The ʿAbbāsid Caliphate

Inhoud Table of contents...... Fout! Bladwijzer niet gedefinieerd. Ḵhalīfa ...... 2 ʿAbbāsids (Banu 'l-ʿAbbās) ...... 28 ʿAbbāsid Revolution ...... 40 Adab Literature: 9th to 13th Century ...... 47 Women Literature: 9th to 15th Century ...... 50 Sexualities and Queer Studies ...... 69 al-Hāsh imiyya ...... 75 Bagh dād ...... 77 Bayt al-Ḥikma ...... 102 People of the House ...... 105 ʿAlids ...... 110 Law: The Four Sunnī Schools of Law ...... 113

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Ḵh alīfa

THE HISTORY OF THE INSTITUTION OF THE CALIPHATE A study of the caliphate, its institution and subsequent developments, has never been attempted in its entirety until the present. The principal reason is that it has not seemed possible to conduct such a survey independently of historical studies relating to different reigns, which are still in most cases insufficient, or even non-existent, whereas studies of doctrine, while more advanced, have not been developed to the same extent with regard to the various periods. The tentative attempts that have been made have therefore been superficial, or lacking sufficient historical perspective. Here we must confine ourselves to making a brief statement of the question and stressing the problems, rather than attempting a complete exposition, which, to do justice to the subject, would require treatment at too great length. A. THE FIRST PERIOD In a sense, the institution of the caliphate was born on the day after the death or the Prophet when the new head of the community, in the event the trusted Companion Abū Bakr, became in 11/632 kh alīfat rasūlAllāh. The date and the circumstances of the appearance of this institution would seem therefore to be well-established, but two questions arise at once. First, how did the designation of the first caliph take place, and was the procedure adopted observed in subsequent cases? Second, what powers were attributed to this ―successor‖ of the Prophet? As regards the first point, the tradition adopted by the majority of historians tells of the acclamation of the new caliph by the leading Companions, who gave him an oath of allegiance; this was the first bayʿa. Whatever were the circumstances under which this proclamation was made, whatever pressures were applied by ʿUmar to the congregation to have Abū Bakr recognized, whatever may have been the protests of ʿAlī and his supporters, it seems to have been accepted from this time onwards that the oath of the Believers, to which corresponded the promise of the new chief to lead the community on the right path, alone conferred upon him the succession. For the two caliphs who followed, variations in procedure should be noted. Abū Bakr, before his death in 13/634, had, according to the chroniclers, personally designated his successor in the presence of ʿUmar. The community of Believers was not there-¶ fore in position to state its own wishes, but got the chance to ratify this appointment. The oath in fact, was taken only by the Companions present at Medina, which explains how the authority of ʿUmar could be disputed by certain groups dispersed elsewhere in Arabia, who refused to pay the legally- assessed poor tax [see RIDDA]. ʿUmar, before dying in his turn in 23/644, had decided that a group of six persons, including among others ʿUth mān and ʿAlī, should choose his successor from among themselves. After discussion the choice fell on ʿUth mān, who then received the oath of allegiance. So even with the designation of the first three caliphs, three different methods were explored; all, however, were only to be put into effect if ratified by the community, or by its most influential and closest members. The second question, that of the powers exercised by the new leaders of the community, is more problematical, since these powers were not at the time defined in a precise fashion. One cannot base conclusions on the sense of the title kh alīfa (see above) which, suggesting at once the ideas of succession, appointment and authority, remained somewhat vague. These powers seem, essentially, to have authorised the first three successors of Muḥammad to pursue the actions previously set in motion by the Prophet himself for the expansion of Islam and to put into practice the regulations set out in the Ḳurʾānic message, which was to be supplemented by the Sunna instituted among the community of Believers in the lifetime of the Prophet.

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The continuation of the work begun by the Prophet was seen during the time of Abū Bakr in the fight against the dissidents of Arabia, soon followed by raiding operations towards the north which became a vast movement of conquest. From this time onwards the caliph assumed the role of army commander, and military operations, conducted against infidels or against rebellious Muslims who, for one reason or another refused to accept his authority, became one of his most important responsibilities. Meanwhile, questions of law, relating to the spheres both of the cult and of social relations, were posed to those caliphs called by the tradition rāsh idūn , that is to say ―those who walk in the right way‖, as opposed to those who came later and were accused of making the caliphate a family possession. Thus ʿUmar was obliged to take decisions concerning the penal law, certain types of inheritance and the practice of the law of retaliation (Sh ahrastāni, Milal, Cairo, i, 18). To him also are attributed some initiatives in matters of ritual, culminating in the attempt, carried on by ʿUth mān, to set in motion the establishment of the text of the Ḳurʾānic ―vulgate‖. It was also in the time of ʿUmar that for the first time the question was raised of the financial organisation of the Islamic state. Since members of the Arab tribes were entitled to endowments, ʿUmar instituted the dīwān, a register in which the names of beneficiaries were inscribed. In addition, the troops were entitled to a share of the booty, which was gradually replaced by a pension, registered in the same way. The organisation of the dīwān [q.v.], first established at Medina, later in all the principal cities of the empire, was thus linked to that of the fiscal system, on which it is not possible to dwell here. Let it be said only that it was at the initiative of the two caliphs ʿUmar and ʿUth mān that a treasury was established, which collected and from which were distributed the revenues supplied first by booty, later by property taxes. As this treasury¶ also met some expenses of communal interest, it should have been seen as the beginning of a financial system which was not strictly in accord with Ḳurʾānic principles for the distribution of booty, but which was made necessary by the development of the new State [see BAYT AL-MĀL]. This innovation was one of the causes of the troubles which culminated in the assassination of ʿUth man in 35/656. Another cause was the choice by ʿUth mān of members of his own family to undertake the government of the principal provinces; in acting thus he was in effect supplanting the earliest converts to Islam, who by virtue of this title had in general more right than the descendants of Abū Sufyān to participate in the organisation of the community. Two concepts of power came into conflict here, of which one consisted in observing strictly the principles of the Ḳurʾān and giving pride of place to the ―first converts‖, while the other paid greater attention to the efficiency of the apparatus of government. After the confrontation which took place between ʿAlī and Muʿāwiya, following the judgement of ʿAdh ruḥ [q.v.], the second concept held definitive sway. The murder of ʿUth mān and the events which followed posed to the Islamic community the problem of knowing whether a caliph could be deposed for neglecting his duties. It seems that it was at this time that there appeared the sect later to be known as the Ḵhawārid j which declared the principle that the caliph must not under any circumstances deviate from the ordinances of divine origin (see the interpretation by W. Montgomery Watt, The formative period of Islamic thought, Edinburgh 1973, 14-15). The judgement of ʿAdh ruḥ itself, the principle of which was denied by the Ḵhārid j īs on the grounds that the cause of good could not be set under discussion, implied a conception of the caliphate according to which the holder of power must answer for his actions, and the justification chosen by Muʿāwiya to explain his action against ʿAlī was the defence of the rights of his kinsman, ―unjustly‖ assassinated at the instigation of his political enemies. The Umayyads, however, on becoming installed in power, made efforts to eradicate this notion of moral responsibility. At the same time as they had the principle of dynastic succession recognised, they maintained the idea that unconditional obedience was owed to the reigning caliph. Thus Yazīd and his successors paid no heed to the proclamation as caliph

3 of ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Zubayr [q.v.] at Medina at 61/681 nor to the declaration of the dethronement pronounced by the leading citizens against the son of Muʿāwiya. It was their opponents, of the movement called Ḳadarī (see Ḳadariyya), who vindicated the right to judge the actions of the sovereign, establishing a doctrine which was invoked by Yazīd III, pretender to the caliphate, to justify his revolt against al-Walīd II, accusing him of misconduct. As for the revolutionary movements which appeared at this time, some of them were of a Ḵhārid j ī tendency, demanding of the caliph particular moral qualities (they succeeded in proclaiming Ḳaṭarī b. al-Fudj ā ʾa [q.v.] caliph in Fārs and Kirmān; he bore the title amīr al-muʾminīn and coined money in his own name for ten years, 69-79/688-99), while the others followed more or less strictly the Sh ī ʿī tendency, that is to say, demanding the accession to the caliphate of either a descendant of ʿAlī, or in the case of the ʿAbbāsid party, of an unspecified member of the Family of the Prophet. It was therefore the legitimacy of the Umayyads that they contested, while at¶ the same time they strove to discredit them, denying their adherence to Islamic principles and accusing them of having usurped the caliphate; the origins and the actions of the ruling caliphs thus being called into question. On their side, the Umayyads were not content with imposing the notion of unconditional obedience to the caliph; they established at the same time, in effect, the dynastic caliphate. Without abandoning the principle of election followed by oath of fealty (bayʿa), Muʿāwiya accomplished his object by means of an election guaranteeing in advance that his son Yazīd would be recognised as his successor. The same procedure was used for the designation of Muʿāwiya II. But on the death of the latter, the problem of succession arose once more, and the Arab ―nobility‖, meeting at Ḏjābiya, made free use of their right to proceed to the choice of a new caliph, without however denying the fact that he should belong to the family of the Banū Umayya. A cousin of Muʿāwiya, Marwān, was duly appointed caliph; to the branch called Sufyānid, there succeeded the Marwānid branch to which belonged all the subsequent Umayyad rulers, all of them nominated by their predecessors, with the exception of the rebel Yazīd III. In fact, from the time of ʿAbd al-Malik onwards, the caliph was in the habit of leaving a written designation, called ʿahd (whence the granting to the heir presumptive of the title walī 'l-ʿahd, in the sense of beneficiary of a contract concluded between him and the community). The testamentary nomination, bearing the signature of witnesses of repute, thus became the essential mandate which had executive force and relegated the ceremony of the bayʿa to a position of secondary importance. It was also the practice for the caliph to nominate two heirs; but such nominations were not acted upon unless an order of precedence had been set. The heir was most often a son of the ruling caliph but could equally well be a brother or a cousin; only one exclusion was maintained, the nomination of the son of a non- Arab concubine; for this reason the prince Maslama b. ʿAbd al-Malik, who was remarkably active during the reign of his father, neither inherited power nor was entitled to do so. At the same time this period saw a real attempt by the Umayyads to establish the legitimacy of their dynastic caliphate. Their panegyrists traced back the right of sovereignty from ʿAbd al-Malik to Marwān, then to Muʿāwiya and ʿUth mān. Some even went so far as to express the idea that the Umayyads had inherited the ―legacy of Muḥammad‖. Ḥadīth s appeared in which Muḥammad predicted their coming. To be sure, all this was nothing more than the outward signs of a different legitimacy, but the idea was disseminated. The Umayyads also on the other hand strove to underline the theocratic nature of their powers, as appears notably from the terms of a kh uṭba of al-Ḥadj d j ād j : ―The amīr of the Believers ʿAbd al-Malik is a leader whom God has chosen as His viceroy upon earth and appointed imām for His creatures.‖ The expression occurs also in the texts of testamentary nominations and in the speeches preceeding the bayʿa. The ruling caliphs considered themselves in fact as appointed by God, and the title kh alifāt Allāh (formerly denounced by Abū Bakr, according to a tradition which appears to be of doubtful validity) came into use from the start of the Umayyad era, helping to establish firmly the duty of obedience to the dynasty.

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Moreover, the ruling sovereigns were required to take decisions, touching on problems of general¶ policy, sometimes directly concerning the sphere of Ḳurʾānic precepts. They were obliged for example to define the place that new converts, non-Arabs becoming mawālī, might take in the organisation of a state where the reins of power were held by Arab Muslims. Also, the exigencies of the conquests in the west led them to emply the services of Berber contingents, who played an active role in the conquest of Spain and whose status raised difficulties from that time onwards. More delicate was the fiscal problem which the caliphʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAziz was obliged to settle by means of an edict. His decision to establish fiscal equality between the original Muslims and the converts having proved impossible to put into effect, it was decided to retain the former land-taxes, irrespective of the religion of the occupant of the land. Thus was established the form of the levy called henceforward kh arād j [q.v.] as distinct from the poll-tax called dj izya , whereas new converts were required to pay a higher tax than that levied on the original Muslims for the lands that they possessed subsequent to the conquest. Hence to this period belongs the definition of the kh arād j and dj izya taxes, an important stage in the development of Islamic law, the process of which can only be grasped with difficulty, but which is to be attributed to the activity of the Umayyad caliphs.

B. THE ʿABBĀSID CALIPHATE UNTIL 658/1258. New modifications to the concept of the caliphate were brought about by the ʿAbbāsid dynasty, which assumed power in 132/750 and retained it in ʿIrāk until 658/1260, then in Egypt until 923/1517. Its members presented themselves as belonging to the family of the Prophet, and it was with this title that the first among them to accede to power justified their action. They thus maintained the thesis according to which the caliphate must revert to the kinsmen of the Prophet, and more particularly to the descendants of al-ʿAbbās, who were considered to be the best qualified. Nevertheless, this ʿAbbāsid legitimism raised difficulties in establishing principles usable against ʿAbd claims. The principal argument, employed very frequently by the caliphManṣūr in his controversy with the Ḥasanid Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh, and subsequently developed on several occasions by the sovereigns themselves or by their panegyrists, followed by principle of right of succession: the descendants of al-ʿAbbās, son of the Prophet's uncle, must take precedence over the ―sons of the daughter‖, that is to say, over those who were descended from the Prophet through his daughter Fāṭima and who were related to his two grandsons al-Ḥusayn and al-Ḥasan. As this argument did not always appear sufficient, the caliphMahdī sought to adduce in addition the thesis according to which al- ʿAbbās had been nominated by the Prophet himself as his successor. Quite independently of this attempt, which did not last long, the panegyrists for their part strove to prove the eminent qualities of al-ʿAbbās, protector and nephew of the Prophet. The legitimism of the ʿAbbāsids thus depended on various arguments, whose vogue changed with the times, arguments which were sometimes radically opposed to those upon which the Umayyad legitimism had been based and which sometimes approximated to them, as when the panegyrists inevitably proclaimed that the sons of al-ʿAbbās were ―the best of Ḳuraysh ‖. This legitimism never ceased in any case to be generally recognised, even when the ―great amīrs‖ of Sh ī ʿī persuasion held power, and it was in a sense consolidated by the arrival of the Saldj ūḳs who, while taking over control of the empire,¶ nevertheless upheld the Sunnī caliphate as it was then established. Previously, the most dangerous challenge had taken place during the reign of al-Maʾmūn, when this caliph attempted to nominate as his heir the ʿAlid ʿAlī al-Riḍā, considered by him ―the best of the descendants of ʿAlī and of al-ʿAbbās‖. This attempt did not amount to an adoption of the Sh ī ʿī point of view; rather, it aimed at restoring vigour to a broader Hāsh imī legitimism, which would have permitted the choice of the imām from one or the other of the branches of the Hāsh imīfamily. To this new legitimist concept was linked a doctrine of Zaydī inspiration, according to which the office of imām must revert, in the context of a defined line of succession, to the most deserving. If the attempt failed, it was through the opposition of

