Chapter 75. Caliphal Empire: Umayyads, Abbasids and the Persian Inheritance

Between 661 and 1258 the caliphate went from a tribal chieftaincy in Damascus to a Sasanian-style monarchy in Baghdad, and then to a symbolic office over a mosaic of Turkish, Iranian and Arab military states. The library’s sources agree that this political history cannot be separated from religious history. They describe each theological school as taking a position for or against the ruler. They also describe the conquered Iranians, and above all their Zoroastrian priesthood, scribes and court tradition, as passing a theory of sacred kingship into the empire that had defeated them. This chapter follows the Umayyad consolidation, the Abbasid revolution of 750 and the high caliphal age, the reign of al-Ma’mun, and the break-up after about 935, together with the slow conversion and decline of the Zoroastrians.

The Umayyad state (661-750)

Armstrong describes Muawiyah (661-680) as restoring unity by reviving Umar’s segregation of Arab Muslims from subject peoples. He “discouraged conversion” and relied at first on non-Muslim officials from the Byzantine and Persian services, so that “Islam thus remained the religion of the conquering Arab elite”. She rejects the image of “secular” Umayyads but sees a structural conflict “between the needs of the agrarian state and Islam” [Armstrong, Islam: A Short History, #53062, “The Umayyads and the Second Fitnah”]. After the Second Fitnah, “Abd al-Malik (685-705) was able to reassert Umayyad rule”: “Arabic replaced Persian as the official language of the empire; for the first time there was an Islamic coinage … In Jerusalem, the Dome of the Rock was completed in 691, the first major Islamic monument, which proudly asserted the supremacy of Islam in this holy city which had a large Christian majority” [Armstrong, #53062; Armstrong, Islam, #68695, “Key Figures”]. Sourdel’s glossary agrees on the date and notes that its “inscriptions inspired by Quranic verses underline the superiority of Islam over Christianity” [Sourdel & Sourdel-Thomine, Civilizatia Islamului clasic III, #12462, entry “CUPOLA STÎNCII”]. It calls Abd al-Malik “the true founder of the Marwanid branch”, who with al-Hajjaj “arabised the administration” [Sourdel, #12462, entry “‘ABD AL-MALIK IBN MARWAN”].

The transition can be seen on the coins themselves. The illustrated volume of Sourdel shows a unique transitional dirham. On it “the fire altar, whose image generally appears on the reverse of the Sasanian-type dirhams struck during the seventh century in Islamic Iran, is replaced … by the engraved image of a mihrab, in the centre of which rises the lance, attribute of caliphal sovereignty”, inscribed “Commander of the Faithful” [Sourdel & Sourdel-Thomine, Civilizația Islamului clasic I (ilustrații), #12460, coin plates]. The Sasanian legacy also ran through the chancery: Abd al-Hamid, secretary to the last Umayyad Marwan II, is credited with founding Arabic epistolary prose, and his treatises show “an evident influence of the tradition of the Sasanian secretaries” [Sourdel, #12462, entry “‘ABD AL-HAMID”].

Under the last Umayyads (705-750) the dynastic principle was accepted “without demur”, and al-Walid I reached Spain. Armstrong calls Poitiers (732) “no Waterloo”. Umar II (717-720) was “the first caliph to encourage the dhimmis to convert”, which cost poll-tax revenue, while Hisham (724-743) restored finances by becoming “more like a conventional absolute monarch”, a form of autocracy “abhorrent to the devout” [Armstrong, #53062, “The Last Years of the Umayyads (705-750)”]. Boyce calls the Umayyad epoch “one of Arab imperialism”, with “little serious pressure … to adopt Islam” except under Umar II. She records one governor of Iraq whose commissioner extorted “forty million dirhams” from fire temples that bought their survival [Boyce, Zoroastrians, #55117, “Under the Caliphs”].

