Part 27 (1/2)
[Sidenote: Ma'mun's heresies.]
[Sidenote: Rise of independent dynasties.]
[Sidenote: Turkish mercenaries introduced.]
[Sidenote: Decline of the Caliphate.]
The new Caliph was anything but orthodox. He favoured the s.h.i.+'ite party to such an extent that he even nominated the 'Alid, 'Ali b. Musa b.
Ja'far al-Ri?a, as heir-apparent--a step which alienated the members of his own family and led to his being temporarily deposed. He also adopted the opinions of the Mu'tazilite sect and established an Inquisition to enforce them. Hence the Sunnite historian, Abu 'l-Ma?asin, enumerates three princ.i.p.al heresies of which Ma'mun was guilty: (1) His wearing of the Green (_labsu 'l-Khu?ra_)[495] and courting the 'Alids and repulsing the 'Abbasids; (2) his affirming that the Koran was created (_al-qawl bi-Khalqi 'l-Qur'an_); and (3) his legalisation of the _mut'a_, a loose form of marriage prevailing amongst the s.h.i.+'ites.[496] We shall see in due course how keenly and with what fruitful results Ma'mun interested himself in literature and science.
Nevertheless, it cannot escape our attention that in this splendid reign there appear ominous signs of political decay. In 822 A.D. ?ahir, one of Ma'mun's generals, who had been appointed governor of Khurasan, omitted the customary mention of the Caliph's name from the Friday sermon (_khu?ba_), thus founding the ?ahirid dynasty, which, though professing allegiance to the Caliphs, was practically independent. ?ahir was only the first of a long series of ambitious governors and bold adventurers who profited by the weakening authority of the Caliphs to carve out kingdoms for themselves. Moreover, the Moslems of 'Iraq had lost their old warlike spirit: they were fine scholars and merchants, but poor soldiers. So it came about that Ma'mun's successor, the Caliph Mu'ta?im (833-842 A.D.), took the fatal step of surrounding himself with a Praetorian Guard chiefly composed of Turkish recruits from Transoxania. At the same time he removed his court from Baghdad sixty miles further up the Tigris to Samarra, which suddenly grew into a superb city of palaces and barracks--an Oriental Versailles.[497] Here we may close our brief review of the first and flouris.h.i.+ng period of the 'Abbasid Caliphate.
During the next four centuries the Caliphs come and go faster than ever, but for the most part their authority is precarious, if not purely nominal. Meanwhile, in the provinces of the Empire petty dynasties arise, only to eke out an obscure and troubled existence, or powerful states are formed, which carry on the traditions of Mu?ammadan culture, it may be through many generations, and in some measure restore the blessings of peace and settled government to an age surfeited with anarchy and bloodshed. Of these provincial empires we have now princ.i.p.ally to speak, confining our view, for the most part, to the political outlines, and reserving the literary and religious aspects of the period for fuller consideration elsewhere.
[Sidenote: The Second 'Abbasid Period (847-1258 A.D.).]
The reigns of Mutawakkil (847-861 A.D.) and his immediate successors exhibit all the well-known features of Praetorian rule. Enormous sums were lavished on the Turkish soldiery, who elected and deposed the Caliph just as they pleased, and enforced their insatiable demands by mutiny and a.s.sa.s.sination. For a short time (869-907 A.D.) matters improved under the able and energetic Muhtadi and the four Caliphs who followed him; but the Turks soon regained the upper hand. From this date every vestige of real power is centred in the Generalissimo (_Amiru 'l-Umara_) who stands at the head of the army, while the once omnipotent Caliph must needs be satisfied with the empty honour of having his name stamped on the coinage and celebrated in the public prayers. The terrorism of the Turkish bodyguard was broken by the Buwayhids, a Persian dynasty, who ruled in Baghdad from 945 to 1055 A.D. Then the Seljuq supremacy began with ?ughril Beg's entry into the capital and lasted a full century until the death of Sanjar (1157 A.D.). The Mongols who captured Baghdad in 1258 A.D. brought the pitiable farce of the Caliphate to an end.
[Sidenote: Dynasties of the early 'Abbasid Age.]
”The empire of the Caliphs at its widest,” as Stanley Lane-Poole observes in his excellent account of the Mu?ammadan dynasties, ”extended from the Atlantic to the Indus, and from the Caspian to the cataracts of the Nile. So vast a dominion could not long be held together. The first step towards its disintegration began in Spain, where 'Abdu 'l-Ra?man, a member of the suppressed Umayyad family, was acknowledged as an independent sovereign in A.D. 755, and the 'Abbasid Caliphate was renounced for ever. Thirty years later Idris, a great-grandson of the Caliph 'Ali, and therefore equally at variance with 'Abbasids and Umayyads, founded an 'Alid dynasty in Morocco. The rest of the North African coast was practically lost to the Caliphate when the Aghlabid governor established his authority at Qayrawan in A.D. 800.”