5 circles in ʿIrāḳ who showed their attachment to the ʿAbbāsid family and their hostility to the new religious policy of al-Maʾmūn, which the latter was forced to abandon. Whatever may have been the basis of ʿAbbāsid legitimism, it was the priority of the ruling caliphs to reinforce the theocratic nature of their power. The same expressions were employed in their case as in that of the Umayyad caliphs. Al-Mansūr declared himself, it is said, ―the power of God on earth‖ (sulṭānAllāh fī arḍi-hi) and the caliphs exacted, like all their predecessors, a duty of unconditional obedience which was founded, from the 3rd/9th century onwards, on the concepts of traditionists of the Ḥanbalī persuasion. In addition, the royal titles adopted by the sovereigns stressed the charismatic quality of their power: the second caliph had himself named Manṣūr, ―he who receives the victory from God‖, the third, Mahdī, ―he whom God leads in the right way‖, a title which tended at the same time to assimilate the caliphs to the ʿAlid imāms. Subsequently, the honorifics Amīn, al-Maʾmūn and al-Wāth ik bi-llāh, stressed rather the piety of those who bore them; but the personal link between the caliph, and the divinity guaranteeing his power remained strongly marked. One may add that from the reign of al-Maʾmūn onwards, the caliphs did not disdain the title of imām, previously considered to be of too Sh ī ʿī a flavour. Also, the dynastic principle was applied in the same fashion as under the Umayyads, the heir being most often nominated by the ruling caliph after consultation with the most influential supporters of the régime. The procedure adopted bore a solemn character on some occasions; thus the testament of Hārūn al-Rash īd, which named two heirs, establishing a kind of division of the empire between them and specifying the rights and obligations of each towards the other, was displayed in the Kaʿba at Mecca in 185/802; the same procedure was used for the testament of al-Muʿtamid in 261/874. But as in the preceding period, no rule determined this choice, and the caliph could just as well nominate a distant cousin as one of his sons. It was nevertheless to a son that the sovereign most often sought to bequeath his office, on condition that the son was of the required age or close to it, that is to say, to the age of majority. This need was admitted by all, as it had been already in the Umayyad period, but not the procedure for its application. On the one hand, a minor could be designated heir, since normally he was not required to assume immediately the function of caliph; on the other hand, the age of majority was not fixed in a precise fashion. It was only in 296/908 that the nomination of a caliph 13 years of age, al- Muḳtadir, set a kind of precedent. ¶ The practice of testamentary nominations posed another problem when these contained two names. It often happened that a new caliph sought to cancel the act established by his predecessor, so as to replace the person chosen as second heir and now becoming first heir—is brother most often—and to substitute for him his son, for example. It was necessary in such cases to obtain the abdication of the heir, since there was no procedure allowing for the dismissal of an heir, just as there was none for a caliph, and it was considered that the oath of allegiance already given was binding upon the heir as it was upon the community. In consequence, it was almost always by means of more or less violent persuasion that heirs considered to be undesirable were forced to renounce their rights. As in the preceding period, it happened sometimes that a caliph died without having designated an heir. The choice then reverted to the community or at least to its most prominent representatives. On the death of al-Wāth iḳ in 232/847, it was a select committee composed of the chief-ḳāḍī, of the vizier and some of the officers of the Turkish guard, who proceeded to the nomination of the future al-Mutawakkil. However, at the times of the sickness of al-Muktafī in 296-908, it was the vizier and the leading officials of the realm who chose a successor to the caliph, who had not chosen an heir. So the composition of the electoral council varied according to the circumstances. Under the ʿAbbāsids, no more than under the Umayyads, was there a procedure for deposing a ruler for moral faults. Where attempts were made to do this, it was a case of local councils,

6 convoked in an arbitrary fashion, proclaiming the dethronement of the ruling sovereign or of the heir presumptive, and these had no more than a limited influence on the course of events. Examples of this were seen when Amīn and al-Maʾmūn declared one another deposed, or when the population of Bagh dād refused to obey al-Maʾmūn and proclaimed as caliphIbrāhīm b. al-Mahdī [q.v.]. In fact, these situations always culminated in a trial of strength, and the judicial death, banishment, dismissal or abdication of one of the rivals produced each time a judicial solution. On the other hand, each abdication registered officially by the ḳāḍīs led to an interregnum, and abdications were frequent in the history of the ʿAbbāsidcaliphate. These were almost always forced abdications. One caliph, al-Ḳāhir [q.v.], who refused to bow to pressure, had his eyes put out, by which means he was legally incapacitated from fulfilling his duties. But instances of forced abdication were particularly flagrant in the period of the Buwayhid amīrs, who brutally deposed two caliphs to replace them with princes of their own choosing. The grand-amīr then convoked each time an electoral college comprising the principal dignitaries of the State as well as jurists and members of the ʿAbbāsid and ʿAlid families; but his own opinion was the only decisive one in the final choice. It is only in the ʿAbbāsid period that one sees in the texts the office of caliph as clearly accompanied by insignia worn by the caliph when giving audience; there is mention of the cloak attributed to the Prophet ( burda [q.v.]), his sceptre (ḳaḍīb [q.v.]), and of a high bonnet ( ḳalansuwa), which first appeared no doubt in the Umayyad period (although the information concerning ceremonial in this period remains of dubious interpretation); in addition, in the 4th/10th century, a copy of the Ḳurʾān of ʿUth mān was carried ostentatiously by the caliph.¶ Insignia of this kind, recalling to a greater or lesser extent contemporary or previous courtroom practice, had the object of stressing the eminent qualities of the ―successor of the Messenger of God‖, and a full etiquette governed the conduct of audiences, requiring from visitors and officials precisely defined marks of respect: the principal one being the kissing of the carpet (taḳbīl) on coming face-to-face with the sovereign, if not kissing his hand. A similar symbolism marked the manners of solemn processions, and when the caliph appeared in public outside the palace he was preceded by the chief of police bearing the lance (ḥarba), at once the symbol of authority and a reminder of the customs of the Prophet. Between the 2nd/8th and the 4th/10th centuries, the functions of the caliph are easy enough to determine, using the information supplied by the ancient chronicles. The caliph was then seen as the guardian of dogma, and in this capacity opposed innovations (bidaʿ) and all that was considered to be such. He was thus permitted to play a part in the formulation of doctrine, and numerous examples of this may be cited: Mahdī ordered for example the persecution of the zindīḳs [q.v.]; al-Maʾmūn and his two successors sought to impose Muʿtazilism as an official doctrine; al-Mutawakkil returned to the traditionalist position which condemned in particular the notion of the ―created‖ nature of the Ḳurʾān; later, al- Muʿtaḍid sought to curb the activities of popular preachers of traditionalist tendencies; al- Rādī, [q.v.] condemned Ḥanbalī theodicy; al-Ḳādir [q.v.], in the full swing of the Buwayhid period, proclaimed his adherence to a profession of faith of Ḥanbalī inspiration in an attempt to prevent the dissemination of other doctrines. On the other hand, the caliphs did not participate in the formulation of law; Manṣūr did not take up the suggestion of Ibn al- Muḳaffaʿ [q.v.] to establish a uniform code of law to which judges would be obliged to refer, and from this time onwards, the judicial schools were established, independent of all interference from the caliph. The measures which the caliph could take in the judicial sphere were thus limited to decrees applying to fiscal matters, although he was obliged, in his capacity as leader of the community, to ensure that the law was observed in all its various aspects. The caliph was the imām [q.v.] par excellence, and conducted the Friday Prayers in the great mosque. At the end of the 3rd/9th century, however, he was exercising this function only in the great mosque of the caliph's residence, leaving to delegated officials the task of

7 conducting the prayers and performing the kh uṭba [q.v.] in the other great mosque of the capital. Similarly, he performed the Pilgrimage in his official capacity or sent a delegate on his behalf. Many of the earlier caliphs performed this religious duty in person, sometimes more than once, as in the case of Hārūn al-Rash īd. In the same way, the caliph was expected to preside over the periodic expeditions against the lands of the infidel. This was done in person by Hārūn al-Rash īd, then by al-Maʾmūn, while subsequent caliphs delegated this duty to appointed officers. He also conducted campaigns against rebels, whoever these might be; but when operating against particularly ferocious enemies such as the Zandj [q.v.], he would delegate his powers to an effective regent, in this event, al-Muwaffaḳ, brother of the sovereign al-Muʿtamid. The maintenance of order was in fact one of the normal obligations of the caliph, who was¶obliged to defend the community against all types of subversion. It was also the caliph who was obliged eventually to deal with those governors who demanded financial autonomy and the hereditary status of their office. On the other hand, it was his duty to ensure the normal exercises of the judiciary in nominating directly—as the practice had been established since the start of the ʿAbbāsid caliphate-the ḳāḍīs, who were themselves subject, from the reign of Hārūn al- Rash īd onwards, to the intermediate authority of the ḳāḍī 'l-ḳuḍāt. So the caliph delegated his powers to magistrates, but he reserved the right to arbitrate as a last resort in cases of litigation and to settle differences arising between administrators and administered. It was the practice of ―redressing of wrong‖ that every caliph conscious of his reputation conducted in person, while other entrusted it to persons specially appointed for this purpose. Finally, the caliph ensured the well-being of the state, though this concept was to some extent ignored in the middle period of Islam-that is to say, he ensured the material life of the community. In particular, he managed the levying of taxes of which the revenues were subsequently distributed between soldiers and officials, and these taxes were levied according to rules established at the end of the Umayyad caliphate [see DJ IZYA , KH ARĀD J , ʿUSH R , ZAKĀT]. The collection of these taxes was entrusted to agents of the caliph, the ʿummāl, who collected sums in cash or contributions in kind from the administered peoples, or to ―tax-farmers‖, who sent to the treasury a lump sum and then recouped the equivalent by means of the sums collected in the territories entrusted to them; the method used remained at the discretion of the caliph. The system varied according to different regions and periods at the will of sovereigns constrained to a greater or lesser extent to cover continually rising expenses; but financial difficulties led the caliph to make a general practice of the farming-out of the taxes, advantageous in the short term but later to prove dangerous, and in the long term making the caliphs dependent on these tax-farmers. Nevertheless, the details of the powers thus exercised by the caliph and related in precise fashion in the historical texts do not suffice to clarify completely the technicalities of a situation in respect of which two kinds of questions are posed. The first kind arises from the impossibility of deciding with certainty in what measure the authority of the caliph was, or could be, arbitrary or despotic. Certainly, the arbitrary exercise of power was in principle limited by the existence of the law, which the caliph was bound to respect, while enforcing it upon others, and which forbade him in particular to put a Muslim to death, except in precisely defined circumstances. But on the other hand, the duty incumbent on the caliph to suppress all rebellion gave him in this capacity a free hand in treating as a rebel against Islam every rebel against the dynasty, and thus in eliminating, sometimes in summary fashion, the enemies of his own policy. The second set of problems arises from another difficulty, that of deciding to what extent the caliph himself exercised the powers with which he was invested. It is certain for example that the representatives of judicial authority enjoyed a certain degree of independence, in that they possessed knowledge and technical ability to which the caliph could only with difficulty lay claim; cases of resistance to the caliph on the part of provincial ḳāḍīs, or even¶ of the chief ḳāḍī of Bagh dād, were not uncommon. It is certain also that the arbitrary exercise of the

8 powers of the caliph was restricted, after the end of the 3rd/9th century, by the establishment of High Courts, before which individuals accused of treason or heresy were most often tried; in this period, only rebels caught bearing arms were executed or subjected to torture in a manner not authorised by the law; others were tried before courts where the final decision was taken by one or the other of the ḳāḍīs of Bagh dād, playing the role of chief magistrate, although the caliph was not bound to ratify this decision. In addition, it should be noted that in numerous other fields, between the 3rd/9th and the mid-4th/10th century, the caliph no longer reserved for himself the conduct of affairs. We cannot speak in this context of a steady progression, since we observe on the part of some sovereigns reactions in the opposite direction, which were generally of short duration. The evolution was, however, none the less irreversible and the main beneficiary was the vizier [seeWAZĪR], a man of trust and reliability whose title appeared at the start of the ʿAbbāsid regime, without from that time onwards being necessarily attributed in a regular fashion. It was to him that the caliph most often delegated the conduct of administrative affairs, and subsequently matters of general policy, including dealings with the governors of provinces and military affairs. The vizier was, however, entrusted with nothing more than the execution of political decisions which he had previously formulated and which had received the approval of his master; he was regularly accountable to him and could be dismissed at any moment, as could any agent of the sovereign, and was only the ―minister‖ par excellence of the caliph, employed by him for as long as his activities gave satisfaction and liable to be replaced as soon as he ceased to please. The arbitrary will of a caliph who apparently disassociated himself from the conduct of affairs but wished nevertheless to retain the exercise of power, was much in evidence in these nominations and dismissals, of which we see examples in the reigns of Hārūn al-Rash īd and al-Muḳtadir. On the other hand, it should not be forgotten that the caliph would have difficulty in holding cheap the services of a supporter who could assure him of such-and-such a group of partisans and faithful servants, without whom it would be impossible to govern, and from among whom originated the viziers. Even if there existed among the administrators themselves rival cliques which encouraged the exercise by the caliph of arbitrary power, the presence of these persons, linked to the régime which supplied them, according to the circumstances, with more or less high offices, remained an element of stability likely to discourage abuse of personal power in the golden age of the caliphate. After the middle of the 4th/10th century, the caliphs ceased to exercise their authority in person, and even ceased to control those to whom they had delegated this authority, in whole or in part. It was then that there began the period of the ―grand-amīrate‖, to be replaced a century later by the sultanate. The chief characteristic of this period is that the delegate of the caliph appeared first as a military commander and that after 336/945, that is to say ten years after the appointment of the first ―grand-amīr‖, a dynasty of grand-amīrs was established and the caliph was not permitted to interfere in the succession of these new officers. The authority that the latter exercised in all matters relating to¶ the administrative, financial and military spheres was nevertheless officially delegated from him, and the caliph retained, in theory at least, the right to appoint agents. It was thus that he succeeded, in certain exceptional cases, in exercising real power, and in one known instance, the Buwayhid amīr was unable in spite of all his efforts to obtain for a Ḥusaynīsh arīf nomination to the post of chief ḳāḍī. For, besides doctrine, the area in which the caliph continued to exercise some influence was the judiciary. There was, however, no clear-cut separation of functions between the caliph and the amīrs, and it would be inaccurate to say that the latter exercised ―temporal power‖, while the caliph retained a limited authority in ―spiritual‖ matters. Not only did the caliph consider himself entitled to intervene in all areas of policy, but the amīrs did not hesitate to use their authority for settling religious affairs, e.g. in promoting the celebration of specifically Sh ī ʿī feasts. Moreover, the relations established between the caliphs and their amīrs varied constantly. There was during the second half of the 4th/10th century a period when caliphs were frequently dethroned or forced to abdicate to be replaced by persons chosen by the amīrs,

9 although the latter did not always obtain by this means the result envisaged. On the contrary, in the first half of the 5th/11th century the caliphs al-Ḳādir and Ḳāʾim were able to nominate their own heirs and enjoyed a resurgence of power, feeling themselves supported by the Gh aznavid amīrs who appeared in Ḵhur āsān and actively upheld Sunnī policies there. However, at this time there appeared the first examples of titles compounded with dīn and attributed to certain local amīrs, to Buwayhids as well as Gh aznavids. This practice, the origin of which cannot be definitely identified, doubtless did not correspond so much to a new set- back in the authority of the caliph, as to a devaluation of the titles compounded with dawla, which were born at first only by the grand-amīrs, later by the Ḥamdānid amīrs of al-Ḏjazī ra, and were eventually attributed to other amīrs of secondary rank. In this period, titles employed in official documents became more and more pompous, and the caliph had himself called al-ḥaḍra al-muḳaddasa al-nabawiyya, a title stressing the sacred character of an office now almost entirely void of its original significance. The arrival of the Saldj ūḳ Turks brought, in principle, no changes of an institutional order to the situation. The new amīrs behaved like their predecessors, receiving a large measure of power which extended legally to the west, occupied by the Fāṭimids, as to the east; this is indicated notably by the title accorded to Ṭugh rīl Beg, malikal-mash riḳ wa'l-magh rib in 449/1057. To be sure, they enjoyed in addition a more exalted title, that of sultan, which was perhaps originally chosen to show that they were the sole depositaries of the full range of the powers of the caliph. Another difference, with particular reference to the functioning of the régime, was that the Saldj ūḳ sultans claimed to be defenders of the Sunna and the Sunnī caliphate, claiming to have come to the aid of the sovereign, with the particular object of re-opening the Pilgrimage route. But the tension was hardly less between the caliphs and the sultans than it had been previously between the caliphs and the grand-amīrs. Thus the sultans had imposed themselves on the caliphs in a manner which the latter could not and did not appreciate: it was with the greatest of dis-¶pleasure that the caliph Ḳāʾim was obliged to give his daughter in marriage to Ṭugh r l Beg, for example. On the other hand, the caliphs and the sultans did not follow the same political-religious orientation. Faced with sovereigns remaining loyal to the traditionalist Ḥanbalī doctrine, the sultans adopted the Sh āfi ʿī-Ash ʿarī line, which was somewhat different, and it was of design that one of the most remarkable viziers, Niẓām al-Mulk, founded in Bagh dād as in the eastern provinces madrasas intended for the training of future lawyers. It was nevertheless admitted, in this period of domination by Saldj ūḳ sultans, that the latter alone should nominate the candidate for the caliphate: this attitude was justified, as we know, in various of the writings of the celebrated Gh azālī who, among other things, castigated the ―bad doctors‖, too eager to submit to the authority of the sultans. The doctors for their part, considered themselves at this time to be the true depositaries of the Law, and demanded in consequence no longer the capacity of idj tihād for the caliph which in principle was claimed for him in the past, but above all qualities of morality and piety. In these difficult circumstances, the caliphs did not abandon the attempt to recover their power, undermined as it was from various quarters. Thus, about 460/1067-8, Ḳāʾim dismissed a vizier judged to be too amenable to the sultan Alp Arslān. Then his successor al-Muḳtadī, after the death of MalikSh āh, succeeded in profiting from the rivalries between the various claimants to the sultanate to make his own authority better respected. Subsequently, in 485/1092, al-Mustarsh id managed to raise an army which permitted him to oppose the Arab chief Dubays, but which did not prevent him from being made a prisoner by sultan Masʿūd. Finally, it fell to al-Muḳtafī, after the death of Masʿūd in 547/1152, to assert definitive sway over ʿIrāḳ. Whatever the circumstances, the disintegration of the Saldj ūḳ empire was accompanied by a multiplication in the number of sultans, and this fact alone further enfeebled the position of the Saldj ūḳs; it was in 514/1120-1 that for the first time the kh uṭba was made in Bagh dād in the name of two sultans of this family, but the title of sultan had already been taken by the Gh aznavid Ibrāhīm, inasmuch as it appeared on his

