Book Review
Joshua Mabra, Princely Authority in the Early Marwānid State: The Life of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Marwān (d. 86/705). Islamic History and Thought, vol. 2 (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2017), bibliography, index. ISBN 9781463206321. Price: $76.00 (cloth).
Matthew S. Gordon Miami University
hose subject to Arab-Islamic rule engagement with the new Umayyad rulers are likely to have wondered at the took on urgency. The policies of the newly life span of the new religio-polit- ascendant branch of the Umayyad clan Tical order at the close of the first/seventh (the Marwānids) sought a new sectarian- century. The conquerors were a quarrel- style unity. The effort sparked a response some lot, as quick to engage in interne- from Christian communities and their cine violence as they were to subdue local respective elites against whom such opposition: the ‘believers’ were at each policies were often aimed. Thus, in Egypt, other’s throats. From, in part, the accounts attitudes shifted on the part of the Coptic of a then burgeoning and variegated popu- Church and its adherents. Joshua Mabra, lation of clients and slaves (mawālī), it is in his concise and understated new book, clear that a new religious program was sees the shift as having taken place under taking shape. But sharp disagreements ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Marwān (d. 85/705), the over its central precepts were no less newly appointed governor, and, again, in obvious; divisions of belief ran as deep as good measure, because of his approach to those of kinship. How long could the new office. masters carry on this way? ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz governed Egypt for twenty The Christians of the Levant and Egypt years—65/685 to 85/705—during which had certainly a special interest in the time he stood as heir to ʿAbd al-Malik fortunes of the nascent order given their (d. 85/705), the caliph, his far better majority standing. If, at first, somewhat known half-brother. The two men had detached, as some modern scholars have assumed office, respectively, following the argued, following the clashes at Marj Rāhiṭ untimely death of their father, Marwān (c. 64-65/683-684) and a more aggressive ibn al-Ḥakam ibn al-ʿĀṣ (d. 65/685). assertion of Arab-Muslim authority, Princely Authority in the Early Marwānid
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State brings together literary, numismatic, His theses are two in number. There is and archeological information in a close his argument that the new governor sought discussion of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s tenure in independence from central authority; I office. A political biography, it has much take this up below. The other thesis is that to say about ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz but also widens Marwān assigned ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz over Egypt a useful window onto the quarrels of the because of the legitimation conferred new empire and emergent patterns of by his mother’s “royal Kalbī lineage” Arab-Islamic legitimation. (p. 11). Through her, Marwān and, Mabra sees, as a failing of modern following the latter’s demise and his own scholarship, its passing treatment of ʿAbd ascent to office, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz himself, could al-ʿAzīz. (A quick survey of the indices of count on the backing of the Quḍāʿa. This modern studies of the Umayyad period is to see ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz as having continued confirms the point: mentions of ʿAbd where Muʿāwiya had left off, decades al-ʿAzīz are scattered and few). The lion’s earlier, in drawing support from the Syrian share of attention has been devoted to ʿAbd tribes, led by the Kalb. Modern scholarship al-Malik. This is as it should be given the has long recognized this feature of early latter’s achievements, and on many fronts: Umayyad politics. But Mabra seems he is typically held to be the architect of justified in seeing that modern (Western) the first Islamic state. ʿAbd al-Malik, more historiography often moves too quickly than any other Arab/Muslim leader, drew through the intricate Arab tribal politics on Islamic symbols and rhetoric in a bid of the Second Fitna. It often overlooks, in to join a fractious Muslim realm under particular, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s role in moving Marwānid rule. But Mabra would have ʿAbd the Quḍāʿa-Marwānid alliance forward al-ʿAzīz play a “paramount role” (p. 10) and, thus, consolidating the authority of in this regard as well. He makes a strong the Marwānids following Marj Rāhiṭ and pitch for the significance of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s the collapse of the Zubayrids. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz contribution and the lessons it offers on provided continuity: he was the best choice Umayyad politics. The book joins a now to succeed his father as amīr of Egypt upon fairly substantial and growing library of his (Marwān’s) rise to the caliphate. revisionist scholarship on the early Islamic Mabra stays with tribal politics in period. But it has problems, and I address his second chapter (“The Coalition of these below. Kalb and Umayya”). He points to the Princely Authority opens with a strained efforts by Julius Wellhausen, discussion of the introduction of Umayyad among others, to explain the rise of the family rule over Egypt, a situation that Marwānids. Why that Umayyad house? would prevail into the early second/eighth Again, Mabra locates Marwānid success, century. Mabra only gets to his main and does so convincingly, in the support arguments at the close of the first chapter from powerful Quḍāʿī circles following (“Egypt and the Early Umayyads”). This is Marwān’s marriage to Laylā bint Zabān a touch annoying: history writing ought ibn al-Aṣbagh from the ruling house not adhere to narrow formulas, but there of Dūmat al-Jandal, a key site linking is reason to provide direction early on. Syria to the Najd (north-central Arabia).
