The rise to power of Abū Isḥāq al-Mu‘taṣim, during the reign of his brother al-Ma’mūn, was to herald a change in the government of the Islamic state as profound as anything which had resulted from the ‘Abbasid revolution. But it was a change of a very different sort. The ‘Abbasid revolution was a broadly based popular movement which aimed to overthrow the established order and to replace it with a society which would more truly reflect the ideals of Islam and its founder. Al-Mu‘taṣim’s revolution, however, was conducted by a fairly small group enjoying virtually no mass support and concerned to preserve ‘Abbasid rule rather than to overturn it. To achieve this, the caliph felt that he had to use new men and new methods, to be guided by a new ideology and to found a new capital.
Al-Mu‘taṣim was in many ways a new man himself; one of Hārūn’s younger sons, he had been given no place in the elaborate succession arrangements his father had worked out and he was only fifteen years old at the outbreak of the civil war. He remained in Baghdad, and in the final stages of the war supported Ibrāhīm b. al-Mahdī in his opposition to al-Ma’mūn and the Banū Sahl. In 199/814–815, he began to buy slaves in Baghdad from their previous owners and to train them for military service, and both Itākh, a Khazar who had been a cook for his previous owner, and Ashinās were in his service before 202/817–818. He also entered into an arrangement with the Samanid family, who controlled much of the Samarqand area and sent him slaves directly from Turkestan. The private army he built up probably numbered only 3,000–4,000 by the end of al-Ma’mūn’s reign, but they were well trained and disciplined and formed a formidable fighting force. His leadership of this army meant that al-Mu‘taṣim, alone of all the members of the ‘Abbasid family, had military support on which he could call and al-Ma’mūn was increasingly obliged to turn to him for help. When in 213/828 ‘Abd Allāh b. Ṭāhir was appointed the governor of Khurāsān on the death of his brother Ṭalḥa, al-Mu‘taṣim took over all his responsibilities in Syria and Egypt, thus becoming one of the most powerful men in the caliphate. It was this military power, coupled with al-Mu‘taṣim’s own forceful and determined personality, which induced al-Ma’mūn to set aside the claims of his own son al-‘Abbās and to adopt al-Mu‘taṣim as his heir. When al-Ma’mūn died in 218/833 during a campaign against the Byzantines, his brother was accepted as caliph, not without some murmurings of dissent from those who saw clearly what the new regime would bring.
The new order was based firmly on the army al-Mu‘taṣim had built up. Few questions in the history of the period have caused as much controversy as this introduction of “slave soldiers” into the Muslim world, and scholars have seen this as an essentially Islamic phenomenon which was to culminate in the rule of Egypt and Syria by the Mamluk, or “Slave Dynasty”, in the later Middle Ages. Two major interpretations have been offered in recent years of the emergence of slave soldiers; both Crone and Pipes see this as a major turning point and for Crone, at least, it represents the bankruptcy of the Islamic polity, the failure of the community itself to produce an acceptable ruling élite. For Shaban and, more recently, De la Vaissière, however, the problem has been misunderstood; they point out, rightly, that many of those who are lumped together as Turkish slaves were neither slaves nor Turks – al-Afshīn, for example, one of al-Mu‘taṣim’s foremost military commanders in the early years of his reign, was of Iranian extraction and the ruler of an independent principality in Transoxania. Al-Afshīn is a local royal title rather than a personal name. Neither of these views is wholly adequate. The evidence for the recruitment of slaves cannot be dismissed; al-Afshīn may have been a prince but the servile origins of the three most powerful military leaders to emerge during this period, Ītākh, Ashinās and Waṣīf, are beyond doubt. Gordon, in another recent discussion of the issue, makes the point that many of these soldiers were certainly of servile origin but that the links with the later “mamlūk paradigm” are far from clear. The word mamlūk is very rarely used to describe these men, and soldiers of slave origin are usually referred to as ghilmān (sing. ghulām), an Arabic word originally simply meaning boy. They are also described as Turks, an ethnic denominator, or as mawālī, which means, among other things, freedmen or ex-slaves. It is clear that these men came from the margins of the Muslim world but recruitment of marginal peoples to form a military élite was rather a process common to many cultures. In the contemporary Byzantine Empire, marginal peoples played a major role in the army, even producing emperors like Leo the Isaurian in 717 and Basil the Macedonian in 876. While neither Leo nor Basil were technically slaves, they were from remote frontier areas and as firmly outside the established élite of the empire as Ashinās or Ītākh were in the Islamic world. Certainly, there were soldiers who had been slaves, some of whom became very powerful, but at the same time there were many soldiers who were not slaves and there seems to have been no effective distinction between them. The real change was not that the community was ruled by slaves but rather that the army became the preserve of different minority groups: Turks, Armenians, Berbers, recruited from the fringes of empire, rather than from the towns and cities of Iraq and Syria or the bedouin tribes of the Arabian Desert. This meant that the military caste became separate from the rest of society. Generals did not have brothers who were merchants or teachers in the mosque. Ashinās, for example, though he ruled over half the caliphate, never learned to speak Arabic properly. This divorce of the military élite from the rest of society, by origin, language and custom, was to be a distinctive feature of many Islamic societies.
It seems that these new soldiers brought with them new military technologies. The Turks were well known for their skill as mounted archers. They were famous for their hardiness and their horsemanship, having been brought up to ride from a very early age. It was this ability that enabled them to use their short powerful bows from the back of fast moving horses to devastating effect. The mounted archers were the most formidable fighters of the day and comparatively small forces of mounted archers came to replace the larger armies of foot soldiers who dominated early Islamic warfare. As always, total numbers are very difficult to estimate, but the largest number of Turks mentioned in contemporary sources was 10,000 when they all united to depose the unfortunate caliph al-Muhtadī in 256/870. More typically, Turkish armies of the period numbered between 2,000 and 5,000. This compares with the 40,000–50,000 abnā that ‘Alī b. ‘īsā b. Māhān had led out of Baghdad to attack al-Ma’mūn in 195/811 or the 135,000 soldiers Hārūn is alleged to have led against the Byzantines in 190/806. Like the mounted knights of western Europe, they were few in number but very expensive to maintain and support, and providing for them placed a massive strain on state resources.
Many groups which had been influential now lost this status. This can be clearly seen in the case of Egypt. The Egyptian chronicler al-Kindī says that when al-Mu‘taṣim came to the throne, he dropped the names of the Arabs from the dīwān, meaning that they were no longer to be paid the ‘aīā’ (salary) as of right. Members of the old established Arab families, mostly in Fusṭāṭ, had drawn salaries from the revenues of Egypt by virtue of their descent from the conquerors, but this was now stopped and the locally recruited jund (army) disbanded. Most of the taxes of Egypt were to be sent to Sāmarrā and only the Turkish soldiers employed by the local governors were to receive salaries. This brought to an end the system of payments originated by ‘Umar in the dīwān, and a link with the days of early Islam was severed forever.
It also marked the end of another long-running controversy over the extent to which the central government could collect taxes from the provinces. From the time of ‘Uthmān, caliphs had tried to do this, but a strong body of opinion had held that revenues collected in, for example, Khurāsān should be distributed there. The Umayyads seem to have had only limited success in extracting revenues – the early ‘Abbasids had probably done better, but under al-Mu‘taṣim, the triumph of the central government was complete. Even Khurāsān, always the most recalcitrant province, sent substantial sums to Iraq.
The new army was the basis of al-Mu‘taṣim’s strength, and its leaders came to hold important provincial governorates. Ashinās was the governor of Egypt and Syria from 219/834 until his death in 230/844, and the Caliph al-Wāthiq put him in charge of all the lands from Sāmarrā to the far west. Ītākh’s career blossomed more slowly but in 225/839–840 he was appointed to Yemen, and when Ashinās died, it was Ītākh who took over his powers in the west. These vast governorates did not, however, form independent power bases. Ashinās seldom visited the provinces he was in charge of, but appointed deputies, while he himself remained in Sāmarrā. This arrangement may simply have meant that he had charge of the revenues from these areas which he distributed to his military following. It represented a further centralizing of power, for the under-governors of the provinces seldom appeared at court and played little part in the making of political decisions.
The Tahirid family retained their power and influence under al-Mu‘taṣim and his successors. ‘Abd Allāh b. Ṭāhir ruled Khurāsān until his death in 230/845, when he was succeeded by his son Ṭāhir; and the family remained firmly in control of the province until the disturbances which followed the death of the Caliph al-Mutawakkil in 247/861. They ruled a “greater Khurā- sān” which stretched from Rayy in the west to the northeastern frontiers of the Islamic world and also included Sīstān to the south. This was the Khurāsān quarter of the old Sasanian Empire, the same area which Abū Muslim had ruled after the ‘Abbasid revolution and which had been assigned to al-Ma’mūn under Hārūn’s succession agreement. The capital was moved west to Nīshāpūr, and the Tahirids ruled in alliance with those local magnates, like the Samanid family in the Samarqand area, who had supported al-Ma’mūn in the civil war. Because of their great power and the fact that succession to the governorate ran in the family, the Tahirids are sometimes considered as the first independent Iranian dynasty, but such a view is misleading. The arrangement was effectively a partnership between the ‘Abbasids and the Tahirids. Under Tahirid rule, Khurāsān contributed large sums in taxation to the central government, perhaps more than had ever been collected before, and we are also told of the caliphs providing money for irrigation projects in the province. Far from being the beginning of independence, Tahirid rule was the most successful solution the ‘Abbasids ever devised for integrating the province into the caliphate.
It is important to remember, too, that the Tahirids were as powerful in Baghdad as in Khurāsān itself, and it is probable that the revenues of Khurāsān were used to maintain the family’s influence in that city. When ‘Abd Allāh b. Ṭāhir had left to take up his position in Khurāsān in 213/828, he was succeeded in Baghdad by his cousin Isḥāq b. Ibrāhīm, who remained an effective ruler of the city until his death over twenty years later in 235/850, after which he was followed by other members of the family. It was this Tahirid control which secured the loyalty of the Baghdadis to the caliphate, especially after al-Mu‘taṣim had moved the capital to Sāmarrā, and it was the Tahirids who suppressed the only real disturbance in the city during these years, the conspiracy of Aḥmad b. Naṣr al-Khuzā‘ī in 231/846. One of the main reasons for the civil war had been the desire of the abnā’ under ‘Alī b. ‘Īsā to have access to the tax revenues of Khurāsān; now, under Tahirid patronage, their children had just that. Baghdad could prove useful to the caliphs as a rival source of power to Sāmarrā with its Turkish population; when al-Mutawakkil wished to dispose of the Turk Ītākh in 235/849, he arranged that the execution be carried out by the Tahirids in Baghdad, safely away from Ītākh’s followers in Sāmarrā.
While the Turks and the Tahirids supplied the military force behind the new government, the administration was carried on by a new generation of bureaucrats in the Barmakid and Sahlid traditions. The government was dependent on the revenues of Iraq, and sometimes of neighbouring areas like Ahwāz and Fārs, and there can be no doubt that these areas had been severely damaged by the fighting in the civil war. It also seems that the tax registers had been largely destroyed by fire in Baghdad. In consequence, the caliphs needed men who knew and understood the collection of taxes in Iraq. To supply this need, a new class of administrators emerged. Like the Sahlids, these were drawn almost entirely from the landowners and merchants of the small towns of the Sawād, and they were almost without exception men of Persian or Nabatī (local Aramaean) extraction. Most of them were Muslims, often newly converted, but Christians played a minor role all through the period. While these men had no soldiers or military power of their own, even the most successful and ruthless Turkish soldiers were dependent on their cooperation, or at least the cooperation of one faction among them. When al-Mu‘taṣim became caliph, he kept on his old secretary, the cautious and frugal al-Faḍl b. Marwān, but he was soon replaced as the head of the administration by a rich merchant whose father had made a fortune supplying oil in Baghdad, Muḥammad b. al-Zayyāt. Muḥammad became wazīr in 221/836, retained the office all through the reigns of al-Mu‘taṣim and al-Wāthiq and was dismissed only after the accession of al-Mutawakkil. He was a competent financial expert but a callous and brutal man who made many enemies, not just among taxpayers but among his fellow kuttāb as well. As wazīr, he was not the major force in the formation of government policy as both the Barmakids and Sahlids had been at the height of their power, but he was in undisputed control of financial business.