10 coinage, although it cannot be confirmed that the titulary in question had received the agreement of the caliph. A new turning-point in the relations between caliphate and sultanate occurred in 547/1152 when the caliph, assisted by an energetic vizier, Ibn Hubayra, chased out of ʿIrāḳ the sh iḥna who represented the sultan and dismissed from his service Turkish and Iranian mercenaries, replacing them with Greek or Armenian mamlūks. Ibn Hubayra, who then received the title ―sulṭān of ʿIrāḳ‖, was also an eminent jurist of Ḥanbalī tendency, who strove in his works to minimise the differences between judicial schools, so as better to reinforce Sunnism. Finally there appeared on the scene, in 575/1180, a new caliph, al-Nāṣir, who followed the policy of his predecessor but used different means. His knowledge of religious sciences permitted him to pose as the ―doctor‖ whom the community must follow. Deriving support on the other hand from the Ṣūfīs and the members of the futuwwa communities in which he reorganised under his own direction in 604/1207, he tried to bring about the unification of the community of Islam and to draw into the framework of his authority the greatest possible number of princes.¶ One of his propagandists, Abū Ḥafṣ al-Suhrawardī, thus formulated a theory of the caliphate which, while retaining the traditional bases, linked to these Ṣūfism and the futuwwa, making the caliph the intermediary between God and the believers and giving him the attributes of a kind of sh ayk h . Al-Nāṣir, who had no vizier as such, was better able by virtue of this to assert his political prerogatives: he succeeded in having his authority recognized by the powerful Ayyūbid Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn (576/1181), who for his part declared himself a defender of the caliphate and of Islam. It was nevertheless with difficulty that he obtained the bayʿa of certain local amīrs of Persia and Upper Mesopotamia. Moreover, the efforts of al-Nāṣir, in which he continued until his death in 622/1225, did not prevent the caliphate from remaining fragile as an institution, and the great reconciliation between Sunnī and Sh ī ʿīs which was one of the most cherished objectives of his policy was never achieved. After only a few more years, the Mongols put an end to the ʿAbbāsid caliphate of Bagh dād, executing the caliph al-Mustaʿṣim in Ṣafar 656/February 1258. Even so, one should not forget the importance of the rôle played throughout the Saldj ūḳ and post-Saldj ūḳ period by an ʿAbbāsid caliph, whom a number of local rulers recognised as the guarantor of their power. Alongside the sultans, who were not so numerous, even when the sultanate was conferred upon several dynasties (Saldj ūḳs of Rūm and of Iran, and Gh aznavids), there were princes of Syria, of Anatolia or of Iran who to some extent put themselves under the authority of the caliph, bearing among their titles a title with the component of -amir al-muʾminīn bestowed by the chancellery of Bagh dād and stressing their personal link with the caliph. This was the case with Zankids and Ayyūbids in Syria, Rasūlids in the Yemen, Gh aznavids, Gh ūrids and princes of Delhi in eastern Iran and in India, to mention only the most important of this group. Different relationships were established too between the caliph and a prince of the Islamic west such as the Almoravid Yūsuf b. Tāsh fīn, who had confirmed by the chancellery of Bagh dād the new title of amīr al-muslimīnwhich he had just taken upon himself. But this came about in a political milieu, that of the Muslim West, where the process of evolution had been quite different from that in the East, and where since the 4th/10th century rival caliphates to that of the ʿAbbāsids had appeared. C. THE CALIPHATES OF THE WEST. It was at the beginning of the 4th/10th century that an Umayyad amīr of Spain put an end to the situation which had previously arisen in the region: the situation of a local prince who, while not recognising the authority of the caliph of Bagh dād, nevertheless allowed the kh uṭba to be made in his name. Then, in 316/928, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III declared himself amīr al-muʾminīn. According to Ibn Ḵhaldūn, this decision was explained by the fact that at that time ―the authority of the caliphate of the east was reduced to nothing‖. To this should be

11 added the fact that the Fāṭimid Sh ī ʿī caliphate had appeared in Ifrīḳiya, and the new caliph of al-Andalus hoped to make himself the champion of Sunnism against this new form of sovereignty. The new caliphs essentially based their legitimacy on the idea of inheritance. ―Sons of the caliphs‖, they considered the caliphate a ―portion‖ set aside by God for the Banū Umayya, who had inherited it from Marwān, if not from ʿUth mān himself, as was¶ stated by Ibn Bassām who went so far as to call the Umayyad caliph ―kinsman of the Prophet‖ by virtue of his status as a member of Ḳuraysh . Furthermore, in imitation of the Umayyads, the caliphs of Spain adopted the colour of white. They applied the hereditary principle in a stricter manner than did the ʿAbbāsids, not considering the minority of an heir presumptive as an obstacle to his proclamation. But the succession was put into effect by the same process, bayʿa, whether preceded by an ʿahd or not. Also, the bayʿa held a more important place than in the Orient and sometimes the rite lasted several days. The caliph frequently declared himself the ―caliph of God‖. He governed in a direct fashion, surrounded by a council of viziers, but in the course of the 4th/10th century, he rapidly ceased to take an active interest in the conduct of affairs, relying on a prime minister who bore, in Spain, the title of ḥādj ib , not that of wazīr: whence the appearance, in 371/981, of a dynasty of ―major-domos‖, of which the founder was the famous Manṣūr (Almanzor). A kind of sultanate was thus established in Spain also, but it lasted only a short time, since the caliphate came to an end, in a period of disturbances, in 422/1031. In the West, other Sunnī caliphs appeared subsequently in rivalry to the caliph of Bagh dād. If the Almoravids contented themselves, as has been seen, with the title of amīr al-muslimīn, which they adopted with the consent of the chancellery of Bagh dād, the Almohad ʿAbd al- Muʾmin, successor to the MahdīIbn Tūmart, ca. 525/1132 took the title of amīr al-muʾminīn, thus setting himself up as a rival to the ʿAbbāsid sovereign and claiming that he was restoring acaliphate now in decline, in the same way that the MahdīIbn Tūmart had revived Islam; in addition, the Almohad caliph, just as was previously the Sh ī ʿī imām, was the bearer of the ʿiṣma. Although the original character of the Almohad movement was gradually effaced, to the point where one chronicler declared that the sons of ʿAbd al-Muʾmin had transformed the caliphate into a mulk (al-Maḳḳarī, viii, 23), the Almohad protocol retained in its formulae (al-ḥaḍra al-ʿaliyya al-sunniya al-ṭāhira al-ḳudsiyya), a reminder of the initial doctrine. The title of caliph was subsequently taken over by the Ḥafṣids, successors to the Almohads, and likewise by the Marīnids.

D. THE FĀṭIMID CALIPHATE AND THE S H ĪʿĪ IMĀMATES. Founded in 297/909 in Ifriḳīya by the Mahdī ʿUbayd Allāh, the Fāṭimid caliphate [q.v.], the appearance of which had, as stated above, led to the constitution of an Umayyad caliphate in Spain, had only a temporary historical rôle to play—it lasted in fact only until 567/1171—but dominated a vast expanse of territory, including Egypt and Syria, and for a brief period came close to endangering the institution of the ʿAbbāsid caliphate. It was a Sh ī ʿī caliphatederived from the Ismāʿīlī movement. As such, it presented a different aspect from that of the Sunnī caliphate; the caliph was the imām maʿṣūm, impeccable and infallible, supreme interpreter of the Law. This charismatic leader derived his powers from his predecessor by virtue of an explicit nomination (naṣṣ), kept secret throughout the preceding reign and revealed only after the death of the caliph, by the man of trust to whom it had been confided. Opinion held that the descent should be by a direct line, from father to son, and by virtue of the Sh ī ʿī doctrine, the community could not remain even for a moment without an imām, whom it had no right to nominate. ¶ This principle of accession was applied in a general way throughout the duration of the Fāṭimid caliphate. After the demise of each sovereign the waṣiyya of the late caliph, revealed by the senior minister, was put into effect. Nevertheless, after the end of the 5th/11th century the system ceased to function regularly, as the ministers had begun to exert too much

12 influence and to involve themselves in affairs of succession. As early as 411/1021, on the death of Ḥākim, who had nominated one of his cousins, his sister Sitt al-Mulk decided that the appointment made by Ḥākim was contrary to the rule and intervened to have the son of the late caliph proclaimed. Later, in 487/1094, the ministeral-Afḍal proclaimed the succession of one of the caliph's sons, al-Mustaʿlī, whereas another son, Nizār, had, in the opinion of some, been named by the waṣiyya. This was the origin of the schism of the Nizārīs or neo-Ismāʿīlīs. Another crisis occurred in 525/1130, when the caliph al-Āmir died without male issue and without having named an heir: this caused some public disorder, if we are to believe the historians; the caliphate passed to a collateral branch of the family. More serious was the initiative taken by the ministerṬalāʾiʿ in 555/1160 when, upon the death of al-Fāʾiz, he sought out a candidate for the caliphate without troubling to discover whether the late caliph had designated an heir. The new caliph could not be under age, as was the case with al-Fāʾiz; in such an instance a de facto regency exercised power, and sometimes the trustees were women. This was what happened for example in the case of the aunt of al-Fāʾiz, and previously in the case of the sister of Ḥākim, who for a time made her authority supersede that of a nephew, then seventeen years of age. Let it be added, that throughout the closing years of the régime, the candidate for the caliphate, whose position was the same as that of the walī 'l-ʿahd for the ʿAbbāsids, was appointed by the minister. The new caliph received a bayʿa which apparently did not differ from the bayʿa made for the ʿAbbāsid caliphs. This bayʿa was, however, in principle simply an expression of homage, and could not in any sense be considered a designation of the sovereign. The caliph, as imām, was in this respect the chief of propaganda, the interpreter of the law, the source of all knowledge. The panegyrists did not cease to develop these themes, stressing that the caliph was the friend (walī) of God, intercessor for all; the doctrine of the walāya was in fact regarded by the jurists as one of the pillars of the faith. Only the caliphḤākim went so far as to consider himself an incarnation of the deity, or at least, he allowed himself to be proclaimed as such (in 408/1017). The theocratic nature of power was thrown into especial relief under the Fāṭimid caliphate. Nevertheless, the conditions for the exercise of power did not differ noticeably from what they were under a Sunnī caliphate. Here also the authority of the caliph fell into decline and, in the 5th/10th and the 6th/11th centuries, power was in the hands of all-powerful ministers who, to the normal title of wazīr, succeeded in adding that of malik (530/1135), and some of whom passed on their power in what was temporarily a hereditary manner. The last of these ministers was Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, who put an end to the régime, restoring the kh uṭba to the name of the ʿAbbāsid caliph and depriving the last Fāṭimidcaliphal-ʿĀḍid of his rights and powers, without however proclaiming his dethronement. ¶ Although the Ismāʿīlī movement thus succeeded in maintaining an effective caliphate for more than two centuries, there never was such a possibility for the Imāmī movement, whose devotees continue to this day to await the return of the Mahdī. On the other hand, the Zaydī movements led to the creation of Zaydī states ruled by imāms descended from al-Ḥasan. One of these states, that of Ṭabaristān, constituted in the mid- 3rd/9th century, was short-lived, but the other, the Yemen, constituted in 288/901, lasted into the very recent past, covering, it is true, only a very limited area. The Zaydī imāms, though not considered impeccable, were doctors schooled in the religious sciences as well as warriors. The most famous of these was the founder of the state of the Yemen, Yaḥyā b. al- Ḥusayn, who took the surname al-Hādī ilā 'l-ḥaḳḳ, as well as the title amīr al-muʾminīn, which appeared in the state documents and on the coinage. Al-Hādī, considered by the Zaydīs to be a model sovereign, possessed, in addition to his qualities of courage, a great knowledge of law and great piety. It is said that he strove to apply strictly the prescriptions of Islam, especially in fiscal matters, and to him are attributed a number of scholarly writings. Under the terms of the Zaydī doctrine, the imām did not command unconditional obedience, because the

13 subordination of the subjects ceased if the caliph deviated from the prescriptions of the Book and the Sunna. On the other hand the imāmate did not necessarily pass from father to son, since it was personal qualities which, in addition to ʿAlid origin, gave entitlement to the imamate. This explains how it was the Zaydī imāmate succeeded in surviving into the 20th century, in spite of interruptions, especially in the Ayyūbid and Ottoman periods, and in spite of various vicissitudes.

E. THE INSTITUTION OF THE CALIPHATE AFTER 658/1258. If the murder of al-Mustaʿṣīm and the Mongol invasions did not bring about the effective disappearance of the ʿAbbāsid caliphate, the new era which began at this date was nevertheless of a quite different character. The Mamlūks, having taken power in Egypt and Syria, took to Cairo a member of the ʿAbbāsidfamily, the uncle of the last caliph of Bagh dād, and Baybars had this man declared caliph through the good offices of the chief ḳāḍī who had verified his genealogy (Radj ab 659/June 1261). This individual, who took the surname al- Mustanṣir, claimed in his first kh uṭba all the privileges of the caliph and claimed to extend his authority over the whole Islamic world, to which end Baybars entrusted an army to him. He failed in his attempt to reconquer Baghdād, and the new caliph, Ḥākim, who was then proclaimed in Cairo (Muḥarram 661/November 1262) and installed in the citadel, no longer had the right to interfere in political life; his presence seems to have had no other purpose than to render legitimate the power effectively exercised by the Mamlūks, according to a regulation which remained in force for two-and-a-half centuries. From a juridical viewpoint, the caliph remained, it is true, titular holder of a sovereignty which continued to be transmitted in the line of the caliphḤākim. But the ensemble of powers, including the right of nominating various agents, had been delegated to the sultan, who was henceforward chosen by the Mamlūks and invested with the sultanate by the caliph. The author al-Ḳalḳashandī compares the sultanate to a delegated vizierate, and declares besides that it consisted of a combination¶ of the imārat al-istīlāʾ with the wizārat al- tafwīḍ (Ṣubḥ, xi, 72), which shows the importance that he still attached to the investiture by the caliph. The sultanate had none the less acquired a kind of juridical autonomy; when the Mamlūks could not agree on the appointment of a sultan, as happened for example in 815/1412, they entrusted to the caliph the powers of the sultan, which were thus, according to the chroniclers, ―added‖ temporarily to the caliphate. In addition, the caliphs lost in Cairo certain of their privileges, the right of sikka, which was no longer observed from the time of the third caliph onwards, the right of kh uṭba which seems to have fallen into disuse, while the traditional insignia of the caliphate were henceforward carried by the sultans themselves. The name of the caliph was no longer mentioned in the kh uṭba at Mecca, but retained the prestige of holding a power of divine origin and of being, as in the past, the ―lieutenant of God on earth‖ (nāʾibAllāh fī arḍi-hi). So obedience to the caliph seems to have been, especially for rulers of distant provinces, a kind of religious duty. Investiture at his hands was always sought by various sovereigns, notably the Muẓaffarids of Iran, the sultans of Delhi and the Ottomans of Anatolia. Ḵhalīlal -Ẓāhirī (d. 862/1468) wrote: ―The amīr of the believers is the lieutenant of God on earth and no prince of east or west can justly call himself sultan if he has not received investiture at his hands.‖ Without this investiture, he could not for example nominate a ḳāḍī whose decisions were to be valid. Various princes of this period refused, however, to recognise the ʿAbbāsid caliphs of Cairo. This happened notably in the case of the Il-Ḵhānid Gh azān Ḵhan, who occupied Damascus in 698/1299 and had himself named in the kh uṭba ―the august sultan, sultan of Islam and the Muslims‖. As for the Tīmūrid Sh āh Rūkh , he considered himself sovereign by divine right and it was his ambition to be recognized as kh alīfa by the other princes which was refused by the Mamlūk sultan Barsbāy and the Ottoman sultan Murād II. Moreover, it seems that from the end of the 7th/13th century onwards, certain princes introduced the word kh alīfa into their titles, without however appropriating the title amīr al-