The Abbasid revolution and the high caliphal age (750-935)

Armstrong writes that the Abbasids “capitalized on the widespread desire to see a member of Muhammad’s family on the throne”. They began recruiting in the Iranian provinces in 743, took Kufah in 749 and defeated the last Umayyad in 750 [Armstrong, #53062]. Sourdel identifies their organiser Abu Muslim as probably a former slave “of Iranian origin” who led the clandestine movement in Khurasan. Al-Mansur “rid himself of him” by luring him to court, and his execution “triggered in Iran a revolt linked to a very heterodox movement of ideas” [Sourdel, #12462, entry “ABU MUSLIM”]. Hoyland documents these revolts. The Abbasids had “recruited Zoroastrian villagers in their armies … only to disband them”. The leader Sunbadh “took control of Rayy and returned to Zoroastrianism … and he wrote to the king of Daylam that the rule of the Arabs was at an end”. Other leaders foretold that Abu Muslim himself “would reappear to ‘fill the world with justice'”. Hoyland concludes that, although medieval writers blamed Mazdakism or extreme Shi’ism, “it is clear that their basis was Zoroastrianism, here revealing its syncretic potential” [Hoyland, Seeing Islam as Others Saw It, #55061, ch. 1, pp. 29-30].

Once in power, Armstrong writes, the Abbasids “shed this religious camouflage”. Al-Saffah “massacred all the Umayyads he could lay his hands upon”, al-Mansur “murdered all the Shii leaders whom he considered a danger”, and al-Mahdi took the Shii messianic title itself. Baghdad was built near Ctesiphon, and “the new caliphate was modelled on the old pre-Islamic autocracy”. Under Harun al-Rashid (786-809) courtiers kissed the ground before the “Shadow of God on earth”, the executioner stood behind the throne and the army became “a corps of Persians”. Harun’s reign was the peak: “the empire enjoyed an unprecedented peace”, and a translation movement made “more scientific discoveries during this time than in the whole of previously recorded history”. But “by the end of the reign of Harun al-Rashid, it was clear that the caliphate had passed its peak” [Armstrong, #53062, “The Abbasids: The High Caliphal Period (750-935)”]. Boyce gives the Zoroastrian side of the same events. The Abbasids “revived the traditions of the Sasanian court”, gave Persians many posts and “imitated Sasanian authoritarianism in religious matters”, so that “as antagonism between Arab and non-Arab disappeared, so that between Muslim and non-Muslim grew sharper” [Boyce, #55117].

Theology as politics: from the ahl al-hadith to al-Ma’mun

According to Armstrong, the ahl al-hadith taught that “commanding the right and forbidding the wrong” was for the very few and that “the rank and file must obey the caliph”. This “was attractive to Harun al-Rashid”, and leading Mutazilites were even imprisoned. At the same time the Shariah “constituted a protest” against courtly culture: Malik and al-Shafii “had taken part in Shii uprisings against the early Abbasids” [Armstrong, #53062]. After the civil war of 809-813 between Harun’s sons, which Armstrong calls a “clash of personal ambition”, al-Ma’mun (813-833) faced “a civil war, with a Shii rebellion in Kufah and Basrah (814-15) and a Kharajite revolt in Khurasan”. He brought back the Mutazilite rationalists, who launched the mihnah (inquisition) against the Hadith People, making Ahmad ibn Hanbal “a folk hero”. He named the eighth imam, Ali al-Rida, his heir, and “a few months later, al-Rida conveniently died, possibly by foul play” [Armstrong, #53062, pp. 62-63]. Boyce adds that al-Ma’mun, nicknamed “Commander of the Unfaithful”, held debates at court in which the Zoroastrian high priest Adurfarnbag Farrokhzadan “ably defended the Zoroastrian faith”, yet he still ordered raids on unconverted peoples beyond Khurasan [Boyce, #55117].