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The marriage was only one in a series: be the case of future Egyptian claimants, the early Muslim elite long knew to forge local poets did much to serve political such ties to the Kalb powerhouse. Marwān ambitions along the Nile. (Michael Bonner did so in style, marrying twice, in fact, has demonstrated as much for Aḥmad ibn into the Kalb, then in his appointment Ṭūlūn of third/ninth century fame1). Two of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz as governor and second poets, in particular, lauded ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz: heir to the caliphate (after ʿAbd al-Malik). Ibn Qays al-Ruqayyāt (d. 85/705) and Mabra provides two handy charts of these al-Aḥwaṣ al-Anṣārī (d. 105/723). Six poems alliances, and in a rare addition to such survive, four from Ibn Qays, two from his charts, includes the women to whom the counterpart, and Mabra investigates them Marwānid chiefs were married (pp. 31-32). with care. He includes selections, both The marital ties were critical: “ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz in the original Arabic and in serviceable b. Marwān was well aware of the value of translation. I find the latter passages often his maternal lineage, and he leaned heavily too close to the Arabic: here, as in other on his mother’s name and nobility” (p. 29). ways, Mabra should have been better A virtue of Mabra’s book is his keen served by his editor and reviewers. But, sense of Umayyad politics: he is a close again, he has studied the poems carefully, reader of his sources, Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam, and draws out telling evidence that, in al-Kindī, and al-Ṭabarī among the Arabic particular, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz relied heavily on writers. Mabra knows, in other words, how his maternal lineage in gilding his claims, to build an argument. It is ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s both as amīr and as heir apparent. shaping of a “power network” (p. 34) that Mabra turns to the second of his overall concerns the third chapter, “Al-Ḥasham: theses in the final two chapters. The A Provincial Power Base.” Echoing Wilfred argument, I believe, is new: ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Madelung and Patricia Crone especially, insisted on ruling Egypt on his own terms, Mabra points to the predominance of the rather than those set out in Damascus Yamānī “super tribal bloc” in Egypt and by ʿAbd al-Malik. Mabra refers to it as the new governor’s efforts, following the independence on the governor’s part: “he Second Fitna, to further consolidate his ruled with almost no involvement from ties (through his Kalbī connections) to that his brother, the amīr al-muʾminīn ʿAbd same bloc. A key decision was to marry the al-Malik…[refusing] to participate in a granddaughter of ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ, Egypt’s number of his brother’s Islamicizing and original boss. No less a measure was the centralizing reforms.” (p. 11). Again, it acquisition by ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz of a series seems to me, this is a significant statement of properties in central Fusṭāṭ. This is a in the light of a near scholarly orthodoxy, useful insight on Mabra’s part. He argues which holds that, following ʿAbd al-Malik’s that the properties, surrounding the sweeping reforms, the interlocking original congregational mosque, gave the streams of Islamisation and Arabisation governor access to Egypt’s best families: swept forward across the Muslim realm. the properties provided proximity and prestige alike. 1. “Ibn Ṭūlūn’s Jihād: The Damascus Assembly of Poetry is the stuff of Chapter Four: “The 269/883,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, Poetic Battle for Succession.” As would 130:4 (2010), 573-605, see, on the poetry, 593-597.
