Abbasid

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Abbasid

Abbasid (Arabic: العبّاسيّون, Abbāsīyūn) is the dynastic name generally given to the caliph of Baghdad, the second of the two great Sunni dynasties of the Islamic empire, that overthrew the Umayyad caliphs from all but Spain. It seized power in 750, when it finally defeated the Umayyads in battle, and flourished for two centuries, but slowly went into decline with the rise to power of the Turkish army it had created, the Mamluks. Within 150 years of gaining power across Iran they were forced to cede power to local dynasties who only nominally acknowledged their power and cede the Maghreb to independent Aghlabids. Their rule was finally ended in 1258, when Hulagu Khan, the Mongol conqueror, sacked Baghdad. While they continued to claim authority in religious matters from their base in Egypt, the dynasty's secular authority had ended. Descendants of the Abbasids include the al-Abbasi tribe who live northeast of Tikrit in modern-day Iraq.

Revolt against the Umayyads

The Abbasid caliphs officially based their claim to the caliphate on their descent from Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib (AD 566-652), one of the youngest uncles of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, by virtue of which descent they regarded themselves as the rightful heirs of Muhammad as opposed to the Umayyads. The Umayyads were descended from Umayya, and were a clan separate from Muhammad's in the Quraish tribe.

The Abbasids also distinguished themselves from the Umayyads by attacking their secularism, moral character, and administration in general. The Abbasids also appealed to non-Arab Muslims, known as mawali, who remained outside the kinship-based society of Arab culture and were perceived of as a lower class within the Umayyad empire. Muhammad ibn 'Ali, a great-grandson of Abbas, began to campaign for the return of power to the family of the prophet Muhammad, the Hashimites, in Persia during the reign of Umar II, Muhammad ibn Ali.

During the reign of Marwan II, this opposition culminated in the rebellion of Ibrahim the Imam, the fourth in descent from Abbas. Supported by the province of Khorasan, he achieved considerable successes, but was captured (AD 747) and died in prison (as some hold, assassinated). The quarrel was taken up by his brother Abdallah, known by the name of Abu al-'Abbas as-Saffah, who, after a decisive victory on the Greater Zab River (750), finally crushed the Umayyads and was proclaimed Caliph.

Consolidation and schisms

The Abbasids had depended heavily on the support of Persians in their overthrow of the Umayyads. Abu al-'Abbas' successor, al-Mansur, moved their capital from Damascus to the new city of Baghdad and welcomed non-Arab Muslims to their court. While this helped integrate Arab and Persian cultures, it alienated many of their Arab supporters, particularly the Khorasanian Arabs who had supported them in their battles against the Umayyads.

These fissures in their support led to immediate problems. The Umayyads, while out of power, were not destroyed. The only surviving member of the Umayyad royal family, which had been all but annihilated, ultimately made his way to Spain where he established himself as an independent Emir (Abd ar-Rahman I, 756). In 929, Abd ar-Rahman III assumed the title of Caliph, establishing Córdoba as a rival to Baghdad as the legitimate capital of the Islamic Empire.

The Abbasids also found themselves at odds with the Shias, many of whom had supported their war against the Umayyads, since the Abbasids claimed legitimacy by their familial connection to Muhammed. Once in power, the Abbasids embraced Sunni Islam and disavowed any support for Shi'a beliefs. That led to numerous conflicts, culminating in an uprising in Mecca in 786, followed by widespread bloodshed and the flight of many Shi'a to the Maghreb, where the survivors established the Idrisid kingdom. Shortly thereafter Berber Kharijites set up an independent state in North Africa in 801.

At the same time the Abbasids faced challenges closer to home. The Byzantine Empire was fighting Abbasid rule in Syria and Anatolia. Former supporters of the Abbasids had broken away to create a separate kingdom around Khorosan in northern Persia. Harun al-Rashid (786 - 809) turned on the Barmakids, a Persian family that had grown significantly in power within the administration of the state. In the ensuing centuries the Iranian territories would only nominally remain under the Caliphs rule and power would be held by various local political factions who usurped the caliphs authority; the first of whome were the Saffarids and the chief of whom were the Buyids who for time even ruled from Baghdad; or those politically supported factions who only nominally supported the caliphs authority such as the Tahirid and the Samanids. The eventual rise of the Ghaznavid Empire and the Seljuks to displace all these factions marked the end of Abbassid political dominion over the area.

