TOWARD a HISTORY of UMAYYAD LEGACIES Antoine Borrut

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INTRODUCTION: TOWARD A HISTORY OF UMAYYAD LEGACIES

Antoine Borrut and Paul M. Cobb

In 750, armies of the revolutionary movement led by members of the BAbbāsid family pursued Marwān II, the last Umayyad caliph in the east, from his defeat on the river Zāb in Iraq to Egypt, whence Marwān had ed, and where he would eventually be killed. During the pursuit, the BAbbāsid armies paused in the old Umayyad capital of Damascus, where their commander, BAbdallāh ibn BAlī, took pains to consider, as the studies collected in this volume do, the heritage of Marwān’s family, the Umayyad dynasty. Signicantly, the BAbbāsids had few prob- lems with the practical symbols of Umayyad statecra in Damascus. ey le intact and unscathed the famous Khad&rāA caliphal palace and (of course) the beautiful Umayyad mosque, as any visitor to the city today can tell you. Indeed, much of the sta of the Umayyad admin- istrative elite took up new jobs under new BAbbāsid masters. What the BAbbāsid conquerors directed their wrath toward were the symbols of Umayyad memory: the memorabilia, to use the term favored by students of historical memory. Most famously, BAbdallāh proceeded to the tombs of the Umayyad caliphs and destroyed them, opening up their graves and examining the state of the human remains within. e BAbbāsids were selective in their destructive undertaking. Some tombs were ignored entirely. Others, like those of the caliph Hishām, they desecrated or destroyed, scattering the remains to the wind. e BAbbāsids then continued on to Egypt where they met up with Marwān in time for him to make his date with destiny. is episode, with all its selectivity, creativity and baleful destruction, is the perfect analogy of the historian’s cra in general and of the study of the Umayyad legacy in particular.1

1 On this episode, see the classic study by Sabatino Moscati, “Le massacre des Umayyades dans l’histoire et dans les fragments poétiques,” Archiv Orientální 18 (1950): 88–115; Ih&sān BAbbās, TaArīkh bilād al-shām fī al-Basr& al-Babbāsī, 132–255 H/ 758–870 M (Amman: Lajnat taArīkh bilād al-shām, 1993), 12–16; and Amikam Elad, “Aspects of the transition from the Umayyad to the ‘Abbāsid caliphate,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 19 (1995): 89–132. See also Borrut’s contribution in this volume. 2 .

Not unlike the BAbbāsid tomb-raiders before them, students of the Umayyad dynasty, whether of the branch that ruled and was toppled in the Near East (661–750) or of the branch that survived to rule later and longer in Spain and Portugal, i.e., al-Andalus (756–1031), must also grapple with the scattered Umayyad remains that have been le to us.2 Sensitive students inevitably confront the question that frames all of the studies in the present volume: how do we know what we think we know about the Umayyads?3 To answer that question requires a brief consideration of the history of Umayyad historical memory, one that includes how the Umayyads wanted to be remembered and how later generations shaped that memory for us (what we may, again fol- lowing historians of memory, call Umayyad memoria).4

2 e history of the Umayyads of the Near East was surveyed long ago by Julius Wellhausen, whose pioneering work has created a particular vision of the Umay- yads (and of early Islamic history broadly) with which historians are still contend- ing: Julius Wellhausen, Das arabische Reich und sein Sturz (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1902), translated by M. G. Weir as e Arab Kingdom and Its Fall (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1927); A more recent survey is G. R. Hawting, e First Dynasty of Islam: e Umayyad Caliphate 661–750, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2000). For the Umayyads of al-Andalus, the monumental survey of Lévi-Provençal occupies roughly the same place as Wellhausen’s does for the East: Évariste Lévi-Provençal, Histoire de l’Espagne musulmane, 3 vols. (Paris: G. P. Maisonneuve, 1950–53). For the moment the Umayyads of al-Andalus carry on without their Hawting. For now, we have Pierre Guichard, La España musulmana: Al-Andalus omeya (siglos –), (Madrid: Temas de Hoy, 1995). e forthcoming New Cambridge History of Islam will o±er synthetic chapters on both branches of the Umayyads: Chase F. Robinson, ed., e New Cam- bridge History of Islam, vol. I: e Formation of the Islamic World, Sixth to Eleventh Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). 3 A question recently asked, and answered somewhat di±erently, about MuBāwiya, the dynasty’s founder: R. Stephen Humphreys, MuBawiya ibn Abi Sufyan: From Ara- bia to Empire (Oxford: Oneworld, 2006), 10–19, and also about the architect of the Córdoban caliphate: Maribel Fierro, BAbd al-Rahman III: e First Cordoban Caliph (Oxford: Oneworld, 2005), 137–40. 4 A µne study of the shaping of medieval Islamic historical memory (and beyond) is D. A. Spellberg, Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past: e Legacy of BAAisha bint Abi Bakr (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). e scholarship on the history of memory is vast. For practical examples relevant to our case, see Patrick J. Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millenium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Gregor Schoeler, Écrire et transmettre dans les débuts de l’Islam (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2002). Translated by Shawkat Toorawa as e genesis of literature in Islam: from the aural to the read (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2009). For a more detailed bibliographical guide, see Antoine Borrut’s contribution to this volume.