14 muʾminīn; this was done by the Saldj ūk sultans of Rūm, protected by the Mongols, and also by the sultans of Dihlī. The Türkmen Uzun Ḥasan (857-82/1453-78) wrote ca. 875/1471 to the Ottoman sultan concerning his new capital Sh īrāz, calling it the ―throne of the caliphate‖. At the beginning of the 10th/16th century the prince of Transoxania, Muḥammad Sh aybānī, put on his coinage the title kh alifat al-Raḥmān. While it is admitted that these titles did not always correspond to a precise aspiration, it appears that from the time of the Mongol invasions onwards, the title ofkh alīfa was no longer reserved for the ʿAbbāsid amīr of the Believers and that a number of rulers did not hesitate to take it up, as though it were a normal title of Muslim sovereigns. This title appeared notably in letters of congratulation addressed by allies to Ottoman sultans after certain of their successes. Thus Murād I at the end of the 8th/14th century saw fit to call himself ―chosen kh alīfa of the Creator‖, and ―shadow of God on the earth‖. A little later, the sultan Bāyazīd did not hesitate to apply to himself verse VI, 165 of the Ḳurʾān: ―we have made of you a representative (kh alīfa ) on the earth.‖ In the same way, Meḥemmed I after the restoration of the Ottoman empire at the start of the 9th/15th century, spoke of his ―caliphate‖, a term which the other Ottoman sovereigns¶ did not hesitate to use on certain occasions in dealings with their allies. At all events, and in spite of the fact that Meḥemmed II the Conqueror did not take to himself the title of kh alifa , official correspondence addressed to the Ottomans by their neighbours did not cease to consider them repositories of thecaliphate and Selīm himself, after 1512, was called by his brother ―shadow of God on earth‖. It is noteworthy that at the same period too, various eulogists applied on occasion to Ottoman sultans the title of kh alīfa or kh alīfat Allāh, although these expressions were nothing more than laudatory epithets, appearing generally in texts of rhymed prose and not to be regarded as official titles. More often, indirect expressions such as ―the throne of the caliphate‖ were employed. In fact, the Ottoman sultans early wished to be considered, without however claiming the title amīr al-muʾminīn, as bearers of the sultanate and thecaliphate combined, a caliphate conceived by the Muslim thinkers of the time in terms completely different from those of early Islam. Thus two thinkers as different one from the other as Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Ḵhaldūn agree in declaring that the caliphate ceased after the rāsh idūn caliphs and that the sovereignty exercised by the Umayyads and the ʿAbbāsids had never been more than a sort of ―royalty‖. This was their way of expressing how they were struck by the contrast between the theory of the caliphate as it had been formulated by al-Māwardī and the reality which they saw. It may be added that the lawyers of the Ḥanafī school were also of the opinion that the true caliphate had lasted no more than thirty years, up to the death of ʿAlī. For their part, Persian authors, such as Dawwānī, who wrote in the 9th/15th century, supported the thesis which held to be a caliph every sovereign who became, as defender of the cause of Islam, ―representative‖ of God on earth. As was stressed by Sir Thomas Arnold, the title amīr al-muʾminīn, associated with the traditional Ḳurash ī caliphate, was then abandoned, while the powerful sovereigns of the Irano-Turkish world sought to adorn themselves with the title ofkh alīfa ; they considered themselves, in fact, simply by virtue of their taking power, as sovereigns by divine right and lieutenants of God. At the same time, they recognised no authority on the part of the caliph of Cairo. This is seen in the episode when the sultan Selīm conquered Syria, then Egypt, making a prisoner of the caliph al-Mutawakkil, treating him with a complete lack of deference and exiling him to Constantinople. Al-Mutawakkil was unable to leave this involuntary exile until the reign of the sultan Sulaymān, returning to Egypt where he died in 950/1543; he made no further exercise of his functions as caliph, except in conferring the investiture on the governorAḥmad Pash a, a governor who had rebelled against the Ottoman sultan. The fact emerges clearly from the account of these events that the last ʿAbbāsid caliph was considered of negligible importance by the victorious Ottoman sultan.

15

On the other hand, not one of the historical accounts states in precise fashion that Selīm sought to take to himself the legacy of the caliphate to the extent that might be inferred from the late, popular versions which began to circulate at the end of the 18th century and were collected by Mouradgea d'Ohsson. There is no justification for the view that there was an official transfer of the caliphate to Constantinople. It is true that certain relics of the Prophet and of the Companions were transferred¶ to the capital of the Ottoman empire; as for sultan Selīm and his successors, they never bore officially in documents of state, inscriptions and coinage, titles other than sulṭān and kh āḳān ; they did not use those of amīr al-muʾminīn or of imām. The only new title adopted by Selīm after the conquest of Egypt was that of kh ādim al- ḥaramayn [q.v.], which was in fact a title belonging to the Mamlūk sultans and not to the caliph. These ill-defined pretentions of the Ottoman sultans towards sovereignty over the entire Islamic world, came into conflict in certain respects, in the east, with the ambitions of the Mugh al rulers of India during the 16th and 17th centuries. After the reign of Akbar (963- 1014/1556-1605) [q.v.], the capital of these faraway but powerful princes, Dihlī, was called dār al-khilāfa (―seat of the caliphate‖) and the coinage of Akbar bore the inscription: ―the great sultan, the exalted kh alīfa .‖ The Mugh als, who dealt on equal terms with the Ottomans, continued until the reign of Sh āh ʿĀlam II (1173/1760) to qualify themselves with the title of kh alīfa , although it is unclear to what extent they were thereby disowning the traditional concept of the Ḳurash ī caliphate. Nevertheless, it was the masters of the Ottoman empire who finally enjoyed the distinction, in the 18th century, of being presented by their diplomats to foreigners, including European monarchs, as the holders of the ―caliphate‖. An example of this appeared in 1774 in the treaty concluded between ʿAbd Ḥamīd I and the empress Catharine of Russia; the sultan was called ―the imām of the Believers and the caliph of those who profess the divine unity‖, an expression which at the time was rendered in French by ―le Souverain calife de la religion mahométane‖. The intention was to retain the sultan's religious authority over Muslim populations which had passed under foreign domination; this the Russians did not accept (the treaty was revised in 1783). In any case, from this time onward, and throughout the 19th century, in the various confrontations which occurred between the Ottomans and the European states, the Ottoman sultans strove to present themselves officially as caliphs, that is to say, as the spiritual leaders of the Muslims and defenders of Islam. The distinction, of European origin, between the spiritual and the temporal thus found, through the exigencies of the situation, echoes in Ottoman circles. Hence the constitution formulated in December 1876 by the sultan ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd II declared explicitly in its art. 3: ―The august Ottoman sultanate, the office of the supreme Islamic caliphate, must devolve upon the eldest of the members of the family‖; and in art. 4: ―the sultan, in his capacity as caliph, is the protector of the Muslim religion‖. Even though the process of giving executive force to the constitution of 1876 was postponed until 1908, the sultan continued to hold to this conception which enabled him to assert his authority over the Arab countries and furthermore to embrace the ideal of pan-Islamic unity, inspired in him by Ḏjamāl al-Dīn al-Afgh ānī [q.v.]. The principle was in any case recognised in the countries of the West, and in Bosnia-Herzegovina, after the annexation of the province to the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1908, the name of the Ottoman sultan continued to be mentioned in the public prayers. In Libya, even after the establishment of the Italian protectorate, the chief ḳāḍī of that country was still appointed by the Ottoman sh ayk h al-Islām. In Bulgaria, under the terms of the treaty¶ of Constantinople of 1913, the prerogatives of the Ottoman sultan, though more strictly limited, were nevertheless upheld, as was also the case in Greece at that time. It should be added that the Ottoman sultans had, in fact, for a number of centuries, exercised functions similar to those of the ancient caliphs, with the difference that they sought to establish a more regular system. In addition to the law, they formulated a code of rules, the

16 purpose of which was in principle to supplement the Law, but which sometimes tended to supplant it; called ḳānūn, it was employed by Sulaymān the Great as by the other sultans, and was applied not only to financial questions, but also to questions such as the problem of succession. Later, in the 19th century, the sultans sought, under the pressure of various circumstances, to modernise the structures of the Ottoman state. This is not the place to examine the reforming measures known as theTanẓīmāt [q.v.], but it should be recalled that it was in their capacity as leaders of an important Muslim community that the sultans introduced modifications in the traditional fiḳh, as in the organisation of public powers. The movement culminated in the formulation of the constitution of 1876 which envisaged a parliamentary régime and which did not come into force until 1908. The installation of a parliamentary régime, then the appearance of the officers of the Committee of Union and Progress, had the effect of calling into question, even before the First World War, the sultanate and the caliphate. The Young Turks had at first been cautious, and if they sought to circumscribe the powers of the sultan, they tended also to use the expedient of the caliphate to maintain Turkish influence over the Arab lands. The issue of the war modified the assumptions of the problem, since the new Turkish nationalism, whose champion was Muṣṭafā Kemāl, had nothing to do with the caliphate. The suppression of the ancient institutions was nevertheless gradual. Muṣṭafā Kemāl began by attacking the sultanate, while recognising the caliphate as ―a moral link, sacred and respected by the entire Muslim world.‖ On the 1st November 1922, the sultanate was abolished by the Grand National Assembly of Ankara, which reserved for itself the right to choose the holder of the caliphate under the terms of the Constitution adopted in January 1921 and which declared the sovereignty of the people. The sultan Meḥemmed VI, deposed by means of a fatwā, went into exile and was replaced by ʿAbd Madj īd, who had been chosen by the Assembly and was asked to consider himself only as the caliph of the Muslims. In fact, the new caliphate was ill- defined, and fruitless discussions were held regarding the functions to be attributed to a figure in whom Muṣṭafā Kemāl, in April 1923, recognised above all ―supreme inter-Islamic authority‖ and the ―symbol of Islamic solidarity‖, and yet who held no real spiritual power, for he did not have the right to appoint ḳāḍīs, muftīs or preachers. In January 1924 Muṣṭafā Kemāl declared: ―The idea of a single caliph, exercising supreme religious authority over all the peoples of Islam, is an idea taken from fiction, not from reality.‖ In February, the caliphate was abolished by the National Assembly which was then endowed with all powers of legislation (tash rī ʿ). The prayer was delivered in the name of al-Ḥukūmaal- dj umhūriyya wa 'l-milla al-islāmiyya. Meanwhile, a group of ʿulamāʾ had drafted a document which was circulated not only in Turkey but also in the Arab countries and which tried to show that the problem¶ of the caliphate was a question not of theology but of practical politics, that the caliphate had not been instituted by the Prophet and that it did not constitute a fundamental element of Islam. The abolition of the caliphate, of which the concept had changed somewhat since the 7th/13th century, was none the less powerfully resented in the Middle-East, where various projects were attempted for the restitution of this institution, considered to be fundamental to the very life of the community of Islam. The sh arīf of Mecca, Ḥusayn, made an attempt to have himself recognised as caliph, but succeeded only with a few neighbouring princes. In 1926, two congresses were held, which had the object of debating the issue of the caliphate; one took place in March, in Cairo, the other in July at Mecca, without any result. The western powers, for their part, sought to encourage the restoration of the caliphate, on the condition that the holder be their ally. In 1930 there was denunciation from certain Muslim quarters of the policies of the British, who continued to give financial support to the former Ottoman sultan while backing King Ḥusayn, and those of the French, who favoured the Bey of Tunis. Then in 1931, a congress of ʿulamāʾ and political figures was held in Jerusalem. It had no result other than to affirm the spirit of solidarity which still existed among Arab and Muslim countries and which was the origin of the ―Congress of Arab Unity‖ held in 1937 and from which arose the League of Arab States, founded in 1944. Meanwhile, the attempt of King Fārūḳ

17 of Egypt, in 1939, to revive the caliphate to his own advantage, met with vigorous opposition from the Turkish government. The rise of nationalism thus brought about the transformation of a pan-Islamic movement into a simply pan-Arab movement. In fact, Muslim opinion was in general resigned to the new situation, entrusting interpretation of the Law to the doctors, and political affairs to the de factoauthorities. Even in 1922, the reformist Rash īd Riḍā had proposed a plan for the reform of the caliphate in his work al-Ḵhilāfa aw al-Imāma al-ʿUẓmā; he asserted that no Arab sovereign was worthy to accede to this office and he proposed the holding of a seminar with the purpose of drawing up a list of doctors from among whom the caliph would be chosen; the rôle of the caliph would essentially have been to adapt Islamic law to the conditions of modern life. But such a project was never realised. More radical was the theory advanced by a sh ayk h of al-Azhar, ʿAlī ʿAbd al-Razīḳ, who, in 1925, wrote an essay entitled al-Islām wa-uṣūl al-ḥukm ―Islam and the bases of power‖, which caused a sensation in traditionalist Muslim circles because it laid down a doctrinal basis for the separation of the temporal and the spiritual, and suggested that the government of the Prophet at Medina was not dependent on the prophetic mission. This work was condemned by thesh ayk h s of al-Azhar, but the notion of temporal sovereignty continued nevertheless to take root in Muslim circles during the decades that followed. (D. Sourdel)

^ IN POLITICAL THEORY There are two references to kh alīfa in the Ḳurʾān (Sūra II, 30 and Sūra XXXVIII, 26). The first, ―We have made thee a kh alīfa in the land; then judge between the men with the truth, and follow not thy desires, lest they cause thee to err from the path of God‖, refers to Adam. The second, ―We have made thee akh alīfa in the earth; so judge between the people with truth‖ is addressed to David. The plural (kh alā ʾif and kh ulafā ʾ), which occurs frequently, means successors (i.e. progeny) (see further R. Paret, Signification coranique de ḫalīfa, in Studia Islamica, xxxi (pars prior), 211-17, and W. Montgomery Watt, Islamic political thought, Edinburgh 1968, 32 ff.). For the commentators such as Zamakh s h arī, the concept of Adam included or typified all mankind and the prophets, while David had the dual rôle of king and prophet. Although there is no indication that the word kh alīfa was intended to serve as the title of the successor of Muḥammad, both the passages quoted above are important for the development of the theory of the kh alīfa as the successor of the prophet, and his office, the kh ilāfa . It is asserted by Muslim historians that the term kh alīfa was first used as the title of the successor of Muḥammad by Abū Bakr, but it is doubtful whether he ever assumed it as a title (Caetani, Annali dell' Islam, 11 A.H., para. 63 n. 1). From the reign of ʿUmar b. al-Ḵhaṭṭāb, however, kh alīfat rasūlAllāh, successor of the messenger of God, became the common designation of the leader of the community, the amīr al-muʾminīn [q.v.], the Commander of the Faitḥful, the title which ʿUmar had adopted on his¶ election (cf. Ibn Ḵhaldūn, al-Muḳaddima, ed. Quatremère, Paris 1858, i, 408-14, ed. Beirut 1886, 227-30 and cf. M. A. Shaban,Islamic history A.D. 600-750 (A.H. 132), Cambridge 1971, 19, and idem, The ʿAbbāsid Revolution, Cambridge 1970, 140-1 on amīr al-muʾminīn). The title kh alīfatrasūlAllāh implied the assumption by Muḥammad's successor of Muḥammad's functions as judge and temporal leader of the community. Muḥammad's prophetic function, on the other hand, was held to have ceased with him and it was believed that the spiritual guidance of the community had been inherited by the community as a whole. The kh alīfa , thus, had no authority to give new interpretations to religious matters: his function was merely to maintain old doctrines. His office was simply a delegation of authority for the purpose of applying and defending the sh arī ʿa. The title kh alīfat rasūlAllāh was commonly applied to the orthodox or rightly guided caliphs (the Rāsh idūn), who were regarded as the representatives or successors of Muḥammad. Muʿāwiya's claim to the caliphate, if it was based on the text of the Ḳurʾān (XVII, 35), was to be sultan: as