The new regime used new personnel and adopted a new ideology. Throughout the early ‘Abbasid period, attempts had been made to reconcile to ‘Abbasid rule the partisans of the family of ‘Alī and all those who wanted a religious leadership. Al-Ma’mūn had gone furthest in this with the adoption of the ‘Alid heir and the abandonment of ‘Abbasid black for ‘Alid green as the colour of court robes. In the event, this total switch generated so much resentment among the Baghdadis and the members of the ‘Abbasid family that it had proved impossible to put into effect. Nonetheless, al-Ma’mūn and his successors remained committed to finding a halfway house between the secular monarchy of the Umayyads and the theocratic state espoused by many ‘Alid supporters. The title of imām, originally assumed by al-Ma’mūn, continued to be used by the caliphs, announcing their claims to religious leadership as well as the secular authority embodied in their other title of amīr al-mu’minīn. Al-Ma’mūn also came to adopt a theological position known as Mu‘tazilism. Mu‘tazilism was essentially concerned with the nature of authority in the community, the question at issue being the relationship between the powers of the caliph and the authority of Revelation and Tradition. For some, the caliph was no more than an executive who was obliged to rule within the limits laid down by the Qur’ān and Sunna, while others allowed the imām to interpret and expand on Revelation to accommodate the changing needs of the community. Mu‘tazilism stood somewhere between these two positions and defined itself by declaring that the Qur’ān was created, as distinct from the belief that it was eternal with God. If it was created in time, then it could be modified to suit different times, and the judgement of a God-guided imām might supersede it. This position also defined itself in historical terms in the discussion of the conflicts between ‘Alī and his enemies; the Mu‘tazilīs favoured neither one side nor the other and withdrew from the conflict (the name Mu‘tazila derives from the Arabic word for withdrawal), although ‘Alī, the archetype of the God-guided imām, was held in high esteem. It was, in short, a position which could hope to attract support from most shades of the theological and political spectrum and enhance the power of the caliph by giving his word theocratic force.
Mu‘tazilism as a system of thought had existed before the reign of al-Ma’mūn and continued to exist after the reign of al-Mutawakkil, but it was only in the first half of the third/ninth century that the issue came to the centre of the political stage, generating all the fervour and passion of a Byzantine theological controversy. The reason for this was the close relationship between Mu‘tazilī ideas and the ruling group which surrounded the caliph. It became in effect the philosophy of the Sāmarrā élite; if one opposed the Sāmarrā élite, one opposed Mu‘tazilism. The man responsible for the close links between religious belief and political controversy seems to have been the chief qāḍī, Aḥmad b. Abī Du’ād, perhaps the most influential of all the caliph’s counsellors at this time and a man whose influence continued unabated from the end of al-Ma’mūn’s reign to the beginning of al-Mutawakkil’s. Al-Ma’mūn and his advisers did not content themselves with proclaiming their own adherence to the doctrine – they also demanded that all other government functionaries do so too. The imām-caliph had given his view, and to question it was to oppose his authority; so belief in the createdness of the Qur’ān became the touchstone of political loyalty. In order to ensure conformity on this issue, al-Ma’mūn took the unprecedented step of setting up an “inquisition”, the miḥna, to examine the views of his subjects. Never before had a caliph claimed the right to decide such matters of doctrine, and entrenched positions were taken up on both sides. The Mu‘tazilī position was accepted by many, not just those in Sāmarrā; the adherents of the house of ‘Alī might appreciate the deference Mu‘tazilīs paid to the memory of the fourth caliph, and Christians and Jews seem to have enjoyed the benefits of tolerance. But the doctrine aroused great opposition, notably in Baghdad. Here, a group of Traditionists, notably Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, asserted the absolute inviolability of the Qur’ān and Sunna, arguing that no imām of the present day should presume to tamper with the reported utterances of the Prophet, and acceptance of the Sunna in its entirety was the sine qua non of true Islam. The resistance to Mu‘tazilism was the sign of resentment against the Sāmarrā élite; it is significant that the one serious attempt to challenge the domination of that élite in Iraq was made in opposition to the doctrine of the createdness of the Qur’ān, in Baghdad under the leadership of a scion of one of the most important of the abnā’ families, Aḥmad b. Naṣr al-Khuzā‘ī in 231/846.
To house his new élite, al-Mu‘taṣim decided to found a new city and to leave Baghdad permanently. There were many reasons for this; the most immediate was the deteriorating relationship between the newly important Turkish troops and remnants of the old abnā’, who resented their loss of status. But the foundation of a new capital demonstrated the establishment of the new regime. Here, the new army could be given land and economic opportunities which were totally impossible in Baghdad with its established landowners and merchants. Besides, in Sāmarrā, land was virtually free and the caliph could reward his chosen élite generously at virtually no cost to the exchequer; indeed, judging by some of the figures given, the government could hope to derive a substantial income from the development of shops and other commercial premises. In fact, the move was a sensible and realistic one. At one level, it allowed the caliphs to establish their followers, free from the constraints, even the contamination, of the existing city; on the other, it was a sort of gigantic property speculation in which both government and its followers could expect to benefit.
The site of the new city had to be in Iraq, since it was from Iraq that the revenues on which the government depended were drawn. After some debate, a site was selected at Sāmarrā about 80 miles north of Baghdad on the Tigris. Unfortunately, the planners showed none of the genius of al-Manṣūr which had ensured the success of Baghdad. The site was on a gravelly plain above the Tigris with no naturally flowing water supply and poor river communications. That such a site prospered at all was entirely due to the determination of the caliphs. The plan of the city can still be seen in aerial photographs today – the long straight streets bordered rectangular compounds where different military leaders could be established with their followers. The most important structures were the mosques and palaces of the favoured members of the ‘Abbasid family and of grandees of the new order like Ashinās, the walls of whose palace are still visible. The building materials were those of the Mesopotamian plain, mud-brick buildings, often faced with stucco and roofed with wooden beams. Time has not on the whole dealt kindly with the ruins and they have little of the charm of the Umayyad palaces of the Syrian Desert, but the sheer size and obvious planning of the site remain impressive. The new town was always something of an anomaly; in Baghdad, al-Manṣūr had simply set the wheels in motion, and natural economic forces had ensured the survival and growth of the city. In Sāmarrā, massive investment by three successive caliphs failed to produce a thriving metropolis, and when the government abandoned the site, the city dwindled and shrank. But for the half-century of its glory, it was the capital of the caliphate and, just as Baghdad had been the city of the abnā’, so Sāmarrā was the city of the new army of al-Mu‘taṣim and his followers.
The years between the death of al-Ma’mūn in 218/833 and the assassination of al-Mutawakkil in 247/861 were on the whole years of prosperity and peace, at least in the heart of the empire. Al-Mu‘taṣim did not let his new army remain idle, and he acquired the reputation of being one of the warrior-caliphs of Islam. His most celebrated campaigns, and, as with his predecessors, the only ones in which he himself participated, were the attacks on the Byzantine Empire, especially the famous sack of Amorion in 223/838. The strength of the new army and the caliph’s devotion to the cause of Islam could be demonstrated for all to see. The victories were certainly notable, even if Amorion was not the most impressive of Byzantine cities, but ‘Abbasid propaganda played them up to the full, and the lengthy accounts of the details of the campaigns in the chronicle of al-Ṭabarī and the poetry of Abū Tammām and others reflect the public relations side of the enterprise. Captives were certainly taken, and the frontiers of the Muslim world safeguarded, but no new territory was annexed.
The other campaigns for which the reign is famous are usually described as the suppression of rebellions, but this gives the impression that the caliphate was being weakened by internal dissent. In reality, these were operations of internal expansion; there were many areas within the boundaries of the caliphate where Muslim rule was very ineffective and where the local people and their chiefs retained almost complete independence. One such area was in northwestern Iran, in the mountains of Āzarbayjān. This wild and inaccessible area had been little visited by the early Muslims, who had contented themselves with establishing posts in lowland cities like Ardabīl and Zanjān and had left the mountain peoples largely undisturbed. Towards the end of the second century, however, this situation began to change. Arabs began to move into the region, mostly from the Mosul area, attracted by the rich mineral resources of the country. Here, they began to settle in cities such as Tabrīz and Marāgha. This influx of colonists disturbed the status quo and led the indigenous mountain people to defy the Muslims. This they did under the leadership of one Bābak, a man of obscure origins who by his determination and ability assumed the leadership. The rebellion had begun during the civil war in 201/816–817, and al-Ma’mūn’s government had largely left the local Arabs to fend for themselves. Various expeditions were led by soldiers of fortune, hoping to reap the benefits of subduing the country, but Bābak had worsted them all. Al-Mu‘taṣim, after his accession, decided that the government should take action against the insurgents and despatched one of his leading generals, al-Afshīn, to conduct the campaign. That Bābak was not a Muslim gave added justification for the action and attracted volunteers to fight alongside the caliphal army. Al-Afshīn was a cautious and determined commander: the caliph supported him with men and money and he gradually succeeded in subduing the country. Finally in 222/837, after three years of campaigning, Bābak’s centre at Budhdh was occupied by al-Afshīn’s troops and he himself was forced to surrender.
The second major campaign was against Māzyār b. Qārin, the ruler of Ṭabaristān at the southern end of the Caspian. Here again was a mountainous region which had never been wholly integrated into the empire. While there were Muslim cities like Āmul and Sāriyya on the plains along the shore of the Caspian, the mountains had remained in the hands of local dynasties who paid some tribute to the Muslims. Māzyār b. Qārin was ambitious and determined to extend his control in the area. He also strongly resented the Tahirids, being content to acknowledge the overlordship of the caliph but not that of a rival princely family. Māzyār was encouraged to defy the government by al-Afshīn, who, it is reported, hoped to use him to discredit the Tahirids and secure the governorate of Khurāsān for himself. Violence began in 224/838–839, when Māzyār’s men began to attack the Muslim settlers in āmul and Sāriyya and destroyed their cities and executed many of the men. The Tahirids responded to appeals from the settlers, and Tahirid forces from Baghdad and Khurāsān, supported by the caliph, succeeded in defeating the rebel, who was taken to Sāmarrā and flogged to death. Solidarity between al-Mu‘taṣim and the Tahirids had once again proved effective, but it is worth noting that the autonomy of the mountainous area of Ṭabaristān was not destroyed. Māzyār was replaced by a member of his own family who was prepared to cooperate with the Tahirids.
While the wars were the most important events of al-Mu‘taṣim’s reign, the caliph faced internal opposition from various quarters. Al-‘Abbās b. al-Ma’mūn, passed over for the caliphate, was naturally a focus for discontent, and in 223/838, on the return from the Amorion campaign, a conspiracy came to light in which al-‘Abbās and a number of eastern Iranian officers, some of them from very prominent families, were involved. Many of these were men who had fought for al-Ma’mūn and enjoyed high status but now found themselves supplanted by Ashinās and Ītākh, who, along with the caliph, were the main targets of their anger. The conspiracy was unmasked and the main participants put to death by subtle and ingenious tortures. The other major conspiracy was alleged to have been undertaken by al-Afshīn. The victor in the war against Bābak enjoyed great favour for a year or two after his triumph, but he was an odd man out among the élite. The ruler of the principality of Ushrūsana, he resented Ītākh and Ashinās but was also a deadly rival of the Tahirids, hoping to challenge their control of Khurāsān. His indiscreet correspondence with the rebel Māzyār came to light – his enemies were quick to strike, and a show trial was arranged in 225/840 (brilliantly reported by al-Ṭabarī). He was accused of apostasy, of being a false Muslim and of treasonous relations with Māzyār. Witnesses were called from Transoxania who testified to the divine status he enjoyed among his own people and his disregard for the ways of Islam; he and the other kings of Sughd (Soghdia), it was revealed, actually prevented people from becoming Muslims and flogged would-be missionaries. The discredited leader, who behaved with great dignity throughout, was led away to die in prison.
Al-Mu‘taṣim died in 227/842, after a reign of eight years, aged about forty-six. In many ways, his reign had been a success; he had destroyed all the opposition to his rule, and the army he had created gave the government an effective authority which it had not known since the days of Hārūn. But it was a highly centralized system. Power lay in the hands of a small number of senior army officers and civilian administrators. As long as the loyalty of these men was assured and their differences did not become open, all was well. Al-Mu‘taṣim was succeeded by his son Hārūn al-Wāthiq, who reigned from 227/842 to 232/847. No other caliph of the period has left so little trace of the history of his times, and it is impossible to form any clear impression of his personality. The government remained almost unchanged. Ibn al-Zayyāt continued as wazīr and Ibn Abī Du’ād as chief qāḍī and counsellor. Death removed a few of the old élite, notably Ashinās and ‘Abd Allāh b. Ṭāhir, both in 230/844–845, but their places were taken by new leaders: Waṣīf and the two Bughās (the Elder and the Younger) among the Turks and ‘Abd Allāh’s son Ṭāhir, with the result that the ruling group remained effectively unchanged. The caliph died after a reign of some five years at the age of thirty-six.