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Rather than counter this view outright, I Sijpesteijn’s Shaping a Muslim State think, Mabra complicates it. It would have (Oxford, 2013) and Majed Mikhail’s From been helpful had he opted to extend his Byzantine to Islamic Egypt (London & New thinking on this score: again, his style is York, 2014), from which we learn a very very understated. great deal of the shaping of Islamic-era So, how did ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz proceed in Egypt. Mabra appears to have relied on constructing his “Independent Polity” Sijpesteijn’s doctoral thesis of the same (Chapter Five)? Mabra relies on the name (Princeton, 2004), although it is a bit evidence contained in the Aphrodito difficult to tell (see below). The turns of documents (P.Lond. IV) and the so-called ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s busy career were, in many ABAZ coin, “the first completely original cases, predictable, given the significance [copper] coin minted in Islamic Egypt” of Egypt: these were matters of tribute (p. 113). The former body of evidence, in and imperial administration. But other Mabra’s reading, points to a refusal by ʿAbd matters had a longer ripple effect: so, for al-ʿAzīz to share Egypt’s fiscal and human example, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, standing up to ʿAbd wealth with the empire: the governor al-Malik, did so at one point by rejecting kept revenue and tradesmen at home for the standardized version of the Qurʾanic his own purposes. The coin, for its part, text produced by al-Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf speaks to the effort by ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz to and ordering up an ‘Egyptian’ muṣḥaf, a nurture relations with Egyptian Christians. legitimating gesture paralleling that of his It was, Mabra states, “a compromise coin,” rival in Damascus. But the wider point, designed to avoid the overtly Islamic again, goes to Egypt’s often edgy relations program put in place by ʿAbd al-Malik. with the imperial center, not simply in The aim, in other words, was to address the Umayyad period, but through the first political challenges at a regional (Egyptian) Abbasid period as well, that is, into the level quite in contrast with his brother’s first part of the fourth/tenth century and more universal (Islamic) program. The the destruction, by an Abbasid force, of the latter program thus comes off as less Tulunid polity. uniform, less imperial, less sweeping. And, Mabra’s contribution, and, again, his as Mabra demonstrates, citing al-Yaʿqūbī discussion overlaps particularly with and al-Kindī, both writers well acquainted Mikhail, is to insist on paying closer with Egypt’s recent political history, the attention than is normally the rule to governor’s stance had as much to do with a the evidence provided by Coptic sources, fraternal clash: ʿAbd al-Malik, at one point, chief among them the History of the sought to convince ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz to step Patriarchs of Alexandria. As Mikhail points down as heir apparent in favor of his own out (see, for example, Islamic Egypt, offspring, an offer he rejected out of hand. 41-42), ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s policies towards A further virtue of the book lies in the church were singular in their aim of turning our lens from center to periphery, integrating Coptic officialdom into the new which is to say, the dynamics internal Arab/Islamic administration. Mabra moves to Egypt this early in the Arab/Islamic forward with this same evidence. First, he period. Mabra shares ground with at sees the governor’s policies as extending least two recent publications, Petra well beyond a warming of relations with
Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 25 (2017) Joshua Mabra’s Princely Authority in the Early Marwānid State • 188 the Coptic religious establishment: ʿAbd I wondered, too, about the counter- al-ʿAzīz worked deliberately to wield close evidence. It perhaps goes without saying authority over the church. But, more to that, largely due to the vagaries of the point, he did so as part and parcel of transmission (oral and written), Arabic the effort to consolidate an autonomous sources on the first Islamic period contain authority. The difference, in other words, contradictory and inconsistent evidence. is that Mikhail seems content to see this Purely by happenstance, I noted a reference new relationship as a step in the extension to ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz in Christophe Picard’s of Muslim/imperial hegemony, whereas