18 such he was not Muḥammad's deputy but God's, and the title kh alīfat Allāh, vicegerent of God, appears to have been approved by the Umayyads (D. S. Margoliouth, The sense of the title Ḵhalifah , in A volume of oriental studies presented to E. G. Browne, ed. T. W. Arnold and R. A. Nicholson, Cambridge 1922, 327). The phrase kh alīfat Allāh had earlier excited the indignation of Abū Bakr, because of the boldness of its implication. It was, nevertheless, used by Ḥassān b. Th ābit in A.D. 35 in an elegy he wrote on the caliphʿUth mān (Dīwān of ḤassānIbnTh ābit ed. W. N. Arafat, GMS, N.S. xxv/1-2, London 1971, i, 96). The ʿAbbāsids later employed the title kh alīfat Allāh, but its use was resisted by many of the ʿulamāʾ, who rejected the idea that the kh alīfa was the representative of God and the implication of autocratic power contained in the title (I. Goldziher, Muhammadanische Studien, ii, 61, H. A. R. Gibb, al-Mawardi's theory of the caliphate, in Studies on the Civilization of Islam, ed. Stanford J. Shaw and W. R. Polk, London 1962, 158, S. D. Goitein, Attitudes towards government in Studies in Islamic history and institutions, Leiden 1966, 203). An attempt to limit the true caliphate to the Rāsh idūn, on the basis of a tradition attributed to the prophet which states ―the caliphate after me will be thirty years: then it will become kingship‖ (quoted by Margoliouth, op. cit., 328), did not become accepted doctrine. Later Sunnī jurists, however, drew a distinction between the caliphate of the Rāsh idūn, the kh ilāfat al-nubuwwa (the vicariate of prophecy) and the later caliphate which they held to have had the character of worldly kingship (mulk) [q.v. in IMĀMA]. As used in the sources, the terms kh alīfa and imām (and kh ilāfa and imāma [q.v.], which refer to his office) are broadly interchangeable. The former is primarily applied to the supreme leader of the Muslim community as the ruler of the community exercising the ―temporal‖ functions of Muḥammad, while the latter is applied to him as the religious leader of the community and derives from his function of leading the prayers of the community, which, in the view of the Sunnīs, was his most important function. The propriety of the election of Abū Bakr was, in fact, defended by many jurists on the ground that he had led the prayers. In fiḳhliterature the terms imām and imāma are used in preference to kh alīfa and kh ilāfat . Among later¶ writers traces are occasionally to be found of a distinction between the functions of the leader of the community as kh alīfa and as imām. For example Rāwandī alleges that Ṭugh ril b. Arslān's atabeg, Muḥammad Pahlavān-dj ahān, used openly to say, ―The imām should occupy himself with delivering the kh uṭba and leading the prayers, which are the best of actions and the greatest of deeds and which uphold (or protect) profane rulers; and he should entrust kingship to sultans and leave rule to this sultan (i.e., Ṭugh ril)‖ (Rāḥat al-ṣudūr, ed. Muḥammad Iqbāl, GMS, N.S. ii, London, Leiden 1921, 334). Politics and religion in Islam were inextricably mixed and the political doctrines of the kh alīfa as the leader of the community cannot be easily separated from the theological and juridical doctrines concerning his office [see IMĀMA]. The early doctrinal disputes and religious polemics—the controversies over the imamate raised by the first civil war, the development of the Sh ī ʿat ʿAlī and the Ḵhawārid j schisms, the succession of the Umayyads and their overthrow by the ʿAbbāsids, the Muʿtazilī movement and its refutation by the Ashʿarīs, and the polemics against the Rawāfiḍ and Ḵhawārid j — profoundly influenced the development of the political theory as well as the religious doctrine of the kh alīfa , as also did Hellenistic and Sasanian theories of government. As the temporal head of the community, whose internal organisation was secured by a common acceptance of and submission to the sh arī ʿa, the caliph was the symbol of the supremacy of the sh a rīʿa. He, like other believers, was subordinate to it and they owed him obedience only as its representative. So far as there was an element of contract in the relations between him and his followers this was to be found in the bayʿa [q.v.]. Termination of the contract was only permitted if a change took place in the status and condition of the caliph such as might cause prejudice to the rights of the community. The weakness of the position was that no tribunal was specified to decide upon his deposition. Gradually the political doctrines of the imamate were worked out in the light of political developments (cf. H. A. R. Gibb, al-Mawardi's theory of the caliphate, 154-5). Significantly, most

19 of the important expositions of the theory of the caliphate were written, if not at a period of crisis, at least at a time when some fairly major problem faced the Muslim community and was exercising the minds of the faithful. In the turbulent years following the transfer of power from the Umayyads to the ʿAbbāsids, Ibn al-Muḳaffaʿ [q.v.], who died probably in 139/756, concerned at the internal dissensions within the community, felt the need for a definition of the powers and authority of the caliph. Recognising the change in the basis of the caliphate which had taken place with the ʿAbbāsid revolution, and believing that the only bond between the caliph and his army was religious conviction, he made right belief the cornerstone of his political programme. Convinced of the need for stability, he proposed a rigid control by the state. He suggested that the caliph should supersede and regulate raʾy [q.v.] as used in the ancient schools of law and recommended that he should create a code based on (i) precedents and usage (siyar), (ii) tradition and analogy, and (iii) his own decisions which would in turn be emended by succeeding caliphs. Ibn al-Muḳaffaʿ's pleas, however, went unheeded: orthodox Islam rejected the view that raʾy was the domain of the ruler and referred the final decision¶ toidj mā ʿ [q.v.] (see further S. D. Goitein, A turning-point in the history of the Muslim state, in Studies in Islamic history and institutions, 149-67). Abū Yūsuf (d. 182/798) [q.v.] represents a somewhat different point of view. Disturbed by contemporary practices, many of which seemed contrary to the spirit of the early caliphate as reflected in the works of the Traditionists, he cites a number of traditions in his Kitābal- Ḵharād j showing the duty of the subjects to their imām. The bayʿa by this time was no longer of practical significance and Abū Yūsuf does not attempt to maintain even the principle of election. He is aware of only one source of authority: God's choice by which the caliph became a vicegerent of God on earth (see further S. D. Goitein,Attitudes towards government in Islam and Judaism, in Studies in Islamic history and institutions, 203 ff.). By implication he holds that the actual possession of power is the necessary basis for authority and a sufficient justification for its exercise, irrespective of the ruler's personal qualifications. Although Abū Yūsuf, who looks upon the caliph as the shepherd of his people, bases the principles of true Islamic government upon the sunna of the Rāsh idūn and of ʿUmar b. ʿAbdal-ʿAzīz, and implicitly protests against the prevailing cult of the Sasanian tradition (cf. Gibb, The evolution of government in early Islam, inStudies on the civilization of Islam, 45), he opens the way, by his acceptance of the caliph as the kh alīfat Allāh, to the theory of the ruler as the Shadow of God upon earth, which was later to be transferred to the temporal ruler once the caliph had ceased to be the effective and immediate source of power (cf. A. K. S. Lambton, Quis custodiet custodes, in Studia Islamica v (1956), 125-48). Al-Ḏjāhiz (d. 255/868-9) [q.v.] approaches the question of the imamate from yet another point of view and bases his argument on the need for an imām on the predatory nature of men and their lack of understanding, an argument frequently put forward later in the works of Islamic philosophers and the writers of mirrors for princes (see further Ch. Pellat, L'imamat dans la doctrine de Ǧāḥiẓ, in Stud. Isl., xxv (1961), 23-52). Preoccupied with the feud between the supporters of the ʿAbbāsids and their opponents, he raises the question of the duty to resist an impious government. In this, his concern is not with the right to resist badgovernment as such, but simply with the duty to oppose the transgression of the law which was involved by the abandonment of Islamic government by the imām. When this happened al-Ḏjāhiz held that it was the duty of the imām's subjects to denounce and depose him, though he limits this duty by the possibility of fulfilment (see further Pellat, locc. cit., and also B. Lewis, Islamic concepts of revolution, in Revolution in the Middle East, ed. P. J. Vatikiotis, London 1972, 35 ff.). By the end of the 3rd/9th century the political control of the ʿAbbāsid caliph was on the one hand becoming increasingly eroded by his governors, who had usurped his temporal powers, and on the other threatened by movements of politico-religious dissent. This made a restatement of the basis and nature of caliphal authority imperative. One of the first to attempt this was al-Bāḳillānī (d. 403/1013) [q.v.], who in his exposition of the imamate was

20 mainly concerned to defend the Sunnī position against the threat of the Sh ī ʿa (see further A. Abel, Le chapitre sur l'imamat dans le Tamhid d'al-Baqillani, in Le Shi'isme imamite, Paris 1970, 55 ff., and Y. Ibish, The political doctrine of al-Baqillani, Beirut 1966). ¶ Al-Māwardī (d. 450/1058) [q.v.], starting from the premiss that authority was delegated by God to the imām and that he alone could delegate this to others, is primarily concerned to maintain the theoretical validity of the caliph's authority and his delegation of this in spite of the actual usurpation of his power by others. In al-Aḥkāmal-sulṭāniyya, he lays down the qualifications of the imām [see IMĀMA] and discusses the functions of his office, having in mind the limitations imposed upon the caliph by political circumstances. Like various writers before him, al-Māwardī speaks of the forfeiture of the imamate, without, however, laying down any legal means by which this might be brought about. In his discussion of the formal institutions of government he concentrates mainly upon what constitutes a valid investiture by the caliph of his functionaries, in particular the wazīr and the amīr. Some two centuries earlier al-Ḏjāhiz had defined political obligation with regard to the overthrow of an impious imām in terms of possibility. Al-Māwardī went further. Constrained by necessity and expediency, he limited even the political obligations of the caliph as the executor of the sh arī ʿa by the possibility of fulfilment. (See further H. A. R. Gibb, al-Mawardi's theory of the caliphate). In the 5th/11th and 6th/12th centuries the jurists continued to wrestle with the problem of how to assert the supremacy of the caliph. They were all concerned to a greater or lesser degree with the caliph's mission as the vicegerent of the prophet, and with his duty to defend Islam and to administer the affairs of the community. Among them were Abū Yaʿlā (380- 458/990-1066) Ibnal-Farrāʾ [q.v.], Ibn ʿAḳīl (431-513/1040-1119) [q.v.], Ḏjuwaynī, the Imām al- Ḥaramayn (419-499/1028-1105) [q.v.], and al-Ghazālī (450-505/1058-1111) [q.v.]. The last named breaks new ground on the subject of the relationship of caliph and sultan in his Iḳtiṣād al-iʿtiḳād. The caliph remains the symbol of the supremacy of the sh arī ʿa but the sultan is associated with him and recognised as the holder of coercive power (see further L. Binder, al- Ghazali and Islamic government, in The Muslim world, July 1955, and H. Laoust, La politique de Ġazālī, Paris 1970). Ibn Ḏjamā ʿa (639/1241-733/1333) [q.v.], writing after the extinction of the caliphate by the Mongols, broadly speaking transfers to the de facto rulers the constitutional theories worked out by earlier jurists, holding that the seizure of power itself gave authority, while Ibn Taymiyya (661-728/1263-1328) [q.v.], seeking a more radical solution, denied the obligatory nature of the caliphate (see further H. Laoust, Essai sur les doctrines sociales et politiques de Ibn Taimîya, Cairo 1939, idem, Le traité du droit publique d'Ibn Taimîya, Beirut 1948). (A.K.S. Lambton)

^ IN ISLAMIC MYSTICISM This term may have any of the following meanings, all carrying the idea of vicarship, when used in writings dealing with or pertaining to certain aspects of Islamic mysticism: He may be the ḳuṭb or perfect man, al-insān al-kāmil [q.v.], around whom the spheres of being evolve, upon whom the Muḥammadan Reality (al-ḥaḳīḳamuḥammadiyya), which is the hidden side (bāṭin) of his own reality in the world, irradiates. This makes the ḳuṭb the kh alīf a of the Prophet on the plane of manifestation (ẓāhir). In this sense the founders of the ṭarīḳas [q.v.] and their successors, when identified with the ḳuṭb, are referred to as kh ulafā ʾof the Prophet (see e.g. Muḥammad Abu 'l-Maḥāsin al- Ḳāwuḳadj ī, al-Badral-munīr ʿalā ḥizbal-sh ād h ilīal -kabīr, Alexandria 1314, 19; Muḥammad Māḍī Abu 'l-ʿAzāʾim, al-Ṭuhūr al-madār ʿalā ḳulūb al-abrār, Cairo 1340, 32; MuḥammadʿAbdal-Raḥīm al-Nash s h ābī, Asrār al-ḥaḳīḳa li-man yasluku al-ṭarīḳa, Cairo 1921, 66 f.).

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They do not unite al-kh ilāfaal -ẓāhira with al-kh ilāfaal -bāṭina, however, as did al-kh ulafā ʾ al- rāsh idūn , but held only al-kh ilāfaal -bāṭina (cf. ʿUbayd AllāhṢāliḥ b. Muḥammadal-Ḳusanṭīnī al- Ḥanṣālī, Fatḥal-Raḥīmal-Raḥmān bi-sh arḥ naṣīḥatikh wān , Cairo 1312, 176; Muḥammadal-Nūrī, al- Nafaḥat al-hadāʾiyya ʿalā wird al-sādātal-aḥmadiyya, Alexandria 1316, 109, 111). This is also referred to as al-kh ilāfa al-kubrā (cf. Ẓahīr al-DīnḲādirī, al-Fatḥ al-mubīn fīmā yataʿ allaḳa bi- tiryāḳ al-muḥibbīn, Cairo 1306, 118). He may be the successor of the (alleged) founder of a ṭarīḳa or to the deceased leader of a group of mystics, without the connotations attached to the term as mentioned under (1). The term may refer to his immediate successor (see e.g. Taḳī al-DīnʿAbd al- Raḥmān al-Wāsiṭī, Tiryāḳ al-muḥibbīn fī ṭabaḳāt kh irḳat al-mash āyik h al-ʿārifīn, Cairo 1305; 20, Karīm al-Dīn al-Barmūnī, Tanḳīḥ rawḍat al-azhār wa-minyat al-sādāt al-abrār, Tunis 1325, 343; al-Nash s h ābī, Asrār, 64 f.) or to the successor to al-kh ilāfa , i.e. to the position of supreme leadership over the ṭarīḳa or group as shaped by its founder or first leader and/or their successors (see e.g. Ḏjalāl Dīn al-Karakī, Lisānal-taʿrīf bi-ḥāl al- walī al-sh arīf SīdīIbrāhīmDasūḳī, ed. AḥmadʿIzz al-Dīn Ḵhalaf Allāh, Ṭanṭā 1969, 5 f., for al-kh ilāfa al-Birhāmiyya, and al-Ḏjabartī, ʿAdj ā ʾibal-āth ār , i, 70, for al-kh ilāfa al- Wafāʾiyya). Equivalent to al-kh ilāfa in this sense is the term sadj d j āda [q.v.]. According to ʿAbd al- Wahhābal-Sh a ʿrānī, al-Anwār al-ḳudsiyya fī maʿrifat ḳawāʾid al-ṣūfiyya, Cairo-Beirut 1962, 6, i, 185, preference for succession of a deceased sh ayk h [q.v.] should be given to the eldest of his disciples. The successor may already have been designated by the ṭarīḳa's leader during his lifetime (on this see e.g. MuḥammadʿAbdal-Bāḳī al-Laknawī, al-Minaḥ al-madaniyya fī mukh tārāt al-ṣūfiyya, Medina 1330, 88 ff.). In addition, the ṣūfī manuals mention the existence of consensus among the disciples about the successor as a legitimate basis for the assumption of leadership (cf. al-Laknawī, al-Minaḥ, 93). Hereditary patrilineal succession to the leadership position became the rule adopted by many of the Ṣūfī orders. This practice is frowned upon by those belonging to al-Naḳsh ibandiyya [q.v.] such as Muḥammad b.¶ ʿAbdAllāh al-Ḵhānī, al- Bahdj a al-saniyya fī ādāb al-ṭarīḳa al-ʿalīyya al-Ḵhālidiyya al-Naḳsh ibandiyya , Cairo 1319, 33, and it is discarded as Sh ī ʿa custom by authors belonging to al-Sh ād h ili yya [q.v.], such as ʿAlī SālimʿAmmār, Abu 'l-Ḥasanal-Sh ād h ilī , Cairo 1951, 62, i, 31. He may be a murīd [q.v.] who, after having reached a certain stage of mystical perfection as defined by the teachings of the ṭarīḳa to which he belongs, is granted permission by his spiritual master to initiate novices and to guide them on the mystical path. This includes permission to transmit the ṭarīḳa's prayers, to lead ḥaḍras [q.v.] and to grant the status of kh alīfa to his own disciples in turn. To this effect a so- called idj āza (Pers./T. idj āzatnāma/icazetname ) [q.v.] is granted to him by his spiritual master, possibly during a festive gathering of the ṭarīḳa's members, when the idj āza is read (cf. P. Kahle, Zur Organisation der Derwischorden in Egypten, in Isl., vi (1916), 157). The actual investiture may consist in the pronounciation of a special oath-formula, themubāyaʿat al-kh ilāfa (cf. al-Laknawī, al-Minaḥ, 89) which differs from the common ʿahd formula [q.v.]. An idj āza of this type may be defined as the deed of spiritual succession granted to a murīd. It is generally referred to as idj āzat al- kh ilāfa (Pers./T. kh ilāfatnāma, hilafetname), or just kh ilāfa . This document generally contains a more or less elaborate exposition of rights and obligations of its recipient and mentions the silsila [q.v.], i.e. the chain of initiation and transmission of mystical knowledge also known as sanad [q.v.] al-kh ilāfa (cf. Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al- Ḳash s h ās h ī, al-Simṭ al-madj īd fī sh a ʾn al-bayʿa wa 'l-dh ikr wa talḳīn wa-salāsil al-ṭarīḳ, Ḥaydarābād 1327, 67 ff.). Provided with the seal of its purveyor, who must have been similarly authorised by his own spiritual master, and sometimes endorsed by a number of witnesses, who may also be kh alīfa s (cf. Muḥammad b. Mubārak ʿAlawī Kirmānī (Amīr Ḵhurd), Siyar al-awliyāʾ, Dihlī 1302, 179) it constitutes the kh alīfa 's primary source of legitimation as a teacher of the ṭarīḳa. The idj āzat al-kh ilāfa need not necessarily be restricted to the permission to transmit mystical knowledge, but may