He left no designated successor. There was then a sort of shūra held by the most prominent men in Sāmarrā to choose a new candidate from among the available princes of the ‘Abbasid house. Ibn al-Zayyāt and Ibn Abī Du’ād were naturally there, along with the two leading Turkish officers, Ītākh and Waṣīf, and two less important bureaucrats. What followed is something of a mystery; Ibn al-Zayyāt hoped to continue the status quo by appointing an infant son of al-Wāthiq, but Ibn Abī Du’ād, always a more scrupulous counsellor, objected to the appointment of a child, and so they eventually settled on a brother of the dead caliph, Ja‘far, who took the title of al-Mutawakkil.
If the members of the shūra imagined that they had chosen a pliable candidate who would go along with their wishes, they were soon to find that they had made a serious mistake. The new caliph was determined to assert his own authority and to break with the policies and personnel who had dominated the government of his father and brother. He moved cautiously, attacking individuals, in turn. Ibn al-Zayyāt was the first victim; he had insulted the caliph before his accession, he belonged to no powerful party and was widely disliked because of his cruelty, and so when, in 233/847 he died in a torture apparatus of his own design, the caliph had won an easy victory. In 235/849, just over a year later, al-Mutawakkil arranged with the Tahirids that Ītākh should be assassinated in Baghdad. It was a bold move not without risks, since Ītākh, after the death of Ashinās, was the most powerful of the Turkish officers, but there was no general rising of the Turks, many of whom may have hoped to gain from his disappearance.
In the same year, the caliph made arrangements for the succession. He appointed three of his sons to succeed each other, in turn; in the meantime, they were to take over the supervision of groups of provinces which had previously been entrusted to Ashinās and Ītākh. Al-Muntaṣir, the eldest, was in charge of Egypt and the west as well as the Jazīra and the property rents in Sāmarrā; al-Mu‘tazz was to supervise the Tahirid areas in the east, while al-Mu’ayyad was given most of Syria and Palestine. There is no evidence that any of the young princes ever visited the areas over which they exercised control, but the object was probably to give them the experience of administration and the use of tax revenue to build support. In this way, the leading members of the élite in the next generation would be members of the ‘Abbasid family rather than Turkish officers.
Al-Mutawakkil systematically pursued his policy of dismantling the old structure. In 237/851–852, he dismissed Ibn Abī Du’ād, the most influential of all the advisers of the Sāmarrā period and a man who had been largely responsible for his own accession. Along with this went a change in official ideology, a break with Mu‘tazilism. ‘Alī was cursed from the pulpits and the tombs of his descendants destroyed; legislation was introduced to humble Christians and Jews; and the caliph made an attempt to reconcile Baghdad opinion and the Traditionists – the body of the rebel Aḥmad b. Naṣr was allowed a fitting funeral.
In place of the old élite, the caliph employed new advisers: ‘Ubayd Allāh b. Yaḥyā b. Khāqān was appointed wazīr in place of Ibn al-Zayyāt, while al-Fath. b. Khāqān (no relation, apparently) became the caliph’s closest personal friend and counsellor. At the same time, new groups were encouraged to join the army to counterbalance Turkish influence. After al-Mutawakkil’s death, we find ‘Ubayd Allāh b. Yaḥyā seeking support against the Turks from, among others, Arabs, the abnā’ of Baghdad, the Qaysīs of northern Syria and the Armenians. This last group seems to have been increasing in importance in the Islamic state at this time, and the campaign which Bughā the Younger conducted in the area may have served to encourage recruitment. These anti-Turkish groups could raise 20,000 horses and 13,000 feet in Sāmarrā itself at the time of al-Mutawakkil’s death in 247/861, showing how far the Turkish monopoly of military power had been challenged.
With the change in policy came a change in capital. For much the same reasons as al-Mu‘taṣim had left Baghdad, al-Mutawakkil was determined to leave Sāmarrā. In 244/858, he went to Damascus with the intention of moving the capital there, but the project was abandoned, ostensibly because of the plagues but probably because of violent Turkish protest in Sāmarrā. In the end, he compromised and built a new city, complete with palaces and mosques, some miles to the north of Sāmarrā, thus giving him a new site with all the advantages it accrued while he placated the opposition.
The reign was one of comparative peace. At no time perhaps had the caliph and his government exercised such real and effective control over the provinces. The east remained quiet under Tahirid rule, while the Turkish army was used to subdue such unruly groups as the bedouin of the ḥijāz and the people of the Caucasus areas. And yet, the very strength and centralization of the caliphate and the crucial role of the élite army corps in maintaining this unity was to prove a source of weakness. A crisis at the centre would result in the complete collapse of the government structure in the provinces.
The crisis which ended the reign of al-Mutawakkil was largely a product of growing Turkish discontent. The caliph was murdered not because the Turks were so strong that they could dispose of the ruler with impunity but because they felt their position being threatened. They were totally dependent on government salaries and support; without these, their influence and even their livelihood would disappear. Their coup against the ‘Abbasid caliph was more a product of desperation than a sign of triumph. The immediate cause of the plot was that the caliph confiscated the estates of the senior-surviving Turkish leader Waṣīf and handed them over to his favourite, al-Fath. b. Khāqān. It was also said that al-Fath. and the caliph were plotting to murder Waṣīf and other leaders, and they must all have been mindful of the fate of Ītākh. All the killers who burst in on the caliph on the night of 4 Shawwāl 247/9–10 December 861 and slaughtered him and al-Fath. as they sat drinking were Turks.
The conspiracy might well have failed, however, if the Turks had not found an ally whose position was also slipping and in need of restoration: the heir apparent, al-Muntaṣir. In 235/849–850, he had been appointed heir, but by 247/861, it had become clear that his father was considering removing him from this position. ‘Ubayd Allāh b. Yaḥyā and al-Fath. b. Khāqān seem to have been behind this, and determined that the second son, al-Mu‘tazz, should take his place. Al-Muntaṣir was publicly humiliated by not being allowed to lead the prayers at the end of Ramaḍān and more privately when al-Mutawakkil ordered al-Fath. to slap his face as a punishment for his stupidity. Whether the connection between the prince and the Turks was long established is not clear, but we can be certain that they came together in a common cause and determined on a coup which would restore all their positions.
The assassination of al-Mutawakkil ushered in the long, nine-year night of the “anarchy” in Sāmarrā. It was a period when caliphs succeeded one another with bewildering speed, four different rulers being proclaimed and accepted as caliphs, of whom at least three were subsequently killed by assassination or rebellion. To both contemporaries and later historians, it has seemed a time when the office of Commander of the Faithful was no more than a plaything in the hands of rival military factions and when the paralysis of the central government allowed disaffection and separatism to flourish unchecked in the provinces.
To understand the reasons for these confusing events, it is necessary to examine the motives of the main participants, the Turkish military leaders. Almost without exception, these were, as far as we can tell, men of obscure origins, slaves or sons of slaves who had risen to power as military commanders. Their fortunes and the livelihoods of their followers were entirely dependent on the favour of the caliph. Furthermore, they were mostly aliens in a strange land, cut off from the local people and without experience at trade or agriculture. These leaders needed a ruler who was going to rely on them, to the exclusion of other groups, for his support, and would, in turn, repay them with estates and gifts for the leaders and salaries for the rank and file. Bitterness and immediacy were added to the conflict because it seems to have taken place against a background of diminishing resources. Al-Mutawakkil had bequeathed a modest treasure to his successor, but this had soon been dissipated, and the confusion soon led to a steep decline in tax yields from the provinces as local governors kept the taxes for their own use. Evidence suggests that both caliphs and military leaders alike were frequently embarrassed for ready money. The military leaders were caught between a government which was either unable or unwilling to pay the necessary sums and their own men who would soon replace a leader who was unable to secure their salaries. The cutthroat competition for diminishing resources led to conflict between the Turks and other groups and, inevitably, among the Turks themselves. The apparently mindless violence bears the hallmark of the action of desperate and often frightened men.
The obstacles the Turks faced included many of the other groups in the state. First, there were the caliphs themselves. Without exception, the four caliphs of the period took measures to restrict their power and influence. None of them were puppet rulers, and at least two of them, al-Mu‘tazz and al-Muhtadī, showed courage and determination in their efforts to restore the power of the caliphate. But their room for manoeuvre was limited; almost isolated at Sāmarrā, they found it difficult to raise support outside and even if they did, financial difficulties meant that they had no immediate rewards to offer. The Turks also faced the hostility of most of the kuttāb class. There were always secretaries prepared to work for Turkish leaders, but the most able and energetic of them, like al-Mu‘tazz’s wazīr, Aḥmad b. Isrā’īl, were determined to prevent the military exercising any direct control over the financial affairs of the caliphates and to restore the wazirate to the position it had enjoyed under Ibn al-Zayyāt and Ibn Khāqān. Then, there were other rival groups of soldiers (north African Maghāriba are the most frequently mentioned) who were sometimes grouped together under the name of Shākiriyya. They seem to have lacked the fierce esprit de corps and determined leadership of the Turks, but the Turks had to come to terms with them or remove them from influence. Finally and most deadly among the enemies of every Turkish leader were his rivals from his own kind. The triumph of one syndicate of leaders meant exile, disgrace, poverty and even death for another. The Turks showed some unity and common purpose in their action against al-Mutawakkil but almost immediately after that, divisions began to appear and much of the violence of the period occurred between rival Turkish leaders.
The assassination of al-Mutawakkil left his son al-Muntaṣir the unchallenged ruler of the caliphate. The new administration, under Aḥmad b. al-Khaṣīb the wazīr, stressed continuity with the old; it was given out that the caliph had been murdered by al-Fath. b. Khāqān, his favourite, who had subsequently been executed by the guard. Nonetheless, changes soon became apparent. The Turkish leaders claimed the reward of their support and became much more vocal in the making of policy; under pressure from Waṣīf and Bughā the Younger, al-Muntaṣir’s brothers were obliged to resign their positions in the succession, while the Turks looked for a more amenable heir. Waṣīf was sent to the Byzantine front for four years with an army, largely drawn from the Shākiriyya, a connection he was later to make use of. Al-Muntaṣir restored the position of the Turks and also seems to have restored to favour the ‘Alid family, who were to enjoy the status which they had had in the years of Mu‘tazilite government under al-Mu‘taṣim and al-Wāthiq but of which al-Mutawakkil had deprived them. How successful this government might have been is hard to tell, but in Rabī‘ II 248/June 862, the caliph died after a reign of six months, possibly of natural causes.
The Turks balked at the prospect of choosing one of his minor sons and felt that they could not trust his deposed brothers, so they turned to another branch of the family and chose a grandson of al-Mu‘taṣim, who was duly installed with the title of al-Musta‘īn. From the beginning of the reign, the Turkish leaders tightened their grip on the government; Ibn al-Khaṣīb was sent to Crete in exile, while the wazirate passed, for the first time ever, to a Turkish leader, Utāmish. Unusually for a Turk, Utāmish busied himself with the financial administration, aided by his secretary, Shujā‘ b. al-Qāsim. The purpose of this arrangement was probably to ensure that the revenues were used for the benefit of the military without the interference of civilian advisers, but the experiment was not a success and many Turks believed that the wazīr, and his agent in the palace, along with the caliph’s mother, was embezzling money rightfully due to them. In Rabī‘ II 249/June 863, Utāmish was murdered by troops incited by his rivals Waṣīf and Bughā the Younger. After a short period of civilian administration, Waṣīf assumed the position of wazīr, but he seems to have aroused the same hostility as Utāmish had done before him. Feeling his position in Sāmarrā under attack, he turned to the Shākiriyya connections he had forged on the Byzantine front (Waṣīf was the only Turkish leader who seems to have tried to seek military support from non-Turkish groups). He and Bughā the Younger left Sāmarrā for Baghdad, where they were followed by the Caliph al-Musta‘īn in the beginning of 251/865. The Turks remaining in Sāmarrā were well aware that an alliance of the caliph, Waṣīf, Bughā the Younger, the Tahirids and Shākiriyya of Baghdad was a formidable threat to their position and they decided on war. They chose a new caliph for themselves, none other than al-Muntaṣir’s brother al-Mu‘tazz, and embarked on the siege of Baghdad.
The second siege of Baghdad echoed many of the features of the first during the reign of al-Amīn. Once again, it was long and hard-fought and once again the ‘ayyārūn (a word which originally meant vagabonds but seems to have lost its pejorative overtones and might be translated as irregulars) played an important role. Once again too, it was divisions among the defenders which led to the fall of the city. Waṣīf and Bughā the Younger did not wish to destroy the army of Sāmarrā, from which they themselves had sprung, and hand over power to others. Furthermore, the Tahirid leader became disillusioned with the rebels and so resistance collapsed – the unfortunate al-Musta‘īn was exiled to Wāsiṭ but was murdered en route, and once again there was a caliph ruling in Sāmarrā with the support of the Turkish military (252/866).