“Religion and sovereignty are twins”: the Iranian theory of rule

Shaul Shaked’s collected articles trace the passage of Sasanian political ideas into Islam. They include an article on “‘Religion and sovereignty are twins’ in Ibn al-Muqaffa’s theory of government” and a note on “the four sages” [Shaked, From Zoroastrian Iran to Islam, #60406, article VI, “From Iran to Islam: notes on some themes in transmission”]. The maxim’s Sasanian form survives in the Arabic Testament of Ardashir, which Shaked quotes: “kingship and religion are twin brothers, no one of which can be maintained without the other. For religion is the foundation of kingship, and kingship is the guardian of religion. Kingship cannot subsist without its foundation, and religion cannot subsist without its guardian” [Shaked, #60406, “Esoteric Trends in Zoroastrianism”, Appendix D, “Secret religion and heresy in the Sasanian theory of government”]. Fozi reports Jonathan Berkey’s view that “Zoroastrian doctrine affirmed the union of Kingship and religion, and so enjoined universal obedience to the sacralized monarch”, and that this “is important for its foreshadowing of later developments in Islam” [Fozi, Reclaiming the Faravahar, #54976, ch. 5].

The main channel was Ibn al-Muqaffa. Boyce calls him Rozbeh son of Dadoy, “an unenthusiastic convert to Islam” in the Basra tax office. His Arabic version of the Sasanian chronicle Khwaday Namag became a basis for Muslim world histories, and it allowed noble Iranian converts to claim descent from Iran’s heroes “without making their attachment to the new faith suspect” [Boyce, #55117]. Sourdel’s glossary describes him as author of ethical treatises “inspired by Iranian traditions” and of a memorandum to the caliph, and as translator of Kalila wa-Dimna. It reports that he “was considered a crypto-Manichaean and is said to have written a refutation of the Quran”, and that he was executed around 757 on al-Mansur’s orders [Sourdel, #12462, entry “IBN AL-MUKAFFA'”].

The Shu’ubiyya: the Persian counter-claim

Sourdel describes the mawali (non-Arab converts attached as clients to Arab tribes) as mostly of Iranian origin. In the ninth century many joined “a movement at once literary and politico-social that aimed to combat the pre-eminence of the Arabs and of Arab culture”. Citing Quran 49:13 on God’s making mankind into “peoples” (shu’ub), they demanded equality with the Arab tribes. Sourdel adds that the movement “also had a religious incidence: its partisans meant to reduce the culture of the Arabo-Islamic world to Iranian culture and ethics; this amounted to reducing the influence of Islam”. The entry cites H. A. R. Gibb, “The Social Significance of the Shu’ubiya” (1963) [Sourdel, #12462, entry “CLIENŢI”, translated from Romanian]. The encyclopaedia distinguishes taswiya (equality) from tafdil (claims of Persian superiority). It names opponents such as al-Jahiz and the Persian-descended Ibn Qutayba, and quotes al-Biruni’s rejoinder: “Our religion and the empire are Arab” [Wikipedia: Shu’ubiyya]. Sourdel describes Ibn Qutayba as a defender of Arab culture who was nonetheless “open to Iranian influences” [Sourdel, #12462, entry “IBN KUTAYBA”]. Hoyland’s evidence locates part of the same Iranian assertion in the countryside rather than at court, in the Zoroastrian-based millenarian revolts [Hoyland, #55061].

Conversion and survival of the Zoroastrians

Boyce describes the conquest as fought “in the spirit of Surah 9.29”, aimed “not … so much to convert the unbeliever as to subject him”. Zoroastrians were treated as dhimmis “despite doubts that persisted down the centuries”. She quotes the civil-service guide prescribing that the payer of jizya “be made to feel that he is an inferior person”. Inducements to convert included freedom for slaves and escape from the poll tax. Qutaiba converted Bukhara four times and paid two dirhams for attendance at Friday prayer. On the other side, apostasy was punishable by death: a ninth-century question asks about a man who “cannot tie the kusti again for fear of his life”. Some converts were drawn by Islam’s simplicity and by doctrines that “derived ultimately from Zoroastrianism”: “Heaven and Hell, the end of the world and the Day of Judgment … the five times of daily prayer”. Others held back from a faith that demanded submission to “an inscrutable, all-powerful God”. By the ninth century Zoroastrians were “a substantial minority”. Al-Balkhi wrote of Fars that “there is no country where the Zoroastrians are more numerous”, and a prince of Tabaristan finally “break[s] his Zoroastrian girdle” in 854. The high priest Manushchihr’s Dadestan i dinig shows a community growing poorer and short of priests [Boyce, #55117, “Under the Caliphs”].