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also contain permission to teach and transmit texts of a different nature. It can also contain permission to initiate into and to teach the methods of more than one ṭarīḳa (cf. Muḥammad b. Sulaymān al-Ḥanafī Bagh dād ī, al-Ḥadīḳa al-nadiyya fī ādāb al-ṭarīḳa al-Naḳsh ibandiyya wa 'l-bahdj a al-Ḵhālidiyya , Cairo n.d., 45). The fact that somebody has been granted the idj āzat al-kh ilāfa means only that he possesses the prerequisites for initiating and guiding disciples of his own, independent of his spiritual master. He is not under the obligation to do so, and he may very well refrain from setting himself up independently until after his master's death (cf. e.g. Amīr Ḵhurd, Siyar al-awliyāʾ, 169, and for present-day practice, Syed Naguib al-Attas, Some aspects of Sufism as understood and practised among the Malays, Singapore, Malaysian Sociological Research Institute, 1963, 37). He may also choose not to set himself up independently but to accept the spiritual leadership of another kh alīfa as his master's legitimate successor. In this case ―a renewal of the ʿahd‖ may take place with the latter (see e.g. Maḥmūd b. ʿAfīf al-Dīn al-Wafāʾī, Maʿāhid al-taḥḳīḳ fī radd al-munkirīn ʿalā ahl al- ṭarīḳ, Cairo 1960 (various editions), 145). According to the tenets of some ṭarīḳas, a sh ayk h has the obligation to grant the idj āzat al-kh ilāfa to a disciple who has attained perfection¶ (cf. al-Ḵhānī, al-Bahdj at al-saniyya, 43). Other ṭarīḳas, however, like al- Čish tiyya [q.v.], and a Ḵhalwatiyya [q.v.] branch like al-Sh arḳāwiyya, do not seem to have known such a rule, and some of the principal sh ayk h s of these orders refused to grant an idj āzat kh ilāfa to any of their disciples (cf. ḤamīdḲalandar, Ḵhayr al-madj ālis , ed. K. A. Nizami, Aligarh, n.d., 287 f. On the last regular kh alīfa of al-Sh arḳāwiyya, see Muḥammad ʿAbduh al-Ḥidj ād j ī, Min aʿlām saʿīd, Cairo 1969, 63 ff. His idj āza was edited by Aḥmad al-Ṭāhir, Cairo 1328). Formal registration of the permission to initiate and the transmission of mystical knowledge in an idj āza seems to be a relatively late development (cf. ʿAbdAllāh b. al-SayyidʿAlawī b. Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭās, Ẓuhūr al-ḥaḳāʾiḳ fī bayān al-ṭarāʾik, n.p. [Bombay] 1312, 26 f.), coinciding with the period in which Islamic mysticism became institutionalised in gradually expanding formal organisations, the ṭariḳas, during and after the 8th/14th century. 4. He may be the deputy of the head of an order in a particular area. The precondition for assignment to such a position is formal investiture as kh alīfa and hence possession of an idj āzat kh ilāfa , which is crucial for the legitimation of any claims for the office or position of local deputy. Appointment as kh alīfa in this sense may be to an already existing group of murīds, in succession to a deceased or suspended predecessor (cf. Muḥammadal-Bakh s h ī al- Ḥalabī, Sh amsal -mafākh ir. Ḏhayl li-Kitāb Ḳalāʾid al-dj awāhir , Cairo 1908, 27; Amīr Ḵhurd, Siyar al- awliyāʾ, 197; ʿAbd al-Ṣamad Zayn al-Dīn, al-Ḏjawāhir al-saniyya wa 'l-karāmāt al-aḥmadiyya, Cairo 1277, 55), in charge of a particular tekke [q.v.] or zāwiya [q.v.] (see e.g. al-Bakh s h ī, Sh ams al- mafākh ir , 64) or, in a particular area where the ṭarīḳa has no adherents, in order to proselytise (see e.g. Muḥammad Abu 'l-Hudā al-Sayyādī, Tanwīr al-abṣār fī ṭabaḳāt al-sāda al-Rifāʿiyya al- akh yār , Cairo 1306, 110; MuḥammadHāsh im Badakh s h ānī, Zubdat al-maḳāmāt, Lucknow 1885, 70-1, 347, 382; Bagh dādī, al-Ḥadīḳa al-nadiyya, 85). The degree to which thesekh alīfa s could and did act independently of the incumbent(s) of a position of superior authority within the ṭarīḳa differs considerably among the variousṭarīḳas over time and in diverse areas. The position of the office of kh alīfa may differ within the organisational hierarchies of the orders. Thus within the Central African Ḳādiriyya branch, having its centre at Ujiji (Tanzania), kh alīfa s are inferior to and nominated by a category of officials known as maakida(sing. akida), (cf. J. M. Cuoq, Les Musulmans en Afrique, Paris 1975, 325). Within a ṭarīḳa such as al-Aḥmadiyya al-Marāziḳa, the kh ulafā ʾ of its semi-autonomous sub-sections (buyūt) rank under the sh ayk h of the bayt, who is a kh alīfa himself in the sense mentioned in section 3 above (cf. MuḥammadḤasanSh ams Dīn,Risālaal-Aḥmadiyya al-Th āniyya , Cairo 1376, 59). In the Magh rib and West Africa, the local deputy of the head of an order is generally referred to asmuḳaddam [q.v.]. This is also the case within a number of Sh ād h iliyya orders in the Middle East and Egypt, e.g. al-Yash ruṭiyya (cf. J. van Ess, Libanesische Miszellen 6, Die Yašruṭīya, in WI xvi (1975), 1-103, passim), and a now defunct Egyptian branch of Nāṣiriyya. Within the latter ṭarīḳa, the muḳaddams (kh alīfa s) ranked under the so-called nāyibs, who as

23 provincial deputies of the ṭarīḳa's leader held jurisdiction over them (cf. IbrāhīmḴhalīl, al- Mardj i ʿ, Cairo 1934, 40 f.). Frequently, the kh ilāfa in a particular area was inherited within¶ the family and developed into a virtually autonomous power position which allowed its incumbents to pay only nominal allegiance to the head or principal leader of their ṭarīḳa. In many cases, this constituted the prelude to the formation of an independent branch or an entirely new ṭarīḳa. The position of the kh alīfa as mursh id [q.v.] is to all intents and purposes the same as the position of the head of a ṭarīḳa. Therefore, the rules for spiritual leadership, i.e. the pre-conditions which allow one to assume the position of sh ayk h , found in Ṣūfī manuals, also apply to the position of kh alīfa . It is only in relatively late 19th and 20th century manuals of the Egyptian orders, which became integrated parts of a highly developed bureaucratic organisation, that sets of rules pertaining to the office of kh alīfa may be found. Within this organisation a limited number ofkh alīfa s in various areas received additional confirmation as local deputies of the heads of their orders from the head of Bakriyya [q.v.], and formed a special category of dignitaries within the administration. They held jurisdiction over those kh alīfa s who could only claim this status by virtue of the idj āzat al-kh ilāfa in their possession. Within some of the Egyptian orders, a kh alīfa may continue to hold some degrees of authority over either the kh ulafa ʾordained by him or over those within a particular area. In this case, he is referred to by the term kh alīfat al-kh ulafā ʾ. In Persia under the Ṣafawids [q.v.] a similarly-named office existed, which was defined by V. Minorsky as ―a special secretariat for Ṣūfī affairs‖. The incumbent to this office was regarded as the vicar of the king, on whose behalf he acted and appointed kh alīfa s in the provinces (cf. Minorsky, Tadh kirat al-mulūk. A manual of Ṣafawid administration, London 1943, 55, 125 ff.). A possibly identical office of this name was also known in another Sh ī ʿī ṭarīḳa, the Niʿmatullāhiyya [q.v.] (cf. R. M. Savory, The office of kh alīfat al-kh ulafā ʾ under the Ṣafawids, in JAOS, lxxxv (1965), 497). He may be the pre-eminent representative and principal propagator of a ṭarīḳa in a particular area acting independently, i.e. duly authorised as mentioned in section 3 above but not paying allegiance to any of the ṭarīḳa's leaders elsewhere. It is this meaning which can be most safely adduced whenever the term kh alīfa is mentioned in conjunction with the name of a ṭarīḳa or of a ṭarīḳa founder, when the latter is not a contemporary of the kh alīfa mentioned and when there is no evidence of the existence of this ṭarīḳa as an organisation. It should be interpreted as such in passages in a variety of texts in Arabic, Persian and Turkish as diverse as the following ones in which the relevant passage is found on the pages indicated: MuḥammadḌayfAllāh al- Ḏja ʿalī, Kitābal-Ṭabaḳāt fī kh uṣūṣ al-awliyaʾ wa 'l-ṣāliḥīn wa 'l-ʿulamāʾ wa 'l-sh u ʿarāʾ fī 'l- Sūdān, Cairo 1930, 40; al-Ḏjabartī, ʿAdj ā ʾibal-āth ār , i, 210; MaḥmūdSh ukrīal -Ālūsī, al- Misk al-adh far , Bagh dād 1930, 141; Tūzuk-i Ḏjahāngīrī , ed. Sayyid AḥmadḴhān, Ghazipur 1864, 211; Ewliyā Čelebi, Seyāḥatnāme, Istanbul 1938, x, 237. Within al- Bektāsh iyya [q.v.] it refers to a rank of spiritual achievement which could be attained only by those who had been ordained as bābā. It is marked by the donation of the idj āzat al-kh ilāfa as mentioned in section 3 above and was the pre-condition for investiture as dede. The latter degree entailed, among other rights, the right to participate in the elections of a dede bābā. Investiture as dede entailed the right to appoint heads (bābās) of tekkes. ¶ In addition, the term kh alīfa may denote the representative of the head of the Sanūsiyya order who has been sent on a mission to a zāwiya (cf. H. Duveyrier, La confrérie musulmane de Sidi Mohammed Ben ʿAlī es-Senoūsī et son domaine géographique, Rome 1918, with notes by C. A. Nallino, 11, n. 1), the head of a holy lineage among the Mourides in Senegal (cf. D. B. Cruise O'Brien, The Mourides of Senegal. The political and economic organization of an Islamic brotherhood, Oxford 1971, 111), and in Turkey prior to 1925, the vicar of the head of a tekke, as reported by J. P. Brown, The darvishes or oriental spiritualism, London repr. 1968, 114. It may take a similar meaning in the Magh ri b, where the term may denote the vicar of the head of a zāwiya (cf. V.

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Crapanzano, The Ḥamadsha, Berkeley and Los Angeles 1973, 81 f.). In MamlūkEgypt, the offices of the custodians of the shrines of Aḥmad al-Badawī and IbrāhīmDasūḳī [qq.v.] became detached from the leadership positions of the ṭarīḳas founded by or named after these saints. Ever since, the incumbent to either of these two offices has been known as kh alīfat al-maḳām, while the head of the Birhāmiyya ṭarīḳa and the heads of the various Aḥmadiyya branches are referred to askh alīfat IbrāhīmDasūḳī and kh ulafā ʾ Aḥmadal-Badawī respectively (cf. Taḳrīr ʿan waẓīfat al-kh ilāfa bi 'l-maḳām al-aḥmadī, n.p. [Cairo], n.d. [approx. 1898], and al-Karakī, Lisānal- taʿrīf, 5 f.). (F. de Jong)

^ IN THE SUDANESE MAHDIYYA The term had various significances during the Sudanese Mahdiyya (1881-98). The originator of the Mahdist movement, MuḥammadAḥmad b. ʿAbdAllāh, as a leading member of the Sammāniyya ṭarīḳa, was commissioned in 1292/1875-6 to appoint kh alīfa s by MuḥammadSh arīfNūr al-Dāʾim, the head of this ṭarīḳa in the Egyptian Sudan: one letter of appointment is extant (see MuḥammadIbrāhīmAbū Salīm, al-Mursh id ilā wath ā ʾiḳ Mahdī, [Khartum] 1969, no. 1). (2) After his public manifestation as Mahdī (1 Sh a ʿbān 1298/29 June 1881), MuḥammadAḥmad appears to have conferred the title of kh alīf a on at least some of those to whom he delegated authority to administer the bayʿa: two examples have been calendared by Abū Salīm, al-Mursh id , nos. 23, 62. (3) This use of the term kh alīfa for local Mahdist leaders fell into disuse, and the title became restricted to three of the Mahdī's principal companions, ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad al-Taʿāʾish ī [q.v.], ʿAlī b. Muḥammad Ḥilū (a pious man of the tribe of Digh aym from the White Nile), and MuḥammadSh arīf b. Ḥāmid (the Mahdī's son-in-law). The Mahdiyya was represented as an eschatological drama, reviving the primitive umma in the end-time. In this drama, the Mahdī was the Successor of the Apostle of God (Ḵhalīfat RasūlAllāh), and his three companions the Successors respectively of Abū Bakr (Ḵhalīfat al-Ṣiddīḳ), ʿUmar (Ḵhalīfat al-Fārūḳ), and ʿAlī (Ḵhalīfat al-Ḳarrār). The date of this development is uncertain; perhaps before the Mahdī left Abā (Ramaḍān 1298/August 1881) or during the following months, while he was at Ḳadīr (cf. R. C. [von] Slatin,Fire and sword in the Sudan, London 1896, 138; F. R. Wingate, Ten years captivity in the Mahdi's camp 1882-1892, London 1892, 14). In a letter dated 5 Radj ab 1300/12 May 1883, the Mahdī informed MuḥammadMahdī al-Sanūsī that he had been designated by the Prophet as the Successor of ʿUth mān, but al-Sanūsī ignored this approach. The letter is calendared in Abū Salīm, al-Mursh īd , no. 113; there is a good text in Mansh ūrāt ... MuḥammadMahdī b. ʿAbdAllāh, ii, 70-3 (Khartum 1963, photographic reproduction of corpus lithographed during the Mahdiyya). The pre-eminence of ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad was stressed in a proclamation of the Mahdī (17 Rabīʿ I 1300/26 January 1883), where he is styled kh alīfat al-kh ulafā ʾ (calendared in Abū Salīm, al-Mursh id , no. 78; text in Mansh ūrāt , i, 30-2). The restriction of the title kh alīfa , and the special status of ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad, aroused resent-¶ ment. One of the Mahdī's most influential supporters, al-Manna Ismāʿīl, a holy man of Kordofān, fell from grace and was ultimately executed after claiming the kh ilāfa (see Abū Salīm, al-Mursh id , no. 112, dated after 4 Radj ab 1300/11 May 1883; A. R. C. Bolton, El Menna Ismail: Fiki and Emir in Kordofan, in Sudan Notes and Records, xvii/2, 1934, 229-41). Another pretender to the kh ilāfa , Fakh r al-DīnḤasan, was reproved in two letters from the Mahdī (calendared in Abū Salīm, al-Mursh id , nos. 351, 352, dated 2-4 Sh awwāl 1301/26-28 July 1884: texts in Abū Salīm (ed.), Mansh ūrāt al-Mahdiyya, n.p., 1969, 76-9).