The new caliph was able and determined. He appointed Aḥmad b. Isrā’īl as his wazīr, and civil and military administrations were once again divided in the old way. He ordered that the names of Waṣīf and Bughā be removed from the dīwāns; in 253/867, Waṣīf was murdered by his Turkish rivals; Bughā the Younger died the next year in prison; and Bughā the Elder’s able son, Mūsā, was exiled to Hamadhān. But this operation did not proceed without opposition; predictably, many Turks opposed it, but so too did the caliph’s own brother, Abū Aḥmad, later known as al-Muwaffaq, who had led the armies of Sāmarrā against Baghdad and established close links with many Turkish leaders, notably Mūsā b. Bughā. The caliph’s position was further weakened by the decline of Tahirid power in Baghdad in the aftermath of the siege and especially after the accession of Sulaymān b. ‘Abd Allāh b. Ṭahir in 255/869. This meant that the caliph was unable to look for support from that quarter.
In 255/869, the lead was taken by a partnership of Turkish military leaders: Wasīf’s son, Ṣāliḥ, and Bāyikbāk. Their first target was the wazīr Aḥmad b. Isrā’īl. They began to assume governorships of provinces in their own name, sending deputies to administer them – Bāyikbāk sending Aḥmad b. Ṭūlūn to Egypt, for example. The object of this was again to avoid civilian control of the revenues, and the wazīr fought a determined but losing battle to keep the military out of the financial administration. In Jumādā II 255/June 870, Ṣālih. launched his attack and forced the removal of Ibn Isrā’īl. Al-Mu‘tazz attempted to raise support from other troops, notably the Maghāriba but was fatally short of money. Unable to find 50,000 dīnārs (the sort of sum Hārūn had given to successful poets) to pay his supporters, he saw them defect to his enemies and a month after the removal of the faithful wazīr, he fell a victim to the Turks.
In his place, the military appointed Muḥammad, son of al-Wāthiq, who took the title of al-Muhtadī. Once again, they found themselves confronted by a caliph determined to take up the fight, against all odds, to restore the dignity of his office. He introduced a new style into caliphal behaviour; he was austere and puritanical, sat in court to listen to grievances in person and established a rapport with the common people of Sāmarrā which none of his predecessors seem to have enjoyed. For the first six months, the government was run by Ṣālih. b. Waṣīf, but he was no more successful in providing adequate revenues than his father and Utāmish before him had been. Despite the execution of Aḥmad b. Isrā’īl and violent extortion from other kuttāb, his position continued to weaken until he was supplanted by Mūsā b. Bughā who came from his base in Hamadhān. Friction between the new man and the caliph continued to increase and, after eleven months of his reign in Rajab 256/summer 870, led to armed conflict. The caliph appealed to the religious status of his office and the affection of the people, but for the last time for half a century, the military were able to crush an obstreperous ‘Abbasid and he died fighting bravely.
The anarchy came to an end with al-Muhtadī’s death. This was partly because the feuds among the Turkish leaders had almost played themselves out, leaving Mūsā b. Bughā and his men in unchallenged control. It did not come to an end because an ‘Abbasid caliph defeated and humiliated the Turks (the events of the previous nine years had shown that there was no real substitute for Turkish military power), but because they were assured of a place in the new regime and integrated once more into the structure of the state. This compromise came about as a result of the unusual personality and career of Abū Aḥmad al-Muwaffaq.
Unlike the other members of his family, it seems that from an early stage, al-Muwaffaq had embarked on a military career. During the recent civil war, he had been in command of the Sāmarrā forces of al-Mu‘tazz against al-Musta‘īn and the Baghdadis. Later, he had shown his identification with the Turkish cause by refusing to support al-Mu‘tazz’s move to curb the military and going into exile instead. He maintained especially close relations with another exiled member of the military, Mūsā, son of Bughā the Elder, who had been sent to Hamadhān, and when Mūsā returned to Sāmarrā during al-Muhtadī’s reign to take over from Ṣālih. b. Waṣīf, Abū Aḥmad was in a very strong position. After al-Muhtadī’s death, however, he did not arrange for his own succession but allowed the appointment of his brother Aḥmad with the title of al-Mu‘tamid. Al-Mu‘tamid is often seen as a rather feeble personality, manipulated by his brother, but this is probably unfair. His brother, like al-Mu‘taṣim in the reign of al-Ma’mūn, had put himself in an unchallengeable position because he alone of all the ‘Abbasids could call on a reliable military force to support his political ambitions. Until his death in 264/877, Mūsā b. Bughā was al-Muwaffaq’s right-hand military man, and after this date he continued to rely on Turkish leaders like Kayghalagh and Isḥāq b. Kundājīq, who had been associated with Mūsā, thus building up a new and reliable army loyal to the ‘Abbasid cause. For the Turkish leaders, the solution worked because al-Muwaffaq assured their status and their position as the army of the caliphate and al-Muwaffaq’s role in the civil administration meant that they received their pay. At first, Abū Aḥmad was simply the governor of Iraq and Arabia, but in 261/875, he was given a place in the succession after al-Mu‘tamid’s son and responsibility for the eastern provinces as well.
The caliph, based in Sāmarrā, tried to maintain the independence of his position by seeking the alliance of the powerful governor of Egypt, Aḥmad b. Ṭūlūn, as a counterbalance to his brother. In 269/882, he tried to escape from his tutelage and join up with Ibn Ṭūlūn in Raqqa but was prevented by the governor of Mosul acting for al-Muwaffaq, and he was then brought south to Wāsiṭ. where he could be kept under closer watch. The struggle for power between the two brothers was reflected in the struggle to control the civil administration. At the beginning of his reign, al-Mu‘tamid enjoyed the services of an experienced and able wazīr, ‘Ubayd Allāh b. Yaḥyā b. Khāqān, who had been al-Mutawakkil’s last wazīr and responsible for many of that ruler’s moves against the Turks. He remained wazīr until his death in 263/877 and ensured his master some freedom of action. After ‘Ubayd Allāh’s death, however, al-Mu‘tamid was forced to accept the services of his brother’s secretary, Sulaymān b. Wahb, who was closely connected to the Turkish interests. Shortly afterwards, Sulaymān was himself disgraced and the caliph was again allowed his own wazīr, an Iranian by the name of Ismā‘īl b. Bulbul, but most of the real power lay with al-Muwaffaq’s secretary Ṣā‘id b. Makhlad, who was his personal assistant from 265/878 onwards, helping in civil affairs and acting as a link between his master and the Turkish leaders, with whom his relations were close. In 272/885, his career was terminated and it was the turn of Ibn Bulbul to become wazīr to both brothers, with wide powers of appointment and command of a group of Berber troops in Baghdad.
These manoeuvres were the product of a continuing financial stringency, and the real questions at issue were first the rivalry between the caliph and al-Muwaffaq, and second whether the civil administration should be independently responsible to the caliph or controlled by men appointed by al-Muwaffaq and the military party. In these circumstances, two parties grew up among the kuttāb; Ismā‘īl b. Bulbul, faced with the acute financial difficulties, had recruited two immensely able merchants to attempt to increase the revenues from the Sawād: Aḥmad and ‘Alī b. al-Furāt, and they and their followers came to form one party in the administration. Opposed to them were a group of secretarial families, all originating from the countryside of the Sawād and many of them of Nestorian Christian origins. Sulaymān b. Wahb was one of these, but the most important and successful were the family of the Banu’l-Jarrāḥ, who became the most important rivals of the Banu’l-Furāt. The financial problems of the time meant that these men enjoyed great power, since even the most successful military leader was impotent unless he could enlist the cooperation and expertise of one of the dynasties of wazīrs.
The anarchy in Sāmarrā paralysed the central government and allowed provincial dissent to come into the open. The damage that the fabric of the caliphate sustained in those few years was never entirely repaired. In Iran, the control of the ‘Abbasid–Tahirid partnership was challenged and destroyed by the Saffarids of Sīstān. Sīstān had always been on the fringes of the Islamic world, a natural place of refuge for rebels. Since Umayyad times, the rural areas away from the towns of Zaranj and Bust had been overrun by Khārijī rebels. Originally, these had been refugees from Umayyad government, but by the third/ninth century, Sīstānī Kharijism was a home-grown phenomenon. In order to combat these rural disturbances, the governors and the local people had set up vigilante groups, sometimes known as ‘ayyārūn. These groups became increasingly independent, and in 239/854 the governor of the Tahirids had been driven from Bust by the leader of one group. In 247/861, the year of al-Mutawakkil’s assassination, the provincial capital at Zaranj was seized by another ‘ayyār leader, Ya‘qūb b. Layth, who had been a coppersmith (Arabic ṣaffār) from a village in the area. By 251/865, Ya‘qūb al-Ṣaffār had established his authority over all Sīstān, defeating both the Khārijīs and rival ‘ayyār leaders. There can be no doubt, however, that he incorporated many of their followers into his own armies, and the armies of the Saffarids were drawn from all sections of the population of Sīstān.
Once he had established himself in his home province, Ya‘qūb turned his attentions to the surrounding areas. It was in pursuit of fleeing Khārijīs that he first invaded Tahirid Khurāsān, but by 253/867 he had defeated the Tahirid army and taken Harāt, and in 259/873 fifty years of Tahirid rule was brought to an end when the Saffarids took Nīshāpūr. At the same time, he led his men against the pagans to the east; in 256/870, he attacked Ghazna, Kābul and Bamyān. But from the point of view of the ‘Abbasids, his most dangerous moves were when he began to turn his attention westwards. In an effort to deflect Ya‘qūb’s energies from Khurāsān proper, Muḥammad b. Ṭāhir had invested him with the governorates of Sīstān, Kābul, Kirmān and Fārs, and in 255/869 he began to make these claims a reality by taking Kirmān. Then in 255–262/869–875, he was engaged in a three-cornered fight in Ahwāz and Fārs with a local adventurer, Muḥammad b. Wāṣil al-Tamīmī, and the caliph’s brother al-Muwaffaq. The ‘Abbasids were particularly concerned lest the Saffarids should join forces with the Zanj rebels of the Baṣra area, but although they both benefited from each other’s activities, the Saffarids refused the formal cooperation offered by the Zanj leader, ‘Alī b. Muḥammad. In 262/876, there was a final trial of strength; Ya‘qūb advanced on Baghdad. The ‘Abbasids were prepared to offer him all the offices held by the Tahirids, not only the governorate of Khurāsān and the east but the command of the police in Baghdad as well. Ya‘qūb, however, continued his advance only to be defeated by al-Muwaffaq and Mūsā b. Bughā at Dayr ‘Āqūl, near Baghdad in 262/876.
This setback and Ya‘qūb’s subsequent death near Ahwāz in 265/879 freed Iraq from the Saffarid menace. Ya‘qūb’s role was taken over by his brother ‘Amr. His position was less secure and he faced prolonged opposition to his rule in Khurāsān, which meant that he greatly valued the legitimacy which the ‘Abbasids alone could confer on his government, and he was given title to Khurāsān, Fārs, Iṣfahān, Sīstān, Kirmān and Sind. Relations between al-Muwaffaq and ‘Amr were not always cordial, although the Saffarid was prepared to pay irregular but substantial sums of tribute in return for caliphal approval. He made no further attempts on Iraq, but Fārs – despite a determined campaign by al-Muwaffaq and his son Abu’l-‘Abbās, the future Caliph al-Mu‘taḍid, in 271–274/884–887 – remained in Saffarid hands. In Iṣfahān, the situation was complicated by a struggle between Saffarids and a local dynasty of Arab origin, the Dulafids, the ‘Abbasids supporting the cause first of one party and then the other. While never becoming as close to the ‘Abbasids as the Tahirids had been, the Saffarids under ‘Amr had ceased to be a threat to the existence of the dynasty and, if it had not been for the dispute over Fārs, might have become firm partners.
The Saffarids were outsiders who had become powerful and then received recognition from the caliphs. The main challenge to the ‘Abbasids in the west came from a member of the Sāmarrā ruling group who profited from the anarchy to break away. Aḥmad b. Ṭūlūn was the governor of Egypt from 254/868 until his death in 270/884 (see pp. 265). During these years, he used the wealth of the country to build up a substantial army which he employed to gain control over Syria and to mount expeditions against the Byzantines from the Syrian frontier lands which usually acknowledged his authority. Ibn Ṭūlūn never ceased to acknowledge the ‘Abbasids as caliphs and he probably continued to make some payments to their treasury. Al-Mu‘tamid welcomed him and his financial contributions, as it seemed to lessen his dependence on his brother, and in 269/882 he made an attempt to transfer to Tulunid territory. Ibn Ṭūlūn’s relations with al-Muwaffaq were less friendly, and the two men clearly saw each other as rivals. There were territorial clashes as well; the Tulunids occupied not just Syria but the Jazīra as far as Raqqa, uncomfortably close to the centres of ‘Abbasid power. But Ibn Ṭūlūn too had his problems, with dissident generals in his own army and the rivalry of Isḥāq b. Kundājīq, a Turkish general of much the same background as himself, who supported the ‘Abbasid cause in Mosul and the northern Jazīra. In these circumstances, he never sought to take over Iraq as well. After Ibn Ṭūlūn’s death in 270/884, al-Muwaffaq attempted to retake Egypt and sent his son al-Mu‘taḍid to challenge Khumārawayh b. Aḥmad b. Ṭulūn, but the attempt ended in failure and in a compromise under which the Tulunids were to pay 300,000 dīnārs in tribute every year in exchange for recognition.