Sundermann follows the same Iranian material into non-Zoroastrian forms. The Avestan king Kauui Usan becomes the Shahnameh’s Kay Kaus, “an arrogant, foolish and incompetent ruler of Iran”, with “his abortive ascension to heaven on a throne drawn by four strong eagles”. Sundermann traces the punishment of his hubris to the lost Avestan Sudgar nask, in which the frawahr of the future king Xusrau saves him [Sundermann, Zoroastrian Motifs in Non-Zoroastrian Traditions, #55067, p. 162]. Sundermann also argues for an Iranian origin of the Jewish demon Asmodaios, from the Avestan Aēšma [Sundermann, #55067, p. 158], and Fozi quotes Berkey’s evidence for Persian loanwords such as firdaws, “paradise”, in the Quran [Fozi, #54976, ch. 5].

The New Order (935-1258) and the end of the caliphate

Armstrong writes that “by the tenth century it was clear that Islamdom could no longer function effectively as a single political unit”. The Fatimids ruled from Cairo, Turkish amirs held the east, and the “Shii century” passed into the Seljuk seizure of Baghdad in 1055. The vizier Nizam al-Mulk then built madrasahs, which made the ulama the empire’s “glue” [Armstrong, #53062, ch. 3 “A New Order (935-1258)”; maps “The Disintegration of the Abbasid Empire”, “The Seljuk Empire”]. Sourdel’s entry on the Abbasids records how the caliphs ceded “the essentials of their prerogatives” to the Buyid amirs from the mid-tenth century and then to the Seljuk sultans, until “the conquest of Baghdad by the Mongols … its devastation and the killing of the last reigning caliph” in 1258 [Sourdel, #12462, entry “ABBASIZI”]. Armstrong describes the city’s fall: “Baghdad fell after a single battle, and took the moribund caliphate with it: corpses filled the streets” [Armstrong, #53062, “The Mongols”; map “The Mongol World”]. In her judgement the decline of the caliphate was experienced as “a liberation”, since a system of rival courts “approximated more truly the egalitarian spirit of the Quran” [Armstrong, #53062]. The illustrated volumes of Sourdel document the urban, courtly and artistic world of these centuries [Sourdel, #12460, #12461].

Key points

• Abd al-Malik (685-705) arabised the administration, struck Islamic coins and completed the Dome of the Rock in 691 [Armstrong, #53062; Sourdel, #12462].
• The Abbasid revolution (750) was organised from Khurasan by Abu Muslim with Iranian support. His execution set off Zoroastrian-based millenarian revolts such as Sunbadh’s [Sourdel, #12462; Hoyland, #55061].
• Under Harun al-Rashid the caliphate reached its height as a Sasanian-style absolute monarchy and then began to decline [Armstrong, #53062].
• Al-Ma’mun’s reign opened with Shii and Kharijite revolts. His turn to Mutazilism and the mihnah shows theology serving the ruler [Armstrong, #53062].
• The Sasanian maxim that kingship and religion are “twin brothers” passed into Islamic political thought through Ibn al-Muqaffa and the Testament of Ardashir [Shaked, #60406; Boyce, #55117].
• The Shu’ubiyya asserted Iranian equality or superiority against Arab privilege. Sourdel says it also sought to reduce Islam’s influence [Sourdel, #12462; Wikipedia: Shu’ubiyya].
• Zoroastrians converted under fiscal, legal and social pressure and remained a large minority into the ninth century. Islam in Iran meanwhile became “steadily more Zoroastrianized” [Boyce, #55117].
• After 935 the caliphate became symbolic under Buyids and Seljuks and ended with the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258 [Armstrong, #53062; Sourdel, #12462].