[Sidenote: Dynasties of the Second Period. 872 A.D.]
[Sidenote: The Samanids (874-999 A.D.).]
Amongst the innumerable kingdoms which supplanted the decaying Caliphate only a few of the most important can be singled out for special notice on account of their literary or religious interest.[498] To begin with Persia: in Khurasan, which was then held by the ?ahirids, fell into the hands of Ya'qub b. Layth the Coppersmith (_al-?affar_), founder of the ?affarids, who for thirty years stretched their sway over a great part of Persia, until they were dispossessed by the Samanids. The latter dynasty had the seat of its power in Transoxania, but during the first half of the tenth century practically the whole of Persia submitted to the authority of Isma'il and his famous successors, Na?r II and Nu? I. Not only did these princes warmly encourage and foster the development, which had already begun, of a national literature in the Persian language--it is enough to recall here the names of Rudagi, the blind minstrel and poet; Daqiqi, whose fragment of a Persian Epic was afterwards incorporated by Firdawsi in his _Shahnama_; and Bal'ami, the Vizier of Man?ur I, who composed an abridgment of ?abari's great history, which is one of the oldest prose works in Persian that have come down to us--but they extended the same favour to poets and men of learning who (though, for the most part, of Persian extraction) preferred to use the Arabic language. Thus the celebrated Rhazes (Abu Bakr al-Razi) dedicated to the Samanid prince Abu ?ali? Man?ur b. Ishaq a treatise on medicine, which he ent.i.tled _al-Kitab al-Man?uri_ (the Book of Man?ur) in honour of his patron. The great physician and philosopher, Abu 'Ali b. Sina (Avicenna) relates that, having been summoned to Bukhara by King Nu?, the second of that name (976-997 A.D.), he obtained permission to visit the royal library.
”I found there,” he says, ”many rooms filled with books which were arranged in cases row upon row. One room was allotted to works on Arabic philology and poetry; another to jurisprudence, and so forth, the books on each particular science having a room to themselves. I inspected the catalogue of ancient Greek authors and looked for the books which I required: I saw in this collection books of which few people have heard even the names, and which I myself have never seen either before or since.”[499]
[Sidenote: The Buwayhids (932-1055 A.D.).]
The power of the Samanids quickly reached its zenith, and about the middle of the tenth century they were confined to Khurasan and Transoxania, while in Western Persia their place was taken by the Buwayhids. Abu Shuja' Buwayh, a chieftain of Daylam, the mountainous province lying along the southern sh.o.r.es of the Caspian Sea, was one of those soldiers of fortune whom we meet with so frequently in the history of this period. His three sons, 'Ali, A?mad, and ?asan, embarked on the same adventurous career with such energy and success, that in the course of thirteen years they not only subdued the provinces of Fars and Khuzistan, but in 945 A.D. entered Baghdad at the head of their Daylamite troops and a.s.sumed the supreme command, receiving from the Caliph Mustakfi the honorary t.i.tles of 'Imadu 'l-Dawla, Mu'izzu 'l-Dawla, and Ruknu 'l-Dawla. Among the princes of this House, who reigned over Persia and 'Iraq during the next hundred years, the most eminent was 'A?udu 'l-Dawla, of whom it is said by Ibn Khallikan that none of the Buwayhids, notwithstanding their great power and authority, possessed so extensive an empire and held sway over so many kings and kingdoms as he. The chief poets of the day, including Mutanabbi, visited his court at s.h.i.+raz and celebrated his praises in magnificent odes. He also built a great hospital in Baghdad, the Bimaristan al-'A?udi, which was long famous as a school of medicine. The Viziers of the Buwayhid family contributed in a quite unusual degree to its literary renown. Ibnu 'l-'Amid, the Vizier of Ruknu 'l-Dawla, surpa.s.sed in philology and epistolary composition all his contemporaries; hence he was called 'the second Ja?i?,' and it was a common saying that ”the art of letter-writing began with 'Abdu 'l-?amid and ended with Ibnu 'l-'Amid.”[500] His friend, the ?a?ib Isma'il b. 'Abbad, Vizier to Mu'ayyidu 'l-Dawla and Fakhru 'l-Dawla, was a distinguished savant, whose learning was only eclipsed by the liberality of his patronage. In the latter respect Sabur b. Ardas.h.i.+r, the prime minister of Abu Na?r Baha'u 'l-Dawla, vied with the ill.u.s.trious ?a?ib.
He had so many encomiasts that Tha'alibi devotes to them a whole chapter of the _Yatima_. The Academy which he founded at Baghdad, in the Karkh quarter, and generously endowed, was a favourite haunt of literary men, and its members seem to have enjoyed pretty much the same privileges as belong to the Fellows of an Oxford or Cambridge College.[501]
Like most of their countrymen, the Buwayhids were s.h.i.+'ites in religion.