In contrast to the Tulunids or ‘Amr b. Layth, with whom cooperation was possible, the Zanj of southern Iraq were the most radical and formidable of the challenges which faced the caliphate after the anarchy. They were a threat not just because of their military prowess, or because they operated in the ‘Abbasid heartland of Iraq, but because they presented a challenge to the whole order of society and established religion. They threatened the very survival of the caliphate, and the struggle against them was a war to the death.
The Zanj was the name given to the slave population of southern Iraq, most of them of East African origin. It seems that at least since early Islamic times, large numbers of slaves had been used by landowners in the marsh areas of southern Iraq to reclaim land. Under Islamic law, reclaimed land brought under cultivation belonged to the man who made it productive and so it was worth investing large sums in this work. This seems to have been the only area in the Islamic world where this sort of large-scale agricultural slavery was practised; elsewhere, farming was conducted by free peasants, while slaves were used for domestic, administrative or military purposes. There is no doubt that many of these slaves lived in very bad conditions, and there had been at least two minor rebellions before in Umayyad times. The revolt in this period, however, was made much more formidable by the weakness of the government and the participation of other, non-slave elements.
The rebellion was not a spontaneous explosion but was the work of one rather unusual man. ‘Alī b. Muḥammad had been born of Arab parents in a village near Rayy in central Iran. He had first tried to make his career as a poet in Sāmarrā but it would seem that his talents were not as great as his ambition and, seeing the chaos in the government, he decided to enter politics. He first went to Yamāma in eastern Arabia, where Musaylima had raised the Banū Hanīfa during the Ridda wars and which was later to be a stronghold of the Qarmaṭīs. It seems that he too claimed to be a Prophet and attracted some following among the tribes of the area, but his supporters were soon routed and with a small number of loyal companions he went to Baṣra in 254/868. There, he made a few more converts to his cause but soon came to realize the potential of the slaves as a source of support. What his religious position was is not quite clear; he seems to have abandoned the idea of prophethood for himself and contented himself with claiming to be a member of the ‘Alid family, or rather, according to his detractors, different members of the ‘Alid family on different occasions. What is more clear is the strong social content of his message; the slaves were going to be rich and free and their masters were going to suffer.
The rebellion broke out in Ramaḍān 255/September 869, just under a year before the accession of al-Mu‘tamid and al-Muwaffaq. It spread very quickly and for ten years enjoyed an almost unchallenged success. The first attempts to subdue the ex-slaves were made by the Basrans, their former masters, but these were beaten off with ease, and the bitterness of the rebels was demonstrated by their policy of executing all prisoners without distinction. The enfeebled and preoccupied government was able to offer little support to the people. The rebels were aided by the difficult marshy terrain, ideal for guerrilla warfare conducted by men who knew the area well but almost impenetrable to a strange, largely cavalry army like the Turks. Aided by nomads of northeastern Arabia, notably from the Banū Tamīm and Banū Asad, they succeeded in 257/871 in taking Baṣra itself. The city, a great commercial centre and one of the cultural capitals of early Islam, was destroyed by the rebels, the mosques were burned, the inhabitants massacred; once more, the ferocity of the war is conspicuous. Their control spread to Wāsiṭ and beyond, and over much of the province of Ahwāz. ‘Alī b. Muḥammad ruled from a new capital he founded, Mukhtāra, on a canal to the east of Baṣra; he minted his own coins and took the title of mahdī. How much power the Zanj themselves enjoyed is not entirely clear. All the known leaders seem to have been Arabs, mostly men who had joined ‘Alī in Yamāma or in Baṣra before the rebellion started, and it may be that the slaves, now slaveowners themselves, had little say in the direction of policy.
When the ‘Abbasid response did come, it was methodical, systematic and effective. From 266/879, al-Muwaffaq and his son Abu’l-‘Abbās began a slow advance, concentrating on destroying the ships which gave the Zanj such mobility in the marshes. The army was large, perhaps 50,000, but the terrain meant that progress was slow. ‘Alī ordered the evacuation of threatened areas and a retreat to the stronghold at Mukhtāra. There, the rebels were eventually besieged before ‘Abbasid forces entered the city, which had to be taken street by street in Ṣafar 270/August 883. ‘Alī b. Muḥammad was killed in the fighting. The rebellion was finally crushed, but the damage caused had been enormous. Slave farming and large-scale reclamation of land were never begun again, and it seems unlikely that the city of Baṣra ever fully recovered. Trade routes had been disrupted for too long, merchants had found other ways of communicating with the east – via Sīrāf in southern Iran, for example – and Baṣra and southern Iraq in general entered a long period of decline. Once again, the social antagonisms in the area led to large-scale popular movements which threatened the order and prosperity of society.
With the Caliph al-Mu‘tamid increasingly a puppet after 269/882 and the effective ruler being al-Muwaffaq, the system of joint rule continued until al-Muwaffaq’s death in 278/891. This did not, however, lead to a renewal of the caliph’s power, since al-Muwaffaq was immediately succeeded by his son Abu’l-‘Abbās, who took the title of al-Mu‘taḍid, and when the caliph himself died the next year, his son was easily brushed aside, and al-Mu‘taḍid, unlike his father, became caliph in his own right (279/892). The new caliph was very much a man in his father’s mould, a strong personality who took good care to remain on close terms with the military and took part in campaigns himself. He inherited the largely Turkish army which had been built up by his father and Mūsā b. Bughā, with which he himself had done his apprenticeship. The army remained loyal to him throughout his reign and became the chief instrument of his policy.
The main objectives of the new caliph were to increase the territory under the effective control of the government and, in order to accomplish this, to establish a viable financial administration. To do this, he collected a remarkably able and compatible government team. His wazīr, ‘Ubayd Allāh b. Sulaymān b. Wahb, was the son of one of al-Muwaffaq’s most influential secretaries. Like his father, he was given wide-ranging powers, not just over the civil administration but over military affairs as well, participating actively in campaigns. This close connection between civil and military leaders had been a major feature of al-Muwaffaq’s success and it was continued by his son. The main army commander, Badr, was the son of a freedman of al-Mutawakkil and had served al-Muwaffaq. Under al-Mu‘taḍid, he was the most prominent general, and the caliph’s son married his daughter. He was also a firm friend of the wazīr, ‘Ubayd Allāh, thus eliminating most of the friction which might have arisen.
The wazīr was in no position to supervise the day-to-day financial administration, partly because he does not seem to have had the technical knowledge and partly because military campaigns often meant that he was away from the capital. Financial administration was therefore left to the Banu’l-Furāt brothers, Aḥmad and ‘Alī, who had served under Ismā‘īl b. Bulbul. Despite this connection, their abilities secured them a position in the new government and they soon made themselves indispensable, reforming the revenue gathering, a process which involved the widespread use of tax farming, a procedure which was to prove very damaging in the future but was probably inevitable in the circumstances. They also allowed the caliph to build up a separate, private purse, again a development which may have had advantages with a strong and effective ruler like al-Mu‘taḍid but was to lead to problems later. In 286/899, the Banu’l-Furāt were replaced by the other important family of kuttāb, the Banu’l-Jarrāḥ, and control of the finances was entrusted to Muḥammad b. Dāwūd and his nephew, ‘Alī b. ‘īsā. When the wazīr ‘Ubayd Allāh died in 288/901, the caliph ensured continuity by appointing his son al-Qāsim to succeed him. The new team was an able one, but there was dissension among them. There grew up a fierce rivalry between the Banu’l-Furāt and the Banu’l-Jarrāh. for control of the administration, each side being supported by groups of lesser secretaries who attached themselves to one party or another. This seems to have been a simple power struggle, but there is some evidence that the Jarrahids favoured a policy of closer cooperation with the military while the Banu’l-Furāt were determined to maintain the supremacy and separateness of the civil administration. Both the caliph and his wazīr, however, were strong, and these rivalries were not allowed, at this stage, to cause any serious problems.
The reign of al-Mu‘taḍid saw the definitive return of the capital to Baghdad. Until the last months of his reign, al-Mu‘tamid had continued to live in Sāmarrā, but al-Muwaffaq and his army had used Baghdad as their base against the Zanj and remained there even after the rebellion was crushed. It was natural then that al-Mu‘taḍid would continue his father’s policy in this as in other matters. The city saw a considerable building activity at this time. Al-Manṣūr’s Baghdad had been established on the west bank of the Tigris, but during the disturbances of the third/ninth century, much of this area had fallen into ruin. Al-Mu‘taḍid moved to the east bank, slightly farther downstream than the original city, and the site he chose has remained the centre of Baghdad to the present day. Both he and his son and successor, al-Muktafī, devoted large sums of money for the reconstruction of this part of the city and the building of new palaces and mosques. The caliph’s concern for civil administration did not end there; we are told that he arranged for the digging-out of the bed of the Dujayl canal and collected contributions to the expense from those who held estates which would benefit from the irrigation work. He also arranged that the tax year should be changed so that the kharāj was demanded after the harvest rather than earlier in the year when farmers would find it more difficult to pay.
But it was a military activity which absorbed most of the caliph’s energies. No ‘Abbasid caliph, not even al-Mu‘taṣim, spent as much time on campaign as did al-Mu‘taḍid. He was also a skilful diplomat, always prepared to make compromises with those who were too powerful to defeat. He was prepared to leave eastern and northern Iran, Syria and Egypt to their own rulers as long as these acknowledged ‘Abbasid sovereignty, but he was determined to assert real control over Iraq, the Jazīra, the Byzantine frontier area and western Iran, including Iṣfahān and Fārs.
With the Tulunids, the caliph was friendly but firm. On his accession, Khumārawayh sent presents for the new caliph and contracted a marriage alliance. After the death of Khumārawayh in 282/896, the Tulunid state began to disintegrate. A large number of soldiers defected to the ‘Abbasids and were welcomed by the army minister Muḥammad b. Sulaymān. Within a year, the new sovereign, Jaysh b. Khumārawayh, had been murdered, in turn, and replaced by his brother Hārūn. In 284/897, there were riots between pro-Tulunid and pro-‘Abbasid parties in Tarsus, the main base for raids against the Byzantines. The ‘Abbasid faction triumphed, the caliph’s authority was acknowledged and the leadership of the ṣā’ifa, the summer expedition against the Byzantines, was once again an ‘Abbasid privilege. The new Tulunid ruler was obliged to make other concessions to gain recognition from the ‘Abbasids and agreed to surrender Qinnasrīn and the province of al-‘Awāṣim, that is, all of Syria north of Homs, to the ‘Abbasids and to increase the tribute to 450,000 dīnārs per year. By the end of his reign, without striking a blow, ‘Abbasid authority had been restored over an important area.
In the Jazīra, the situation was complicated by the rivalries of different leaders who had established themselves during and after the anarchy, often playing off the Tulunids against the ‘Abbasids to preserve their independence. The Turkish strongman of the Mosul area, Isḥāq b. Kundājīq, had died the year before al-Mu‘taḍid’s accession, and his son Muḥammad was driven out by a rival adventurer, Aḥmad b. ‘Īsā b. Shaykh. Aḥmad’s father had been a Shaybānī bedouin leader who established himself first in Palestine and later in the northern Jazīra with his capital at āmid. He was now the unofficial ruler of the area and was trying to expand his authority northwards into Armenia. A further threat in the area was posed by the Taghlibī leader Ḥamdān b. Ḥamdūn, who had numerous contacts among the Khawārij and the Kurds. The caliph began his campaigns with characteristic energy in 280/893 when he travelled north, chastising the Banū Shaybān and restoring ‘Abbasid rule in Mosul. The next year, he was in Mosul again (after a stay in Baghdad and a campaign in Iran in the interim) seeking out the elusive Ḥamdān b. Ḥamdūn. During this campaign, he made contact with ḥamdān’s son al-ḥusayn, who later secured his father’s release and a position for himself and his followers in the caliph’s army, in return for capturing a Khārijī leader. This marks the beginning of the rise of the Hamdanids, and al-Ḥusayn, with his highly mobile Arab following, was to provide the most effective troops the ‘Abbasids could find against the Qarmaṭī menace.
