.34 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.35
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.36
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.37
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.38
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.39
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.40
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.41
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.42
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.43
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.44
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.45
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.46
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 Pandora's box of
Yemeni-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.47
1. Edward Gibbon, The
Decline and Pall of the Roman Empire, 1978, Vol. 5, pp. 398-99.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Noeldeke, Sketches from Eastern History, 1892, p. 73.
5. Abdel Rahman ibn
Abdullah ibn Abdel Hakam, Futuh Misr wa-Akhbaruha,
Yale University Press, 1922, p. 65.
6. ibn Khaldun, Kitab
al-Ibar wa-Diwan al-Mubtada wa-l-Khabar, Beirut,
1961, Vol. 1, p. 278.
7. M. J. Kister,
Concepts and Ideas at the Dawn of Islam, 1997, p. 284.
8. Ahmad ibn Yahya
al-Baladhuri, Futuh al-Buldan, Cairo, 1957, Vol. 2, p. 149.
9. 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.
10. E. Ashtor, A Social and Economic History of the Near East in
the Middle Ages, 1976, pp. 81-84.
11. 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.
12. 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.
13. G. E. von Grunebaum, Classical Islam: A History 600-1258, 1970, p.
57.
14. See: Jashiyari, Kitab al- Wuzara wa-l-Kutab, Cairo, 1938, p. 17; Morony, Iraq after the Muslim Conquest, Princeton
University Press, 1984, p. 56.
15. Baladhuri, Futuh, Vol. 1, pp. 33-41, 76--83. A Jewish
community nevertheless managed to survive in Yemen until the 1940s.
16. 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.
17. 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.
18. 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.
19. 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.
20. Crone, Roman,
Provincial, and Islamic Law: The Origins of the Islamic Patronage, Cambridge
University Press, 1987, pp. 40-88.
21. 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.
22. Baladhuri, Futuh, Vol. 2, pp. 131--49; Elias Shoufany, AI-Rida and the Muslim Conquest of Arabia,Toronto University Press, 1973.
23. Muhammad ibn Jarir
al-Tabari, Tarikh al-Rusul wa-I-Muluk, Cairo, 1966, Vol. 3, pp. 287-301.
24. 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?"
25. 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.
26. Mas'udi, Muruj, Vol. 3, pp. 120-54; Hinds, Studies, pp.
56-66.
27. Mas'udi, Muruj, Vol. 3, pp. 155-63.
28. 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.
29. F. Harb,
"Wine Poetry;' in Julia Ashtiany et al, Abbasid
Belles-Lettres, Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 224.
30. Thomas W. Arnold,
The Caliphate, 1967, pp. 31-33.
31. Von Kremer, The
Orient under the Caliphs, Calcutta, 1856 pp. 163-64.
32. M. J. Kister,
"The Battle of the Harra," in Miriam Rosen-Ayalon, ed., Studies in
Memory of Gaston Wiet, 1977, pp. 30-50.
33. 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.
34. Mas'udi, Muruj, Vol. 3, pp. 331-32.
35. Jurji Zaydan,
History of Islamic Civilizations. Part 4: Umayyads and Abbasids, trans. D. S.
Margoliouth, 1907, p. Ill.
36. Abd al-Ameer Abd
Dixon, The Umayyad Caliphate: A Political Study, 1971), Chapter 5.
37. 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.
38. M. A. Shaban, The
Abbasid Revolution, Cambridge University Press, 1970, pp. 138-49.
39. Mas'udi, Muruj, Vol. 3, pp. 248-59; Ya'qubi,
Ta'rikh, Voi. 2, pp. 243-47.
40. Tabari, Ta'rikh, Vol. 6, pp. 115-16. See also: ibid. pp. 45-114; Ya'qubi, Ta'rikh, Vo!. 2, p. 307;
Mas'udi, Muruj, Vol. 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.
41. 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.
42. 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.
43. 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
Islamica, 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.
44. Shaban, The
Abbasid Revolution, pp. xv, xvi, 156-57; M. Sharon, Revolt: The Social and
Military Aspects of the Abbasid Revolution, 1990.
45. C. E. Bosworth,
"Byzantium and the Arabs: War and Peace between Two World
Civilizations," in his The Arabs, Byzantium, and Iran, p. 64.
46. 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.
47. 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.
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