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(4) When on the Mahdī's death, ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad succeeded him as head of the Mahdist state, the analogy to Abū Bakr's succession to the Prophet was emphasized in a proclamation by the two junior kh alīfa s and the Mahdī's kin (text in Abū Salīm (ed.), Mansh ūrāt al-Mahdiyya, 84-9, dated 8 Ramaḍān 1302/22 June 1885). From this time, ʿAbdAllāh assumed the new style of kh alīfat Mahdī, ―the Successor of the Mahdī‖, which was not used as a formal title by his two colleagues. His reign saw the appearance in Dār Fūr [q.v.] of another pretender —the holy man called Abū Ḏjummayza, who claimed the vacantkh ilāfa of ʿUth mān, but who died about the beginning of 1889. (P.M. Holt)

^ Bibliography

(I) The history of the institution of the caliphate Sir Thomas W. Arnold, The Caliphate, Oxford 1924 and 2nd edn. 1965 (completed for the modern period by S. Haim), remains the basic work, to be completed, for the older period, by E. Tyan, Institutions du droit public musulman, i, Le califat, Paris 1954, ii, Califat et sultanat, 1957. On special aspects, see M. A. Shaban, Islamic history, A.D. 600-750 (A.H. 132), Cambridge 1971 W. Montgomery Watt, God's caliph. Qur'anic interpretation and Umayyad claims, in Iran and Islam (ed. C. E. Bosworth), Edinburgh 1971, 565-¶ 74 D. S. Margoliouth, The sense of the title Khalifah, in A volume of oriental studies presented to E. G. Browne, ed. T. W. Arnold and R. A. Nicholson, Cambridge 1922 Rudi Paret, Signification coranique de ḫalīfa et d'autres dérivés de la racine ḫalafa, in St. Isl. xxxi, (1970), 211-17 idem, Ḫalīfat Allah - Vicarius Dei, in Mélanges d'islamologie (Armand Abel), Leiden 1974, 224-32 D. Sourdel, Le vizirat ʿabbāside, Damascus 1959-60. H. Siddiqui, Caliphate and sultanate in medieval Persia, Karachi 1969 H. Busse, Chalif and Grosskönig, Beirut 1969

G. Makdisi, Ibn ʿAqīl et la résurgence de l'Islam traditionaliste au XIesiècle, Damascus 1963 idem, Les rapports entre calife et sulṭān à l'époque saljūqide, in IJMES, vi (1975), 228-36 H. Mason, Two statesmen of mediaeval Islam, vizir Ibn Hubayra, caliph an-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh, The Hague-Paris 1972 Hartmann, La conception gouvernementale du calife an-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh, in Orientalia Suecana, xxii (1973), 52-61 idem, An-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh, Berlin 1975, esp. 109-21 van Arendonk, Les débuts de l'imamat zaidite au Yémen, Fr. tr., Leiden 1960 R. Strothmann, Das Staatsrecht der Zaiditen, Strasbourg 1912. R. Hartmann, Zur Vorgeschichte des ʿabbāsidischen Schein-Chalifats von Cairo, in Abh. des deutschen Ak. der Wiss. zu Berlin, phil.-hist. Klasse, 1947, No. 9, Berlin 1950, 3-10 Ayalon, Studies on the transfer of the ʿAbbāsid caliphate from Bagdād to Cairo, in Arabica, vii, (1960), 41-59. H. Inalcık, The Ottoman empire, the classical age 1300-1600, London 1973 H. A. R. Gibb and Bowen, Islamic society and the West, ii/1, Oxford 1950 Lévi-Provençal, Hist. Esp. mus., iii, passim

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M. van Berchem, Titres califiens d'Occident, in JA (1907/1), 245-335 R. Brunschvig, La Berbérie orientale sous les Ḥafṣides, i, Paris 1940, esp. 40. (II) In political theory Additional Bibliography: C. H. Becker, Islamstudien, i W. Barthold, Khalif i sultan, in Mir Islama, i, 203 ff., 345 ff. (abridged German tr. in Isl., vi (1915), 350 ff. abridged English tr. by N. S. Doniach in IQ (1963), 117-135) Th. W. Juynboll, Handbuch des islamischen Gesetzes, Leiden 1910 T. W. Arnold, The caliphate, London 1924 Tyan, Institutions du droit public musulman, Paris 1956, ii H. A. R. Gibb, The heritage of Islam in the modern world (i), in International Journal of Middle Eastern studies, 1 (1970), 3-18 W. M. Watt, God's caliph: Qurʾānic interpretations and Umayyad claims, in Iran and Islam, in memory of the late Vladimir Minorsky, ed. C. E. Bosworth, Edinburgh 1971, 565-74. For¶ the works of the Muslim theorists mentioned above see under the relevant articles. (III) In Islamic mysticism In addition to the references in the text, see J. S. Trimingham, The Sufi orders in Islam, Oxford 1971, 174 ff., and idem, Islam in the Sudan, Oxford 1949, 202 ff., which also gives an abbreviated English text of an idj āzat kh ilāf a. On the appointment of kh alīfa s and on the kh ilāfat nāmas issued by a 7th/13th century Čish tī mystic, see K. A. Nizami, The life and times of Shaikh Farid- u'd Dīn Ganj-i-Shakar, Aligarh 1955, 92 ff., and idem, Some aspects of religion and politics in India during the thirteenth century, Bombay 1961, 214 ff. and also 349-52 for the texts of two kh ilāfat - nāmas drawn from Amīr Ḵhurd's Siyar al-awliyāʾ. The text of a Čish tī idj āza translated from the Urdu may be found in G. R. Smith, A Muslim saint in South Africa, in African Studies, xxviii/4 (1969), 267-8, 277 f. For the text of a Ḳādiriyyaidj āza , as well as for the text of an idj āza of a mixed nature (i.e. ʿilm and taṣawwuf), in a French translation, see A. Abel, Les musulmans noirs du Maniema, in Corr. d'Orient, iv (Brussels 1960), 22 and 151 ff. A translation of a late 19th century Aḥmadiyyaidj āza , together with a discussion of its contents and significance, may be found in E. Kümmerer, Die Aḥmadīya. Beiträge zur Kenntnis eines ägyptischen Derwischordens, Diss. Tübingen 1953 (unpublished). On the rank of kh alīfa (T. halife) in al-Bektāsh iyya, see in addition to J. K. Birge, The Bektashi order of dervishes, London 1937, 165 f., where this is dealt with somewhat defectively, Aḥmad Sirrī Dede Bābā, Ḳānūn al-ṭarīḳa al-Bektāsh iyya , Cairo 1959, 5. For details about the office of kh alīfa in various ṭarīḳas in Egypt in the 19th and 20th century, and concerning the contents and significance of idj āza s, see F. De Jong, The Ṣūfī orders in post-Ottoman Egypt (forthcoming), in particular chs. iii and x. Examples of Ṣūfī manuals and other texts defining the relationship between the sh ayk h of a ṭarīḳa and his kh ulafā ʾ as mentioned in section 4 above are: MuḥammadʿUth mān al-Mīrgh anī, al-Zuhūr al-fāʾiḳa fī ḥuḳūḳ al-ṭarīḳ al-ṣādiḳa, Būlāḳ¶ 1316, 9 f. idem, Minwāl al-ṭarīḳa al-ṭāhira al-nūrāniyya, in al-Rasāʾil al-Mīrgh aniyya , Cairo 1939, 108 ff. ʿAbd Salām al-Ḥalwānī, Sīra al-ḥalīliyya, Manṣūra 1339, 97 ff. Muḥammad ṢāliḥMuḥsin (ed.), Mursh id al-sālikīn ilā ṭarīḳ al-muhtadīn, Cairo 1927, 20 ff. AḥmadʿAbd al-Munʿim ʿAbd Salām al-Ḥalwānī, al-Ḳuṭb al-rabbānī SīdīʿAbd Salām al-Ḥalawānī, bīʾatuhu, nash ʾatuhu, ʿilmuhu, ṭarīḳatuhu, ath aruhu fī 'l-umma al-islāmiyya, Cairo 1970, 22 ff. SalāmaḤasanal-Rāḍī, Ḳānūn ṭarīḳat al-sāda al-Ḥāmidiyya al-Sh ād h iliyya , Cairo 1965 (revised ed.), 9 ff. An English translation of these latter regulations is found as an appendix to M.

27

Gilsenan, Saint and Sufi in modern Egypt, Oxford 1973. On the position of the kh ulafā ʾ in al- Ḥāmidiyya al-Sh ād h iliyya, a ṭarīḳa with which this study mainly deals, see in particular 82 ff. (IV) In the Sudanese Mahdiyya

P. M. Holt, The Mahdist state in the Sudan, 1881-18982, Oxford 1970, 119-25. [Print Version: Volume IV, page 937, column 1] CITATION: Sourdel, D.; Lambton, A.K.S.; Jong, F. de; Holt, P.M. "Ḵhalīfa." Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Edited by: P. Bearman; , Th. Bianquis; , C.E. Bosworth; , E. van Donzel; and W.P. Heinrichs. Brill, 2011. Brill Online. K.U. Leuven - University Library. 17 February 2011

ʿAbbāsids (Banu 'l-ʿAbbās) , the dynasty of the Caliphs from 132/750 to 656/1258. The dynasty takes its name from its ancestor, al-ʿAbbās b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib b. Hāsh im, the uncle of the Prophet. The story of the origins and nature of the movement that overthrew the Umayyad Caliphate and established the ʿAbbāsid dynasty in its place was for long known only in the much-revised version put about when the dynasty had already attained power, and, with it, respectability. A more critical version was proposed by G. van Vloten (De opkomst der Abbasiden in Chorasan, Leiden 1890, and Recherches sur la domination arabe, le chiitisme et les croyances messianiques sous le califat des Omayyades, Amsterdam 1894), and developed by J. Wellhausen (in the final chapter of his Das Arabische Reich und sein Sturz, Berlin 1902; English transl., Calcutta 1927). His findings, with some modifications, have been confirmed by subsequent research, and more especially by the new information that has come to light in recent years on the early history of the Sh ī ʿa sects, notably in the Firaḳ al-Sh ī ʿa of al-Nawbakh tī (ed. H. Ritter, Istanbul 1931). They were to a remarkable degree anticipated by Ibn Ḵhaldūn in his history. The ʿAbbāsid party that won power from the Umayyads was known as Hāsh imiyya. According to the later chronicles, this name referred to Hāsh īm, the common ancestor of al-ʿAbbās, ʿAlī and the Prophet, and it has been taken as asserting a claim to the succession based on kinship with the Prophet. In fact the name was of a quite different significance, and reveals very clearly the true origins of the ʿAbbāsid party. During the Umayyad period the large number of Sh ī ʿite and pro-Sh ī ʿite sects and parties that flourished in different parts of the Empire, but especially in Southern ʿIrāḳ, may be broadly divided into two main groups. One of them followed the pretenders of the line of Fāṭima, and was, generally speaking, moderate, differing from the dominant faith chiefly by its support, on legitimist grounds, for the political claims of the house of ʿAlī. The other first appeared in the revolt of al-Mukh tār, who rose in 66/685 in the name of Muḥammad, a son of ʿAlī by a Ḥanafī woman. For the next sixty or seventy years the claims of Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya and his successors were advanced by a series of sects of a more extreme character, deriving their main support from the resentful and imperfectly Islamised mawālī and embodying in their teachings many ideas brought by these converts from their previous religions. After the death of Muḥammad b. al- Ḥanafiyya in 81/700-1, his followers split into three main groups, one of which followed his son Abū Hāsh im ʿAbd Allāh [q.v.], and was known after him as Hāsh imiyya. On the death of Abū Hāsh im without issue in 98/716, his followers again split into several groups, one of which maintained that Abū Hāsh im had bequeathed the Imamate to Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. ʿAbd Allāh just before he died in the house of Muḥammad b. ʿAlī's father in Palestine. This group continued to be known as Hāsh imiyya, and also as Rā¶ wandiyya (cf. S. Moscati, Il testamento di Abū Hašim, RSO 1952, 28 ff.). It may be noted in passing that the doctrine that the Imamate

28 can be bequeathed or transferred by the Imām to another person is by no means infrequent in early Sh ī ʿism (see B. Lewis, The origins of Ismāʿīlism, Cambridge 1940, 25 ff. and 44 ff.). Whether or not the story of the bequest of Abū Hāsh im is, as has been suggested, fictitious, the main fact remains clear: that Muḥammad b. ʿAlī took over the claims of Abū Hāsh im, and, with them, the sect and propaganda organisation of the Hāsh imiyya, which he then proceeded to transform into the instrument of the ʿAbbāsid party. He seems to have lost little time in using it. The accounts given by the historians of the first ʿAbbāsid missions are incomplete and in part contradictory. Broadly, they indicate that intensive propaganda began from about 100/718. From headquarters in Kūfa, the Hāsh imiyya sent emissaries to Ḵhurāsān, one of whom, Ḵhidās h , won considerable success, but was executed in 118/736 after prematurely showing his hand. The moderate Sh ī ʿa, whose support Muḥammad b. ʿAlī was still seeking, were alienated by the extreme doctrines taught by Ḵhidās h , and after his death Muḥammad deemed it advisable to disavow him and place his own organisation in Ḵhurāsān under the control of the Sh ī ʿite chief missionary, Sulaymān b. Kath īr [q.v.]. A period of inactivity followed, during which Muḥammad died in 125/743. His son Ibrāhīm [q.v.] succeeded to his claims and was accepted by the followers in Ḵhurāsān, including Sulaymān b. Kath īr. With Ibrāhīm a new phase of activity began. In 128/745-6 Ibrāhīm sent his mawlāAbū Muslim [q.v.] as his personal representative to Ḵhurāsān. The sources differ on the origin of Abū Muslim, but agree that he was a Persian, and a freedman of Ibrāhīm. The use of thekunya was at that time a privilege rarely enjoyed by non-Arabs, and its employment by Persian emissaries of the ʿAbbāsids like Abū Muslim, his lieutenant Abū Ḏjahm, and his rival Abū Salama al-Ḵhallāl is not without significance. Considered in the light of the statements in some sources that Abū Muslim claimed or was granted membership of the ʿAbbāsid house, it may well be an example of the practice, common among the extreme Sh ī ʿa, of granting to favoured supporters adoptive membership of the house of the Prophet, and thus, incidentally as it were, of the Arab nation. A modified form of this method of adoption later became part of the dynastic policy of the ʿAbbāsid caliphs (see ABNĀʾ). Abū Muslim's mission to Ḵhurāsān achieved a rapid and resounding success. While his main appeal was to the Persian mawālī, he also found important support among the Yemenite Arabs, and is said to have won over many of the Zoroastrian and Buddhist dihḳāns, some of whom were now converted to Islam for the first time. Opinions differ as to the nature of Abū Muslim's teachings. Two things are clear however—that he was a loyal agent of the Hāsh imiyya, and that they were a part of the extremist wing of the Sh ī ʿa. It seems likely therefore that the doctrines he taught were of the kind current among the extreme Sh ī ʿa— probably including elements of Iranian origin, and thus the more acceptable to those whom he addressed. The hoisting of the black flags, later accepted as the emblem of the house of ʿAbbās, had at this stage a messianic significance. Black flags were among the signs and portents listed in the eschatological prophecies current at the time, and had been used¶ as emblems of religious revolt by earlier rebels against the Umayyads. Their use by Abū Muslim was thus an appeal to messianic expectations. His activities aroused some opposition among the more moderate Arab Sh ī ʿa, led by Sulaymān b. Kath īr, but a tactical withdrawal of Abū Muslim from Ḵhurāsān was sufficient to demonstrate that no effective movement was possible without him and his policies, and led to his return as undisputed leader of the mission. By Ramaḍān 129/May-June 747 he was ready to show his hand. The time and the place were auspicious. The moderate Sh ī ʿa and the Ḵhawārid j , the two most important opposition movements against the Umayyads, had both shot their bolt — the former in the risings of 122/740 and 126/744, the latter in the rebellion of 127/745. These served the double purpose of weakening the Umayyad regime and, by their failure, eliminating possible rivals to the Hāsh imī succession. ʿIrāḳ, the main centre of previous anti-Umayyad movements, was exhausted, and was moreover subject to special Umayyad surveillance. In concentrating their attention on Ḵhurāsān, the ʿAbbāsids were breaking new grounds. Their choice was good. An active and warlike Persian population, imbued with the religious and military traditions of the frontier, was deeply resentful of the inequalities imposed by Umayyad rule. The Arab