Aḥmad b. ‘Īsā died in his capital at āmid in 285/898 and although he was succeeded by his son Muḥammad, al-Mu‘taḍid saw this as the opportunity for a fundamental reorganization in the area. The next year, he launched a major expedition which forced the surrender of Muḥammad after a siege. He then left his son ‘Alī al-Muktafī to arrange for the administration of the frontier areas and northern Syria and the Jazīra while he returned to Raqqa. By a mixture of force and diplomacy, the caliph had brought the whole area back under the control of the ‘Abbasids. In Armenia and Āzarbayjān to the north and east, however, the caliph was unable to exercise any real authority at all; the local military commander, Muḥammad b. Abi’l-Sāj, remained effectively independent and the caliph was wise enough not to attempt a campaign in these distant regions. Even the death of Muḥammad in 288/901 and the subsequent dispute between his son Dīvdād and his brother Yūsuf allowed the ‘Abbasids no opportunity for intervention.
In Iran, al-Mu‘taḍid’s policy was based on friendship with the Saffarid leader ‘Amr b. Layth, with whom he exchanged gifts and courtesies. He was even content to allow the Saffarids to retain Fārs, while he struggled to assert ‘Abbasid sovereignty in the Jibāl and Iṣfahān. The leading power in this area was the Dulafids and once again it was the death of an established member of the family (in this case Aḥmad b. ‘Abd al-‘Azīz b. Abī Dulaf in 280/893) which enabled the caliph to take action. He refused to allow Aḥmad’s son ‘Umar to succeed, and the next year, 281/894, he went to the province in person. Here, he divided the Dulafid domains, appointing his son ‘Alī al-Muktafī to govern Rayy, Qazvīn, Qumm and Hamadhān, while ‘Umar was restricted to the Dulafids’ ancestral lands around Karaj and Iṣfahān. Even here, he was subjected to harassment, and in 283/896 he was obliged to surrender to the wazīr ‘Ubayd Allāh b. Sulaymān and the army commander Badr. A member of the Baghdad army, ‘Īsā al-Nawsharī, was appointed the governor of Iṣfahān and, despite some guerrilla campaigns by ‘Umar’s brothers, Dulafid rule was ended. ‘Abbasid control in Rayy proved ephemeral; pressure from the ‘Alids of Ṭabaristān and others made the city untenable and in 284/897 it was handed over to ‘Amr b. Layth, then at the height of his power, while the young prince ‘Alī made his way west to take up new responsibilities in the Jazīra. Despite this setback, ‘Abbasid power had notably increased in the Jibāl area and ‘Īsā al-Nawsharī remained the governor of Iṣfahān for the rest of the reign.
The end of the reign saw a major change in ‘Abbasid policy in Iran. In 285/898, al-Mu‘taḍid appointed ‘Amr b. Layth to Transoxania, the region then held by Ismā‘īl b. Aḥmad the Samanid. In view of subsequent events, this has been seen as a piece of ‘Abbasid duplicity, but in fact it accords well with al-Mu‘taḍid’s previous policy of support for ‘Amr. The Saffarid’s attempt to assert his power in the area led to disaster; he was totally defeated, captured and sent to Baghdad, where, in 289/902 just after the caliph’s death, he was killed. Ismā‘īl b. Aḥmad was now acknowledged as the ruler of Khurāsān. In some ways, this revolution benefited the ‘Abbasids, since the Samanids had no ambitions in western Iran or Iraq, but relations were never as close as they had been with ‘Amr, and there is no evidence that the Samanids ever sent significant tribute to the caliphs; unlike the Tahirids and the Saffarids, they can be described as truly independent. The fall of ‘Amr encouraged the ‘Abbasids to make another attempt to retain Fārs, but despite campaigns by ‘Īsā al-Nawsharī and Badr, the Saffarids, under ‘Amr’s grandson Ṭāhir b. Muḥammad, proved unexpectedly resilient and Fārs was not retaken by the ‘Abbasids until the reign of al-Muqtadir.
This picture of gradual and systematic reestablishment of ‘Abbasid power was threatened by the rising tide of discontent among the bedouin Arabs. The first campaign of al-Mu‘taḍid after he became caliph had been to discipline the Shaybān of the Jazīra. When, from 286/899, their activities were coordinated by the leaders of the Qarāmiṭa or Carmathians (sing. Qarmaṭī), the tribes began to pose a more serious threat to the state. As long as al-Mu‘taḍid and his military commander Badr lived, the menace was kept under control, but under al-Muktafī and his successors, they were to prove the most dangerous enemies the ‘Abbasids had faced since the time of the Zanj.
Al-Mu‘taḍid died in 289/902 and his son al-Muktafī, who was in the Jazīra at the time, was proclaimed caliph by the wazīr al-Qāsim b. ‘Ubayd Allāh. Like his father, the new caliph had had extensive experience of government, in Rayy and the Jazīra, before he became caliph. In general, he followed in his father’s footsteps but showed none of al-Mu‘taḍid’s amazing energy and does not seem to have exercised the same degree of control or to have led his army in person. It is very similar to the reign of al-Wāthiq after that of al-Mu‘taṣim – a peaceful continuation of the same policies by a less forceful personality.
The reign was marked from the beginning by the determination of the wazīr, al-Qāsim b. ‘Ubayd Allāh, to secure an effective monopoly of power. As soon as the new caliph was installed, the wazīr secured the recall of Badr from the campaign in Fārs and his execution. The death of al-Mu‘taḍid’s most important military leader meant that al-Qāsim was free to extend his control over the military. He did this through the agency of the clerk of the dīwān al-jaysh (the government office in charge of paying the troops), Muḥammad b. Sulaymān, who had been in charge of paying the army for some years and had welcomed the Egyptian military leaders who defected to Baghdad after the death of Khumārawayh. He was obviously liked and trusted by the military and now, despite his background as a kātib, he effectively became the commander of the army.
The most critical threat faced by the new regime was the Qarāmiṭa of the Syrian Desert. Faced by this menace, the ‘Abbasids made peace in Iran, acknowledging Samanid control in Rayy and Saffarid control in Fārs. The first attempts to fight the Qarāmiṭa were heavily defeated, and the rebels threatened both Aleppo and Damascus. At the end of 290/903, Muḥammad b. Sulaymān was put in charge of a major expedition to the west to deal with the menace. Early next year, the ‘Abbasid army won a major victory against the rebels near Ḥamāh, and the Qarmaṭī leaders were sent captive to the caliph at Raqqa. Muḥammad and his commanders were given a triumphal reception in Baghdad. The danger from the Qarāmiṭa was by no means over, and they continued to raid and pillage in the cities of Syria and Iraq which bordered on the desert, but the most serious threat had now passed.
Having achieved this triumph, Muḥammad b. Sulaymān then set out to retake Egypt from the Tulunids. The Tulunids had been weakened by internal strife since the death of Khumārawayh, and many of the officers in Muḥammad b. Sulaymān’s army had previously served the Tulunids, especially Turks, dissatisfied with the favour Hārūn b. Khumārawayh showed to the Berbers and others. Tulunid rule had been further weakened by the Qarāmiṭa. Despite the successful defence of Damascus by Ṭughj b. Juff (the father of Muḥammad b. Ṭughj al-Ikhshīd, the future ruler of Egypt), the Tulunids had proved totally unable to defend the settled people of Syria against the threat from the desert. Muḥammad planned the expedition carefully; his army of 10,000 was very large by the standards of the time and he was aided by naval support from the fleet of Tarsus and further desertions from the Tulunid army. The campaign was something of a triumphal progress, and in 292/905, after only a little fighting, the Tulunid dynasty was brought to an end and ‘Abbasid control restored. The triumph was not complete, however, and a revolt flared up under Ibrāhīm al-Khalījī. It was not until another year’s fighting, in 293/906, that the province was finally subdued.
This triumph was succeeded the next year by a series of decisive victories over the Qarāmiṭa in the Syrian Desert, and although they continued to threaten Iraq from their base in Baḥrayn, their Syrian supporters were dispersed and subdued. Once again, the forces of the Hamdanid leader al-ḥusayn b. ḥamdān played a vital role in this.
The death of al-Muktafī in 295/908 marks the high point of the ‘Abbasid revival. Not only were Syria and Egypt subdued but the treasury was full and the caliph left 15 million dīnārs. The army seems to have been effective and firmly under the control of the caliph and his civilian administrators. When al-Qāsim died in 291/904, he was in a position to nominate his successor. He suggested either the Jarrahid ‘Alī b. ‘Īsā or al-‘Abbās b. al-Ḥasan al-Jarjarā’ī, another bureaucrat from the Sawād of Iraq, being determined to the last to exclude Ibn al-Furāt. ‘Alī declined the offer and al-‘Abbās assumed the powers his predecessor had built up. When the caliph died in 295/908, it fell to him to order the succession.
Al-Muktafī had been ill for some time before his death, probably in fact for much of his short reign, and this may account for his failure to give clear guidance on the question of the succession. The choosing of the new caliph reveals clearly where power now lay. When al-Wāthiq had died in 232/847, the choice of the new caliph had been made by a group which consisted of the wazīr, two kuttāb, the chief qāḍī and two important representatives of the military, Ītākh and Waṣīf. In 295/908, however, only the bureaucrats were involved in the decision making. The wazīr, al-‘Abbās b. Ḥasan, asked for advice from various quarters. Muḥammad b. Dāwūd the Jarrahid pronounced in favour of the talented and experienced ‘Abd Allāh, son of the Caliph al-Mu‘tazz, while the other leading Jarrahid, ‘Alī b. ‘Īsā, would not be drawn. ‘Alī b. al-Furāt, however, persuaded the wazīr to appoint a weak candidate, al-Muktafī’s brother Ja‘far. It was a sinister development, since Ibn al-Furāt was clearly suggesting a candidate whom it would be possible to manipulate and control. In the end, the wazīr was persuaded and Ja‘far was installed with the title of al-Muqtadir. It was an inauspicious beginning to what was to prove one of the most disastrous reigns in the whole of ‘Abbasid history. For a quarter of a century, the place of al-Manṣūr and Hārūn was occupied by a youth who was constantly manipulated, exploited and deceived by his advisers, and it was a quarter of a century when all the work of his predecessors was undone.
The accession of the new ruler was a triumph for the civilian aristocracy. By their close relations with the military, al-Muwaffaq, al-Mu‘taḍid and al-Muktafī had prevented army mutinies and rebellions, but under the new ruler, this link was lost. In addition, the bureaucrats were far from united and the bitter feuds which had divided them in the previous reign were allowed to flourish unchecked. We know a lot about these men and their manoeuvre, since their histories were recorded in detail by later administrators, notably Hilāl al-Ṣābī and Abū ‘Alī Miskawayh, half in admiration, half as an awful warning of the consequences of bad government. There were still two main, and many minor, factions among the kuttāb. The Banu’l-Furāt were led by Abu’l-Ḥasan ‘Alī. In many ways, he was a great man, an extremely able financier committed to the reform of abuse and the raising of state revenues without oppression. He was also highly cultured and extremely wealthy, with all the extravagant and conspicuous generosity which could be expected of such a man. But his character was not without flaws; he was to an extent ruthless and unscrupulous when it came to furthering his own interests, and he failed to restrain the rapacious cruelty of his son al-Muḥassin, whose excesses alienated many. The leader of the Banu’l-Jarrāḥ, ‘Alī b. ‘Īsā, is portrayed as a perfect foil to this grand seigneur personality. He too was a skilled administrator, devoted to the eradication of corruption, but he was austere, pious and even mean. He did not have an affable public manner and made enemies easily. Nonetheless, later generations praised his carefulness and probity, and he became known as the “good vizier”. He also enjoyed the confidence of the military. The leading figure in the Baghdad forces, said to have numbered 9,000, was now Mu’nis, known as al-Muẓaffar, “the Victorious”, after a successful campaign against the Byzantines. He was the most powerful military officer throughout the reign and remained an ally of ‘Alī and a supporter of his methods. He also acquired vast landed estates, notably in Fārs after its reconquest by ‘Abbasid forces. Around these figures, there grouped numerous lesser men – relatives and hangers-on. Each change of government meant not just a change of wazīr but changes in many other areas as well. The court was alive with intrigue and competition for favour.
This competition was made much more dangerous by the continuous financial crisis of the reign. The government was always short of money to discharge its immediate obligations and wazīrs were often forced to borrow to pay the next month’s salaries. It is not entirely clear why this crisis had become so pressing. It is clear that revenues from the Sawād of Iraq had been declining for at least a century. In early Islamic times, the Sawād is said to have produced over 100 million dirhams in tax revenue each year, and this remained true until the reign of al-Ma’mūn. By the reign of al-Muqtadir, in a survey of 306/918–919, it seems to have yielded only 31 million dirhams, a dramatic decline, and it is clear that much of this was never collected or was embezzled before it reached the capital. The decline in revenue from the Sawād was all the more damaging because many other areas, like Egypt and Fārs, contributed little or no taxes during the second half of the third/ninth century.