The Mamluks

In the 9th century, the Abbasids created an army loyal only to their caliphate, drawn mostly from Turkish slaves, known as Mamluks, with some Slavs and Berbers participating as well. This force, created in the reign of al-Ma'mun (813 - 833), and his brother and successor al-Mu'tasim (833 - 842), prevented the further distintegration of the empire.

The Mamluk army, though often viewed negatively, both helped and hurt the caliphate. Early on, it provided the government with a stable force to deal with domestic and foreign problems. However, creation of this foreign army and al-Mu'tasim's transfer of the capital from Baghdad to Samarra created a division between the caliphate and the peoples they claimed to rule. In addition, the power of the Mamluks steadily grew until al-Radi (934 - 941) was constrained to hand over most of the royal functions to Mahommed bin Raik. In the following years, the Buwayhids, who were Shi'ites, seized power over Baghdad, ruling central Iraq for more than a century before being overthrown by the Seljuq Turks. In the same period, the Hamdanids, another Shi'ite dynasty, came to power in northern Iraq, leading to a tremendous expansion of Shi'a influence. In the process, the Abbasid caliphs became no more than figureheads.

Learning under the Abbasid dynasty

The reigns of Harun al-Rashid (786 - 809) and his successors fostered an age of great intellectual achievement. In large part this was the result of the schismatic forces that had undermined the Umayyad regime, which relied on the assertion of the superiority of Arab culture as part of its claim to legitimacy, and the Abbasids' welcoming of support from non-Arab Muslims. It is well established that the Abbasid caliphs modeled their administration on that of the Sassanids.Hamilton Gibb. Studies on the civilization of Islam. Princeton University Press. 1982. ISBN 0691053545 p.66 One Abbasid caliph is even quoted as saying:

"The Persians ruled for a thousand years and did not need us Arabs even for a day. We have been ruling them for one or two centuries and cannot do without them for an hour."Bertold Spuler. The Muslim World. Vol.I The Age of the Caliphs. Leiden. E.J. Brill. 1960 ISBN 0685233286 p.29

A number of medieval thinkers and scientists living under Islamic rule played a role in transmitting Greek, Hindu, and other pre-Islamic knowledge to the Christian West. They contributed to making Aristotle known in Christian Europe. In addition, the period saw the recovery of much of the Alexandrian mathematical, geometric and astronomical knowledge, such as that of Euclides and Claudius Ptolemy. These recovered mathematical methods were later enhanced and developed by other Islamic scholars, notably by Al-Biruni, and Abu Nasr Mansur.

Medicine was an area of science that advanced particularly during the Abbasids' reign. During the ninth century Baghdad contained over 800 doctors, and great discoveries in the understanding of anatomy and diseases were made. The clinical distinction between measles and smallpox was discovered during this time. Famous scientist Ibn Sina (known to the West as Avicenna) produced treatises and works that summarized the vast amount of knowledge that scientists had accumulated, and is often known as the father of modern medicine. The work of him and many others directly influenced the research of European scientists during the Renaissance and even later.

Three speculative thinkers, al-Kindi, al-Farabi, and Avicenna, combined Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism with other ideas introduced through Islam.

The end of the caliphate

Hulagu Khan sacked Baghdad on (February 10, 1258), causing great loss of life. Hulagu and many others feared an earthquake or other shock to nature occurring if the blood of Al-Musta'sim, the last reigning Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad, a direct descendent of Mohammed's uncle, was spilled. Despite having taken advice from Learned Shiites that no such calamity had happened after the deaths of John the Baptist, Jesus Christ, or the Shiite saint Hosein, as a precaution Hulagu had Al-Musta'sim wrapped in a carpet and then trodden to death by horses on February 20, 1258. Al-Musta'sim family was also executed, with the lone exceptions of his youngest son and a daughter who was sent to Mongolia to be a slave in the harem of Hulagu.Annals of history: Invaders: Destroying Baghdad by Ian Frazier, in The New Yorker 25 April 2005

The Abbasids still maintained a feeble show of authority, confined to religious matters, in Egypt under the Mamluks, but the dynasty finally disappeared with Al-Mutawakkil III, who was carried away as a prisoner to Constantinople by Selim I.