We read in the Annals of Abu 'l-Ma?asin under the year 341 A.H. = 952 A.D.:--
[Sidenote: Zeal of the Buwayhids for s.h.i.+'ite principles.]
”In this year the Vizier al-Muhallabi arrested some persons who held the doctrine of metempsychosis (_tanasukh_). Among them were a youth who declared that the spirit of 'Ali b. Abi ?alib had pa.s.sed into his body, and a woman who claimed that the spirit of Fa?ima was dwelling in her; while another man pretended to be Gabriel. On being flogged, they excused themselves by alleging their relations.h.i.+p to the Family of the Prophet, whereupon Mu'izzu 'l-Dawla ordered them to be set free. This he did because of his attachment to s.h.i.+'ism. It is well known,” says the author in conclusion, ”that the Buwayhids were s.h.i.+'ites and Rafi?ites.”[502]
[Sidenote: The Ghaznevids (976-1186 A.D.).]
Three dynasties contemporary with the Buwayhids have still to be mentioned: the Ghaznevids in Afghanistan, the ?amdanids in Syria, and the Fa?imids in Egypt. Sabuktagin, the founder of the first-named dynasty, was a Turkish slave. His son, Ma?mud, who succeeded to the throne of Ghazna in 998 A.D., made short work of the already tottering Samanids, and then sweeping far and wide over Northern India, began a series of conquests which, before his death in 1030 A.D., reached from Lah.o.r.e to Samarcand and I?fahan. Although the Persian and Transoxanian provinces of his huge empire were soon torn away by the Seljuqs, Ma?mud's invasion of India, which was undertaken with the object of winning that country for Islam, permanently established Mu?ammadan influence, at any rate in the Panjab. As regards their religious views, the Turkish Ghaznevids stand in sharp contrast with the Persian houses of Saman and Buwayh. It has been well said that the true genius of the Turks lies in action, not in speculation. When Islam came across their path, they saw that it was a simple and practical creed such as the soldier requires; so they accepted it without further parley. The Turks have always remained loyal to Islam, the Islam of Abu Bakr and 'Umar, which is a very different thing from the Islam of s.h.i.+'ite Persia. Ma?mud proved his orthodoxy by banis.h.i.+ng the Mu'tazilites of Rayy and burning their books together with the philosophical and astronomical works that fell into his hands; but on the same occasion he carried off a hundred camel-loads of presumably harmless literature to his capital. That he had no deep enthusiasm for letters is shown, for example, by his shabby treatment of the poet Firdawsi. Nevertheless, he ardently desired the glory and prestige accruing to a sovereign whose court formed the rallying-point of all that was best in the literary and scientific culture of the day, and such was Ghazna in the eleventh century. Besides the brilliant group of Persian poets, with Firdawsi at their head, we may mention among the Arabic-writing authors who flourished under this dynasty the historians al-'Utbi and al-Biruni.
[Sidenote: The ?amdanids (929-1003 A.D.).]
While the Eastern Empire of Islam was pa.s.sing into the hands of Persians and Turks, we find the Arabs still holding their own in Syria and Mesopotamia down to the end of the tenth century. These Arab and generally nomadic dynasties were seldom of much account. The ?amdanids of Aleppo alone deserve to be noticed here, and that chiefly for the sake of the peerless Sayfu 'l-Dawla, a worthy descendant of the tribe of Taghlib, which in the days of heathendom produced the poet-warrior, 'Amr b. Kulthum. 'Abdullah b. ?amdan was appointed governor of Mosul and its dependencies by the Caliph Muktafi in 905 A.D., and in 942 his sons ?asan and 'Ali received the complimentary t.i.tles of Na?iru 'l-Dawla (Defender of the State) and Sayfu 'l-Dawla (Sword of the State). Two years later Sayfu 'l-Dawla captured Aleppo and brought the whole of Northern Syria under his dominion. During a reign of twenty-three years he was continuously engaged in harrying the Byzantines on the frontiers of Asia Minor, but although he gained some glorious victories, which his laureate Mutanabbi has immortalised, the fortune of war went in the long run steadily against him, and his successors were unable to preserve their little kingdom from being crushed between the Byzantines in the north and the Fa?timids in the south. The ?amdanids have an especial claim on our sympathy, because they revived for a time the fast-decaying and already almost broken spirit of Arabian nationalism. It is this spirit that speaks with a powerful voice in Mutanabbi and declares itself, for example, in such verses as these:--[503]
”Men from their kings alone their worth derive, But Arabs ruled by aliens cannot thrive: Boors without culture, without n.o.ble fame, Who know not loyalty and honour's name.
Go where thou wilt, thou seest in every land Folk driven like cattle by a servile band.”