War and maladministration probably account for much of this. The agricultural economy of the area was potentially very rich, but it was also very fragile; it required constant investment in canals and irrigation if prosperity was to be maintained. The series of long drawn out campaigns of the third/ninth century must have caused immense damage. In Umayyad and early ‘Abbasid times, we hear of large-scale agricultural development in the area. From the third/ninth and fourth/tenth centuries, we hear of occasional attempts to restore damaged systems, but it would seem that no one was prepared to make long-term investments. The problem was aggravated when the government was obliged to grant lands to military officers whose tenure was insecure and whose only concern was to extract as much as possible before moving on. As von Kremer remarked:
One fact appears to emerge with certainty from the list of the tax-payments of Sawād province; it is the decline of the agricultural economy, while simultaneously the grandees of the state, the members of the ruling families, established for themselves widespread latifundia.
The problem the ‘Abbasids faced at this time cannot be understood unless the economic and financial problems are given due attention.
Despite the long-term decline in the prosperity of the Sawād, however, al-Mu‘taḍid and al-Muktafī were both able to save about 1 million dīnārs per year out of current revenue, and both left substantial sums in the treasury. Furthermore, the revenues available to al-Muqtadir actually increased in some ways; the reconquest of Fārs was said to have brought in an extra 18 million dirhams per year, more than enough to pay the salary bill of the troops Mu’nis commanded in Baghdad, and the revenues of Egypt under the administration of the Mādharā’ī brothers were much greater than al-Muqtadir’s predecessors had enjoyed. The caliph also resorted to widespread confiscations of the goods of deposed wazīrs, amounting to 2.3 million dīnārs on the one occasion from Ibn al-Furāt and his family. Writing at the time of the Buyid ‘Aḍud al-Dawla half a century later, Miskawayh blamed the caliph for squandering and wasting this money. Some contemporaries shared this point of view; ‘Alī b. ‘Isā as wazīr made sustained attempts to reduce court salaries and cut out extravagant expenditure and in this he was supported by Mu’nis, who considered that the palace was responsible for most of the problems. It was here that the private purse of the caliph became such a problem, as the wazīr was unable to supervise it, while al-Muqtadir (and even more so his mother, who controlled many of his activities) insisted that all the everyday expenses of court and government be met out of public funds. The army was certainly costly. The 9,000 troops Mu’nis commanded in Baghdad are said as of 315/927 to have been paid 600,000 dīnārs (about 9 million dirhams) per year: monthly and in cash. The root of the problem was that both of the great consumers of public wealth – the palace and the military – were in a very strong position; the palace because the courtiers effectively controlled the caliph and could secure the dismissal of wazīrs like ‘Alī b. ‘Īsā, who reduced their allowances, and the military because they could threaten mutiny and were the only people who could hope to defend Iraq from the Qarāmiṭa, although their military abilities and enthusiasm seem to have been very limited. When Ibn Rā’iq finally broke up this army, he found that it contained many merchants, women and others who collected salaries but performed no military duties at all. Most attempts to solve immediate problems tended to reduce revenue in the long term, and in the end it was financial disaster which destroyed the great ‘Abbasid caliphate. The overall picture suggests that Iraq was burdened with a military and court establishment out of all proportion to its real wealth.
To deal with these problems, wazīrs tried a variety of expedients. The first and most obvious was to extract money from previous holders of the office, and the high turnover of top administrative officials is in marked contrast to the stability of the previous two reigns, when ‘Ubayd Allāh b. Sulaymān and his son al-Qāsim had both held office until their deaths. The procedure, frequently repeated, went like this: there was a financial crisis and some ambitious bureaucrat or businessman would approach the caliph saying that he was in a position to increase the revenue and extract a vast sum from the present wazīr. The caliph would agree that the hapless wazīr was dismissed and he and his assistants interrogated, often under torture, and would promise to pay huge fines. The new holder of the office would then discover that the fines were mostly unpaid, since the victims did not have the money, and he was wholly unable to raise the promised sums, whereupon the whole dismal cycle began all over again.
The government was supposed to extract the revenue from the Sawād and the provinces. There were three ways in which this could be done. The first was by direct taxation on land, the kharāj, which was assessed according to area and collected annually. This was an ideal system, and wazīrs like Ibn al-Furāt and ‘Alī b. ‘Īsā strove to uphold it, realizing that it was the best method of paying the expenses while maintaining the prosperity of the country, but it was increasingly difficult to sustain. It needed a number of skilled, honest, salaried tax gatherers who were themselves a strain on the public purse – but more importantly under the circumstances, it was very inelastic. A sudden demand for money could not be met, and deficit financing, borrowing against next year’s anticipated income, was very difficult. Equally, a bad harvest one year or a provincial rebellion could reduce tax yields dramatically and cause a major political crisis. In the circumstances of the time, wazīrs, often against their better judgement, were compelled to resort to the second alternative: tax farming. The collection of revenues was often granted to individuals in return for a guaranteed sum for the exchequer. The entrepreneur was then entitled to collect what he could from the unfortunate local people. Such tax farmers appear frequently in the chronicles, among them the fabulously rich farmer of Wāsiṭ, Ḥāmid b. al-‘Abbās. He was at one time made wazīr himself, although it soon became apparent that the abilities needed for tax farming and for being wazīr were quite different, and he was obliged to leave everyday affairs to ‘Alī b. ‘Īsā. After their reconquest, Syria and Egypt were farmed out to two Iraqi businessmen, the Mādharā’ī brothers, who agreed to pay 1 million dīnārs a year to the public purse while paying the Syrian and Egyptian armies themselves. The system solved some problems but led to others – the peasants were often exploited for short-term profits, and tax farmers were often unable to meet their obligations. The Mādharā’īs, for example, made the bargain for Syria and Egypt in 306/918 and paid up the first year, but thereafter the threat of Fatimid invasion diverted the revenues. In 320/932, Syria and Egypt were said to have contributed no revenues to Baghdad for the previous four years.
The third option was the granting of an iqīā‘. Basically, this meant that the revenues of a given area would be assigned to an individual who would undertake to provide the government with a number of troops or a sum of money. It differed from tax farming in that the person concerned was effectively the governor and military leader as well as the tax officer of the area. Ḥāmid b. al-‘Abbās as a tax farmer collected the revenues of the Wāsiṭ area and forwarded the agreed sum to Baghdad, where the wazīr used it to pay salaries to troops and courtiers. Security and civil government in the area of the tax farm were the responsibility of separate officials. By contrast, an iqīā‘ holder like Yūsuf b. Abi’l-Sāj in Armenia and Āzarbayjān would collect the revenues, pay the army of the area himself and exercise all the powers of government while sending an agreed sum to Baghdad. This iqṭā‘ system first seems to have been used in Āzarbayjān in the time of al-Ma’mūn when the caliph, faced with a prolonged local rebellion, was prepared to offer the revenues and the governorship of the province to anyone who was able to crush the dissidents. Such bargains continued to be made in outlying areas. Soon after the accession of al-Muqtadir and his own appointment as wazīr, Ibn al-Furāt persuaded Yūsuf b. Abi’l-Sāj to accept the authority of Baghdad, which he had not previously done, and pay the fairly modest sum of 120,000 dīnars per annum in exchange for the recognition of his titles, thereby attaching the area, at least in some measure, to the caliphate. At the same time, Ibn al-Furāt was attempting to regain control of Fārs, a valuable province which had been taken over by a supporter of the Saffarids called Subkarā. The wazīr was prepared to offer Subkarā a bargain, but the terms were steep. Subkarā could not offer more than 10 million dirhams per annum, after paying for the army and administration in the province, and the wazīr would not accept less than 13 million dirhams, with the result that a military expedition was sent, the area was brought under direct government control and a tax farmer was appointed. The idea of the iqīā‘ originated as a way of settling the problems of outlying areas, but as time went on, it was used nearer to home. In 317/929, after an attempted coup against al-Muqtadir, the wazīr Ibn Muqla was obliged to sell off state lands to the military at very reduced prices. In addition, these new landholders were obliged to pay only the tithe (‘ushr) not the full kharāj to the government, keeping the difference between the two rates of tax for themselves, with the result that those lands had the same fiscal status as the iqīā’. In this way, financial expediency caused the spread of these concessions into the heartland of the caliphate.
The political history of al-Muqtadir’s reign is full of incidents but not very easy to follow. Two attempts were made to depose the useless caliph. In 296/908, very shortly after his accession, the Jarrahids and elements of the military, including the Hamdanid leader al-Ḥusayn b. Ḥamdān, attempted a coup in favour of Ibn al-Mu‘tazz. The young caliph was saved by the loyalty of the military, recruited by his father the caliph al-Mu‘taḍid and now led by Mu’nis, who were determined that the caliphate should remain in their old master’s family. More by good luck and the panic of their opponents than by their own abilities, al-Muqtadir’s supporters were able to defeat the rebels, and the Jarrahid leaders were imprisoned and executed, except for ‘Alī b. ‘Īsā, who had been careful to distance himself from the whole operation. In 317/929, there was a military coup launched by Mu’nis after his trusted ‘Alī b. ‘Īsā had been removed from the wazirate. For a few days, the caliph’s brother Muḥammad al-Qāhir was accepted as caliph before another army mutiny resulted in the restoration of al-Muqtadir. The third attempt was decisive. In 320/932, Mu’nis, again exasperated by the failure to curb court expenditure and repeated attempts to remove him from the centre of power, marched south from Mosul, where he had been sent in semi-exile. He was opposed by rival military leaders, but once again shortage of money and the caliph’s own lack of courage meant that his army dispersed. Mu’nis entered the capital in triumph and installed al-Qāhir as caliph; once again, the military were deciding the course of government.
As far as external opposition was concerned, the early years of al-Muqtadir’s caliphate were comparatively successful, and the gains made by al-Mu‘taḍid and al-Muktafī were retained. Fārs was retaken, Āzarbayjān acknowledged the sovereignty of the caliph, the Byzantine frontier was defended, raids were launched against the Greeks and the Fatimids were prevented from taking Egypt. From 311/923, however, the position began to change. The Qarāmiṭa had been quiescent since the defeats they had suffered during al-Muktafī’s reign, but although they did not recover their power in the Syrian Desert, the Qarāmiṭa of Baḥrayn began to raid Iraq. This may have been connected with the fall of ‘Alī b. ‘Īsā as wazīr and his replacement by Ibn al-Furāt at this time, because ‘Alī believed in paying subsidies to the rebels, while his rival favoured military action. Under their new leader, Abū Ṭāhir al-Jannābī, with 1,700 men they entered and sacked the once great city of Baṣra, and although Ibn al-Furāt sent troops, they had already disappeared into the desert. Early next year, the ḥajj caravan was attacked on the return from Mecca. This disaster led to a crisis in the government. Ibn al-Furāt, now wazīr for the third time, was an old man and seems to have forgotten much of his earlier moderation. In the quest for money, he had allowed his son al-Muḥassin to torture government officials with a brutality never seen before, while to maintain his power against the military, he had secured the semi-exile of Mu’nis to Raqqa. The sack of Baṣra and destruction of the ḥajj led to riots in the streets and a military takeover. Ibn al-Furāt was arrested, Mu’nis recalled, and the old wazīr and his son executed in prison. This coup really marked the end of the civil domination of government. Ibn al-Furāt lost the support of the army because he could not pay the salaries regularly and lost popular support because of his failure against the Qarmaṭīs. He had even alienated most of the kuttāb, by his tortures and exactions. From now on, the military came to play an ever-increasing role in the nomination first of wazīrs and then of caliphs; it was only a matter of time before a general felt it necessary to take over the government himself.
The raids of the Qarāmiṭa continued, and despite an escort 6,000-men strong, the ḥajj was attacked again the next year, and the wazīrs who followed Ibn al-Furāt were deposed for being unable to meet their financial commitments. In 314/926, the wazīr al-Khaṣībī invited the ruler of Āzarbayjān, Yūsuf b. Abi’l-Sāj, to come to Iraq with his men to fight the rebels who were threatening the Sawād itself. There was no question of paying them salaries, since there was no money, but instead all the revenues of the Jibāl and northwestern Iran were to be paid directly to Ibn Abi’l-Sāj “for his table” during the campaign. In effect, all the Iranian provinces except Fārs were to be given to him as a vast iqīā‘ in addition to Āzarbayjān and Armenia, which he held already. In the event, the Qarāmiṭa proved too much for him, perhaps because his followers from the mountainous areas of northwestern Iran were unused to fighting in the desert terrain. He was captured and killed by the rebels, and Sajid rule in Āzarbayjān, which had lasted since the days of al-Mu‘tamid, was brought to an end with his death. The next year, Mu’nis succeeded, against the advice of the courtiers, in securing the appointment of ‘Alī b. ‘Īsā to the wazirate just before the rebels pressed home their attack towards Baghdad in 315/927. For a while, it seemed as if the capital must fall, but the attack was held off by Mu’nis, with help from the Hamdanids, and the danger passed. In 317/930, the Qarāmiṭa sacked Mecca and removed the Black Stone from the Ka‘ba, a serious blow to the prestige of the caliph, but after that the rebels were divided by internal disputes and ceased to be a threat to the ‘Abbasids for some decades.