new study of the ‘Islamic Mediterranean,’ Mabra appears to be arguing for a break La Mer des Califes (Seuil, 2015).2 Picard occasioned by ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s particular quotes a long passage from al-Bakrī’s Kitāb political and administrative strategies. al-masālik wa al-mamālik, so admittedly a I liked this chapter in particular for its later (fifth/eleventh century) Andalusian reliance on a mix of literary, numismatic geographical text. It has ʿAbd al-Malik, as and archeological evidence. caliph, order ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, as governor, I have described the book as understated: transfer a population of one thousand Mabra is a reticent writer, for all of his Coptic shipbuilders and their families to clarity. Perhaps this is proper in a first Tunis, where they were to construct a new book, and fair enough. But Mabra has a way fleet with which to engage the Byzantines. of stopping just short of a full argument. It has ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz work out the details So, for example, he treats the critical part with the governor of Ifrīqiya, Ḥasān played by maternal lineage, as indicated ibn al-Nuʿmān. There is much here: the above, and names several of the Kalbī passage evinces a practice of population women in question, but could underscore transfer on the part of the Umayyads the point that, without the perspective that one reads of in other sources as well of gender, a retelling of Umayyad history (and which was very much a practice of falls short. He might also have said more most ancient and medieval empires). It about the use of the physical landscape. complicates Mabra’s account: first, it has He speaks to the purposes to which ʿAbd al-Malik working with his brother at property and city-building were put by a point when, if we follow Mabra, the two ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, especially in his discussion men were at odds and, second, it has Ibn of Ḥulwān, the governor’s new capital. al-Nuʿmān on the scene when, according He sees it, properly, as an ideological use to Mabra (p. 93), ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz had replaced of brick and mortar, and comments, in him years earlier as governor of Ifrīqiya. this regard, on the later construction of This is not to challenge Mabra—I find al-Ramla by Sulaymān ibn ʿAbd al-Malik his theses very well supported—so much (d. 99/717), which he treats similarly in as to suggest that an engagement with symbolic terms. But I thought it right for uncomfortable evidence makes for richer Mabra to offer a wider comment that, in history. this way, as in many others, the Umayyad house developed patterns of legitimation— including city-building—that flourished 2. See my review of Picard’s book in this same well beyond the dynasty’s fall. issue.
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Finally, the book is marred by two errors. More serious are the problems of problems that, unfortunately, appear citation: I checked only a handful of the to have become common to academic notes, and in random fashion, and found publishing. One wants not to be naïve at least four that needed correcting, which as regards the perilous state of book suggests others exist as well. The citation publishing, but the volume is far too to al-Kindī (p. 94, note 33) should be to p. 58 expensive. And the shame of it goes to its not 55; the references to Petra Sijpesteijn’s availability to instructors. As perhaps other Shaping a Muslim State (eg. p. 100, note colleagues have as well, I have used Chase 49 and p. 105, n. 61) are misleading in that Robinson’s ʿAbd al-Malik (Oneworld, 2005) they apparently refer to Sijpesteijn’s 2004 with students to good effect. It works well Princeton dissertation, which bears the in part because of its brevity, focus and the same title as her later monograph (Oxford narrative ‘story’ inherent to biography. I University Press, 2013), but Mabra makes could see using Mabra’s book—it bears the no effort to distinguish the two works; same features—in similar fashion. But the and, finally, Phil Booth’s Crisis of Empire cost is prohibitive. One hopes that Gorgias (University of California Press, 2013), is Press will see to an affordable paperback cited (p. 141, note 59) but does not occur edition. in the bibliography. Casual errors, perhaps, The second problem is more serious: the and certainly not exceptional, but they lax editing of the book. It contains, first are pernicious nonetheless in that they of all, no small number of typographical reduce confidence.
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