The disasters of the campaign against the Qarāmiṭa and the loss of revenue from the devastated Sawād caused tensions within Baghdad to reach a climax. In 316/928, the court party secured the dismissal of ‘Alī b. ‘Īsā, and Mu’nis now felt that he had to take control of the civil administration. For three years, there were coups and countercoups as Mu’nis and his enemies disputed for control of the caliphate, until in 320/932 Mu’nis defeated and killed al-Muqtadir.
As before, the murder of a caliph was the signal for a period of continuing anarchy, but this time, after the death of al-Muqtadir, there was to be no recovery. The military takeover of government which had begun with the removal and execution of Ibn al-Furāt gained momentum with the death of al-Muqtadir, the first caliph to die a violent death since al-Muhtadī, sixty years before. The military leaders did not attempt to change the dynasty at this time, but from the death of al-Muqtadir onwards, the choice of caliphs was decided not by the ‘Abbasids, as it had been during the great days of the caliphate, or even by the kuttāb, as it had been when al-Muqtadir himself was appointed, but rather by the leading military figures in Baghdad at the time. The political history of this new anarchy was dominated by the struggles of military men to control the caliphate and, perhaps more importantly, the revenues of the Sawād, which would enable them to satisfy the demands of their followers. In the aftermath of the coup against al-Muqtadir, as has been mentioned, the victorious party put on the throne his brother Muḥammad, who had briefly been caliph three years before after a somewhat similar coup, and as before he took the title of al-Qāhir. The new caliph was a man of some determination and energy but was given to violence and brutality. He put on a show of puritanism to dispel the reputation of extravagant court immorality, which had been a major factor in the undoing of al-Muqtadir, but he himself, like many of his contemporaries, was frequently drunk and incapable. The first concern of the new regime was to destroy the power of their rivals who had supported al-Muqtadir in his last fight and had now established themselves in the area of southern Iraq and Ahwāz. They were dispersed by diplomacy and violence, but the area became subject to the rising power of the Barīdī family. For some years now, this family had farmed extensive taxes in southern Iraq, around Basra and in Ahwāz, but they now aspired to political power. They began by backing different groups in the army but soon developed a military power base of their own. Although they had little military experience, they seem to have been able to raise considerable funds when the need arose, both because of their own financial expertise and because the lands they farmed had been less ravaged by recent wars than other parts of Iraq. In a political situation where everyone else was short of cash, this put them in a strong position, and their power in the south was a constant factor up to the consolidation of the Buyid regime.
Mu’nis and his fellow officers hoped that they had secured a monopoly of military power and control over the revenue, but they were soon alarmed to find that the caliph they had installed was negotiating with Muḥammad b. Yāqūt and other members of the faction they had so recently defeated. Feeling their position threatened, they decided to depose the caliph, but he was too quick for them and they were arrested and killed; even the veteran Mu’nis (a leading figure in the army since the time of al-Mu‘taḍid), his throat cut “like a sheep” (321/933). Needless to say, these measures merely exacerbated the problems of the caliphate, and al-Qāhir was unable to find officers who were as capable and influential among the troops to replace Mu’nis. The violent and brutal nature of the caliph and the distrust now felt against him by many in the army allowed discontent to spread. Inevitably, there was a conspiracy, coordinated in this case by Ibn Muqla, who had been wazīr up to the failure of Mu’nis’ conspiracy. Al-Qāhir was seized while drunk, deposed and blinded (322/934) by the rank and file of the army, who now produced one of al-Muqtadir’s sons, Muḥammad, who took the title of al-Rāḍī as caliph. They then sent for the ex-wazīr, ‘Alī b. ‘īsā, to explain the proper protocol for proclaiming caliphs. Compared with his predecessor, al-Rāḍī was quiet and affable and given to the company of scholars, but he had little chance to display any political talents he may have had.
The intrigues and conspiracies which surrounded the caliph in Baghdad were becoming increasingly irrelevant to most of the Muslim world. In 305/918–919, during his third and last term as wazīr, ‘Alī b. ‘īsā had caused a list of the revenues of the caliphate to be drawn up. Neither north Africa nor Khurāsān were included, since they made no contributions – but Egypt, Syria, the Jazīra, western Iran (including Rayy) and Fārs were all listed, the Sawād, Ahwāz, Fārs and Egypt being the most profitable areas. No doubt even when it was drawn up, the list was optimistic; seven years later, during al-Rāḍī’s caliphate, it was no more than a historical curiosity. Not just the distant provinces but even the Sawād of Iraq itself had been seized from ‘Abbasid control. Egypt and Syria were in the hands of Muḥammad b. Ṭughj the ikhshīd, Mosul and the Jazīra in the hands of the Hamdanids. Western Iran had been taken over by groups of Daylamite soldiers of fortune and Fārs had passed into the hands of the first of the Buyid rulers. None of these areas now made any contribution to the revenues of the caliph. More critical still was the position in Iraq. In the south, the Barīdīs frequently withheld revenues from their area and began to negotiate with Aḥmad b. Būya with a view to taking over the whole country. In Wāsiṭ, the military governor, Muḥammad b. Rā’iq, refused to pay any of the revenues to Baghdad, saying that he needed them for his own purposes. The wazīr, Ibn Muqla, made an attempt in 323/935 to remedy the situation by leading an expedition to Mosul to try to assert his authority, but intrigues forced him to return. The next year, he persuaded the caliph to undertake an expedition against the nearest of the usurpers, Muḥammad b. Rā’iq in Wāsiṭ, but it failed to materialize and the wazīr was himself arrested. Not for the next 200 years was an ‘Abbasid caliph to launch a military campaign on his own initiative.
It was bankruptcy, not military defeat, which finally brought ‘Abbasid power to an end. The previous year, Ibn Rā’iq had suggested that he himself should take over both the civil and military administrations of the caliphate. Al-Rāḍī had refused, but now he saw no alternative. He wrote to Ibn Rā’iq, who in 324/936 came to Baghdad to take over the entire administration. It was a momentous change. From this time onwards, real power remained with Ibn Rā’iq – who was given the title of amīr al-umarā’ (commander of commanders) – and his secretary. The caliph had neither soldiers nor administrators to command. It was a revolution in another way as well. Ibn Rā’iq’s military power was based on a group of Turks newly arrived from Iran, where they had served with the Daylamite Mardāvīj b. Ziyār until his assassination the year before. The leading figures in this group were Bajkam and Tūzūn, each of whom later became amīr al-umarā’ in his own right. When Ibn Rā’iq took over the administration, he entirely disbanded and cashiered the old army of Baghdad, and its members were dispersed. It was the military force which al-Muwaffaq and Mūsā b. Bughā had built up and which had sustained the ‘Abbasid revival. Now that this army was no more, there was no body of troops to whom the dynasty could look. The arrival of Ibn Rā’iq also meant the end of the old wazirate. Ibn Muqla was the last of a tradition that stretched back to the Barmakids and before, the great ‘Abbasid wazīrs. On the orders of the vengeful amīr al-umarā’, Ibn Muqla’s tongue was torn out, and his hand, which had produced the most beautiful calligraphy of the age, was cut off “like a thief’s”. He died of dysentery, alone in a squalid dungeon, denied even a drink of water. From then onwards, it was the secretary of the amīr al-umarā’ who conducted such administration as was needed. The old dīwāns, with their specialized methods and procedures, were abandoned, and only the most basic functions of government remained.
The success of the new amīr al-umarā’ was short-lived. The Barīdīs, who had supported his move, began to negotiate with the Buyids again, while he himself faced discontent among his own military led by Bajkam. A short but destructive campaign saw him removed from power by his former protégé in 326/September 938. Thereafter, there followed a very confusing period of struggle for control of the caliphate in Baghdad. The main participants were the Turkish military of the capital, who produced two amīr al-umarā’s: Bajkam (326–9/938–941) and Tūzūn (331–334/943–945); the Hamdanids, one of whom became amīr al-umarā’ briefly with the title of Nāṣir al-Dawla (330–331/942–943); and the Barīdīs, who, being civilians by training, did not aspire to the title of amīr al-umarā’ but attempted briefly to run the government as wazīrs. The constant changes reveal both the bankruptcy and the unimportance of the caliphate during this period. Al-Rāḍī himself died peacefully in 329/940, and his brother Ibrāhīm took the title of al-Muttaqī, nominated by the then amīr al-umarā’, Bajkam. Al-Muttaqī seems to have been more forceful than al-Rāḍī in his attempts to restore the caliph’s power, and after Bajkam was murdered by some Kurds while out hunting in 329/941, he attempted to restore the wazirate in the old way and dispense with the office of amīr al-umarā’ entirely, but the attempt failed and the military soon regained control. Three years later, in 333/944, the caliph had a last chance when Muḥammad b. Ṭughj, the ruler of Egypt, came to see him in Raqqa and encouraged him to join him in Egypt. Unwisely, he refused and returned to Baghdad, where Tūzūn blinded and deposed him.
A new ‘Abbasid caliph, who took the name of al-Mustakfī, was appointed by Tūzūn, but affairs in Baghdad were increasingly overshadowed by the activities of Aḥmad b. Būya, sometimes supported by the Barīdīs in southern Iraq. While Tūzūn lived, he and his Turkish followers were able to maintain the independence of the city, but when he died, peacefully in his palace in 334/945, it was only a matter of time before the Buyids advanced. A last attempt was made by his secretary Ibn Shīrzād to arrange an alliance with the Hamdanid Nāṣir al-Dawla of Mosul but it came to nothing, and on 11 Jumādā II 334/17 January 946 Aḥmad camped outside Baghdad and was received by al-Mustakfī and acknowledged as amīr al-umarā’. The Buyid era in Baghdad had begun.
After the anarchy which followed the death of al-Mutawakkil, the ‘Abbasid caliphate was able to mount a sustained revival of power, but in the crisis of the first half of the fourth/tenth century, no such revival was possible. We can suggest a number of reasons for this. The first was perhaps the caliphs themselves. The earlier revival had been possible because of the close relationship that al-Muwaffaq had developed with the military commanders in Baghdad – but none of the ‘Abbasids of al-Muqtadir’s time seem to have done this; they remained secluded in the palaces of the dynasty until fortune thrust them, for good or ill, into the limelight. When made caliphs, they had neither experience nor contacts on which to build political power.
The nature of the army had changed as well. At the end of the Sāmarrā anarchy, most of the military leaders, men like Ṣālih. b. Waṣīf and Mūsā b. Bughā, were second-generation supporters of the ‘Abbasids who had been brought up in the service of the dynasty. Mu’nis was the last commander with such a background; Bajkam and Tūzūn were newly arrived from the east, where they had been serving with Mardāvīj, who rejected the caliphate entirely and felt no tradition of loyalty. The same was true of their followers. The fate of the dynasty was sealed when Muḥammad b. Rā’iq disbanded the old Baghdad army. In the Sāmarrā anarchy, the Turks had attempted to dominate the caliph so that they could guarantee salaries and rewards for their followers. They were not in fact hostile to caliphal power; they simply wanted to control it in their own interest. The soldiers of the fourth/tenth century, by contrast, were not dependent on salaries, and the winning of lands became their priority. Men like Ibn Rā’iq were intent on building up their own landed holdings, and any revival of central government could only be detrimental to their ambitions.
Over and over again, the problems of the ‘Abbasids at this time boiled down to shortage of money. The constant civil strife and the depredations of the Qarāmiṭa meant that the war-torn countryside of the Sawād of Iraq was exhausted, unable to yield the revenues which alone could make a revival possible. Ahwāz, Fārs and even Mosul seem to have remained comparatively prosperous but none of these was in ‘Abbasid hands, and the Baghdad countryside remained devastated. The military adventurers of the time totally disregarded the interests of the people and the economy of the area. In 326/937, Ibn Rā’iq, striving to impede the armies of his rival Bajkam by flooding, cut the great Nahrawān canal which watered much of the Sawād. The manoeuvre failed, but the consequences remained. Within four years, both Ibn Rā’iq and Bajkam were dead and the causes for which they fought forgotten. Yet, in the struggle they had destroyed for short-term military advantage the labour of generations. Never again would the countryside around Baghdad be able to support the flourishing civilization it had in early ‘Abbasid times and before. The breach of the Nahrawān canal was simply the most dramatic example of a widespread phenomenon of the time; and it was symbolic of the end of ‘Abbasid power, just as the breach of the Mārib dam was of the end of the prosperity of pre-Islamic south Arabia.