29 army and settlers, half Persianized by long residence, were sharply divided among themselves, and even during the triumphal progress of Abū Muslim diverted their own energies and those of the Umayyad governor, Naṣr b. Sayyār [q.v.], to Arab inter-tribal strife. Soon Abū Muslim was able to take Marw, and then, ably seconded by his general Ḳaḥṭaba [q.v.], an Arab of the tribe of Ṭayy, seized all Ḵhurāsān from the crumbling Umayyad power. From Ḵhurāsān the ʿAbbāsid forces advanced to Rayy and then, after defeating a relieving Umayyad army from Kirmān, captured Nihāwand. The way was now open to ʿIraḳ. In 132/749 the ʿAbbāsid army crossed the Euphrates some 30 or 40 miles north of Kūfa, and engaged and defeated another Umayyad army led by Ibn Hubayra [q.v.]. Ḳaḥṭaba fell on the field of battle, but his son, al- Ḥasan b. Ḳaḥṭaba, took command, and following up the victory, took possession of the city of Kūfa. Ibrāhīm al-Imām had fallen into the hands of the Caliph Marwān in 130/748, and died shortly after. It was therefore his brother, Abu 'l-ʿAbbās [q.v.] who was hailed as Caliph by the Hāsh imī troops in Kūfa in 132/749, with the title al-Saffāḥ. The accession of the first ʿAbbāsid Caliph was accompanied by the first breach with the revolutionaries, when the missionary Abū Salama [q.v.] was put to death in obscure circumstances, allegedly for attempting to bring about the replacement of the ʿAbbāsids by the ʿAlids. Abū Muslim undertook his removal, perhaps in return for ʿAbbāsid acquiescence in the death of Sulaymān b. Kath īr. Meanwhile another ʿAbbāsid army, led by Abū ʿAwn, advanced from Nihāwand towards Mesopotamia. In 131/749, in the neighbourhood of Sh ahrazūr, east of the Lesser Zāb river, he inflicted a crushing defeat on an Umayyad army led by ʿAbdAllāh, the son of the caliphMarwān. Marwān now himself took the field, and marched across the Tigris towards the Greater Zāb river, to engage the army of Abū ʿAwn. The latter had meanwhile handed over his command to ʿAbdAllāh, the uncle of al-Saffāḥ, who had arrived from Kūfa with considerable reinforcements. The battle of the Greater Zāb, in 132/750, sealed the fate of the Umayyad Caliphate. The defeated Mar-¶ wān fled to Syria, where he tried in vain to organize further resistance. The victorious ʿAbbāsid troops advanced through Ḥarrān, the residence of Marwān, into Syria, occupied Damascus, and then pursued Marwān into Egypt, where he was killed and his head sent to al-Saffāḥ in Kūfa. The authority of the new ʿAbbāsidcaliph was now established all over the Middle East. Much has been written about the historical significance of the ʿAbbāsid revolution, which historians have rightly seen to be something more than a mere change of dynasty. Many nineteenth century orientalists, unduly influenced by the racial theories of Gobineau and others, saw in the struggle a conflict between the Aryanism of Iran and the Semitism of Arabia, ending in a victory for the Persians over the Arabs, the destruction of what Wellhausen called the ―Arab Kingdom‖ of the Umayyads, and the establishment of a new Iranian Empire under a cloak of Persianized Islam. There is at first sight much to support this view: the undoubted role of the Persians in the revolution itself, the prominent place of Persian ministers and courtiers in the new regime, the strong Persian elements in ʿAbbāsid government and culture. It is not surprising to find some statements to the same effect in the Arabic sources (Cf. al-Masʿūdī,Murūdj , viii, 292; al-Ḏjāḥiẓ, al-Bayān wa 'l-Tabyīn, iii, 181 and 206; etc.). More recent writers have however made important modifications in the theories both of Persian victory and of Arab defeat. Sh ī ʿism, for long regarded as an expression of the ―Iranian national consciousness‖, was of Arab origin, and had its main centre among the mixed Arab, Aramaean and Persian population of southern ʿIrāḳ. It was taken to Persia by Arabs, and remained strongest in areas of Arab settlement like Ḳumm. The revolt of Abū Muslim was directed against Umayyad and Syrian rather than Arab rule as such, and won the support of many Arabs, especially among the Yemenites. There were many Arabs even among its leaders, including the redoubtable general Ḳaḥṭaba. Though racial antagonisms no doubt played their part in the movement, and though Persians were prominent among the victors, they nevertheless served an Arab dynasty, and, as the fate of Abū Muslim, Abū Salama and the Barmakids shows, received short shrift if they fell foul of their masters. Many high offices under the state were at first reserved to Arabs, Arabic was still the sole official language, Arabian land remained fiscally privileged, and the doctrine of

30

Arab superiority remained strong enough, on the one hand, to induce Persians to provide themselves with fabricated Arab pedigrees, on the other to provoke the nationalist reaction of the Sh u ʿūbiyya [q.v.]. What the Arabs had lost was the exclusive right to the fruits of power. Persians as well as Arabs came to the ʿAbbāsid court, and the favour of the ruler, often expressed in the form of ―adoption‖ into the Royal household, rather than pure Arab descent, came to be the passport to power and prestige. If a term must be set to the Arab Kingdom, it must be sought in the gradual cessation of the allowances and pensions formerly paid as of right to the Arab warriors and their families, and in the rise to power of the Turkish guards from the time of al-Muʿtaṣim. The real significance of the ʿAbbāsid victory must be sought in the facts of the change that followed it, rather than in dubiously documented hypotheses on the movement that produced it. The first and most obvious change was the transfer of the centre of gravity from Syria to ʿIrāḳ, the traditional centre¶ of the great cosmopolitan Empires of the ancient Middle East, and of the civilisation to which Toynbee has given the name ―Syriac‖. The first ʿAbbāsid caliphal-Saffāḥ set up his capital in the small town of Hāsh imiyya, which he built on the east bank of the Euphrates near Kūfa. Later he transferred the capital to al-Anbār. It was his brother and successor, Manṣūr, in many ways the real founder of the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate, who established the permanent capital of the Empire in a new city on the west bank of the Tigris, near the ruins of Ctesiphon and at the intersection of several trade-routes. Its official name was Madīnatal-Salām, but it is usually known by the name of the small town that previously occupied the site— Bagh dād. From this city or its neighbourhood the ʿAbbāsid dynasty first ruled, and later reigned, as heads of the greater part of the Islamic world for five centuries. The period of their sovereignty, covering the great epoch of classical Islamic civilisation, may be conveniently considered in two parts. The first, from 132/750 to 334/945, saw the gradual decline of the authority of the caliphs and the rise of military leaders ruling through their troops. During the second, from ca. 334/945 to 656/1258, the caliphs, with one exception, retained a purely nominal suzerainty, while real power, even in Bagh dād itself, was exercised by dynasties of secular sovereigns. The main events of these two periods will be treated under the names of the various caliphs, dynasties, places, etc. Here only the broad outline of events will be given, and an attempt made to describe the main characteristics of each period.

^ 132/750—334/945 The ʿAbbāsid Caliphate in the days following its establishment must have seemed very insecure to contemporary eyes. Rebels rose against it on every side and for a long time every new caliph had to face risings in and around even the metropolitan province of ʿIrāḳ. In Syria, Arab supporters of the deposed Umayyads gave trouble, and found encouragement in the growing legend of the Sufyānī, a messianic figure of the house of Umayya who competed with the ʿAlid pretenders for the support of the discontented. The ʿAlids themselves, temporarily disorganised by the frustration of their hopes, and kept under close surveillance, were for a time in eclipse, but soon reappeared as the most dangerous and determined opponents of ʿAbbāsid rule. Even the Ḵhawārid j remained an active, if minor, opposition force. Nor were the ostensible supporters of the dynasty wholly reliable. In the prevailing atmosphere of mistrust, only members of the ʿAbbāsid family were appointed to the highest positions—but when Abu 'l-ʿAbbās al-Saffāḥ died and his brother Abū Ḏja ʿfar succeeded as Caliph with the title Manṣūr, their uncle, ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAlī, commanding the troops and raiders on the Byzantine frontier, revolted and proclaimed himself caliph, and this serious threat was averted thanks in the main to Abū Muslim. There remained the problem of Abū Muslim himself and the Hāsh imiyya. The ʿAbbāsids, like others before and after them who had come to power on the crest of a revolutionary movement, soon found themselves faced with a

31 conflict between the tenets and objectives of the movement on the one hand and the needs of government and Empire on the other. The ʿAbbāsids chose continuity and orthodoxy, and had to face the angry disappointment of some of their followers. Abū¶ Salama had already been destroyed. Abū Muslim himself was put to death as soon as Manṣūrfelt strong enough to dispense with his uncomfortable presence. These steps, and the suppression of the more consistent wing of the Rāwandiyya [q.v.], alienated the extremist following of the ʿAbbāsids, some of whom found an outlet in a series of religio-political revolts in Irān, while others later joined the ranks of the Ismāʿīlīs, the extremist wing of the FāṭimidSh ī ʿa that grew up in the course of the 2nd/8th and 3rd/9th centuries. At the same time, however, the changes reassured the orthodox, thus helping Manṣūr to meet the dangers of rebellion and foreign war, and during his long and brilliant reign, to lay the foundations of ʿAbbāsid government. In this task, and especially in the elaboration of the centralised administrative structure, Manṣūr was ably seconded by a family that was to play a vital role during the first half century of ʿAbbāsid rule. The Barmakids [q.v.] are usually described as Persians, but they were of a very different kind from the Ḵhurāsānian rebels who followed Abū Muslim. Their religion before conversion to Islam was neither Zoroastrianism nor any of its heresies, but Buddhism, and they belonged to the aristocratic, landowning priesthood of the Central Asian city of Balkh , an ancient capital whose imperial and commercial traditions provided a fund of experience to the ruling class of its citizens. It was after the foundation of Bagh dād that Ḵhālid al-Barmakī appeared as the righthand man of Manṣūr, and thereafter he and his descendants developed and directed the administration of the Empire, until the dramatic and still unexplained fall of the Barmakids from power under Hārūn al-Rash īd in 187/803. With the transfer of the centre of the Empire to the East, the destruction of the Arab aristocratic monopoly of high office, and the firm establishment in power of the Barmakids, Persian influences became stronger and stronger. Sasanid Persian models were followed in the court and the government, and Persians began to play an increasingly important part in both political and cultural life. This process of Persianisation continued during the reigns of Mahdī and al-Hādī; the prejudice against the employment of mawālī in high places gradually disappeared. To replace the weakening bond of Arab nationality the caliphs laid increased stress on Islamic orthodoxy and conformity, trying to weld their cosmopolitan Empire into a unity based on a common faith and a common way of life. Al-Manṣūr's renunciation of the heterodox origins of the ʿAbbāsid movement was followed under his successors by a deliberate policy of wooing the orthodox theologians and makers of opinion, and laying a greater stress on the religious element in the nature of the authority exercised by the caliphs. This policy, when contrasted with the dissolute lives led by many of the caliphs and their courtiers, often led to charges of hypocrisy, but was in the main successful in achieving its object. Mecca and Medina were rebuilt, the pilgrimage from ʿIrāḳ organised on a regular basis, and orthodoxy reinforced by an inquisitorial persecution of the various heretical movements and of Manichaeism, which at this time became prominent, under the name of Zandaḳa, as a revolutionary movement of the poorer classes (see ZINDĪḳ). For a time an attempt was made to impose the Muʿtazilī doctrine, which, if H. S. Nyberg's attractive hypothesis is correct (see EI1MUʿTAZILA), was an official ʿAbbāsid attempt at a compromise with the Sh ī ʿa. From the¶ time of al-Mutawakkil this attempt was abandoned, and thereafter the ʿAbbāsids adhered, formally at least, to the most rigid orthodoxy. The reign of Hārūn al-Rash īd is generally regarded as the apogee of ʿAbbāsid power, but it is at this time that the first portents of decline are seen. In Persia, the series of religious revolts that had followed the martyrdom of Abū Muslim became ever more threatening, and challenged ʿAbbāsid authority in the Caspian provinces as well as in Ḵhurāsān. In the west, ʿAbbāsid authority disappeared almost completely. Spain had rejected the ʿAbbāsids and become independent under an Umayyad prince as far back as 138/756. After the death of Yazīd b. Ḥātim, the last effective ʿAbbāsid governor of North Africa, in 170/787, independent dynasties arose, first in Morocco and then in Tunisia, and the authority of Bagh dād was never again asserted west of Egypt. TheAgh labids of Tunisia, exercising

32 hereditary and independent rule under the nominal suzerainty of the caliph, set the pattern for a whole series of subsequent local hereditary governorships, whose encroachments eventually reduced the effective sovereignty of the Caliphate to central and southern ʿIrāḳ. Another danger-sign showed the weakness of the defences of the Empire. By ʿAbbāsid times the frontiers of Islam were more or less stabilised. The only foreignwars of any importance were with the Byzantines, and even these seem to have been of more show than effect. The inconclusive campaigns of Hārūn were the last major offensives launched against Byzantium by the Caliphate. Thereafter Islam was on the defensive. Byzantine armies sought out weak points in Syria and Mesopotamia, while Ḵhazar invaders entered Islamic territory in the Caucasus and Armenia. Perhaps the most serious factor of weakness was the obscure internal convulsion that culminated in the degradation of the Barmakids and the assumption by Hārūn of the reins of power in his own not too competent hands. This step seems to have shaken the alliance with the Persian aristocratic wing of the movement that had brought them to power, which the early ʿAbbāsids had maintained long after shedding the more extremist elements. After Hārūn's death, smouldering conflicts burst into civil war between his sons Amīn and al- Maʾmūn. Al-Amīn's strength lay mainly in the capital and in ʿIrāḳ, al-Maʾmūn's in Persia, and the civil war has been interpreted as a national conflict between Arabs and Persians, ending in a victory for the latter. The same objections can be raised to this explanation as to the corresponding theory concerning the ʿAbbāsid revolution itself. The civil war was more probably a continuation of the social struggles of the immediately preceding period, complicated by a regional rather than national conflict between Persia and ʿIrāḳ. Al-Maʾmūn, relying on eastern support, for a while projected the transfer of the capital from Bagh dād to Marw, but some time after his victory wisely decided to return to the Imperial city. Thereafter Persian aristocratic and regional aspirations found an outlet in local dynasties. In 205/820 Ṭāhir, the Persian general of al-Maʾmūn, made himself virtually independent in Ḵhurāsān, and founded a dynasty. His example was followed by others, who, while for the most part still recognizing the suzerainty of the caliphs, deprived them of all effective authority in most of Persia. While the power of the caliphs in the provinces was gradually being reduced to the granting of diplomas of investiture to the de facto rulers, their¶authority even in ʿIrāḳ itself was dwindling. A spendthrift court and a inflated bureaucracy produced chronic financial disorder, aggravated by the loss of provincial revenues and, subsequently, by the exhaustion or loss to invaders of gold and silver mines. The caliphs found a remedy in the farming out of state revenues, eventually with the local governors as tax-farmers. These farmer-governors soon became the real rulers of the Empire, the more so when tax-farms and governorships were held by army commanders, who alone had the force to impose obedience. From the time of al-Muʿtaṣim and al-Wāth iḳ, the caliphs became the puppets of their own generals, who were often able to appoint and depose them at will. Al-Muʿtaṣim is usually credited with the introduction of the practice of using Turks from Central Asia as soldiers and officers, and from his time the dominant military caste became mainly Turkish. In 221/836 he built a new residence at Sāmarrā, some 60 miles north of Bagh dād. Sāmarrā remained the Imperial residence until 279/892, when al-Muʿtamid returned to Bagh dād . Its foundation illustrates the growing gulf between the caliph and his praetorians on the one hand and the people of Bagh dād on the other. Its art and architecture illustrate the emergence of a new ruling caste with different tastes and traditions. Under al-Wāth iḳ the power of the Turks continued to grow. A serious attempt to reassert the supremacy of the Caliphate was made by his successor al-Mutawakkil, who tried to break the power of the Turkish guards and to rally support against them among the theologians and the civil population, whose orthodox fanaticism he sought to placate by renouncing and suppressing the Muʿtazilī doctrines of his predecessors and enforcing the regulations against the Christians and Jews. The attempt ended in failure. The murder of al-Mutawakkil in 247/861 was followed by a period of anarchy. During an interval of nine years four caliphs succeeded one another, but all were helpless in the hands of the Turkish guards, whose control of the court and the capital grew firmer, while the provinces relapsed into anarchy or, at best, autonomy. In Southern ʿIrāḳ a

33 revolt broke out among the negro slaves, known as Zandj [q.v.], who worked on the salt marshes near Baṣra. This rapidly developed into a major threat to the Empire. The Zandj leader, who displayed brilliant generalship, defeated several imperial armies, and was able to establish effective control over much of Southern ʿIrāḳ and South West Persia. The lines of communication linking Bagh dād with Baṣra, and therefore with the Persian Gulf and the trade route to the East, were cut, and by 264/877 Zandj parties were raiding within 17 miles of Bagh dād itself. But meanwhile a period of greater stability had begun in the capital. The caliphal-Muʿtamid, who succeeded in 256/870, was not a very effective ruler, but his brother al-Muwaffaḳ soon became the real master of the capital, and during the twenty years of his rule did much to restore the failing strength of the house of ʿAbbās. His first task was to restore order and stability in Bagh dād itself, then to tackle the problems presented by the Zandj and by the encroachments of provincial leaders, especially the Ṣaffārids in Persia and the Ṭulūnids in Egypt and Syria. By 269/882 he had expelled the Zandj from all their conquests, and in 270/883 finally crushed them. Though failing to destroy the Ṣaffārids and Ṭulūnids, he did succeed in checking their ambitions, and facilitated the task of his successors. On the¶ death of al-Muwaffaḳ in 278/891, he was succeeded as real ruler by his son al-Muʿtaḍid, who became caliph on the death of al-Muʿtamid in the following year. Al- Muʿtaḍid and his successor al-Muktafī were both able and energetic rulers. In Persia and Egypt the authority of theCaliphate was for a time reasserted, leaving the governmentfree to deal with the menace of Sh ī ʿism, now active again in a militant and extreme form. After the rise of the ʿAbbāsids and the consequent disappearance of the Ḥanafī line of pretenders, it was the Fāṭimid line of Imāms who commanded the support of most of the Sh ī ʿa. After the death of Ḏja ʿfar al-Ṣādiḳ in 148/765, these split into two groups, one of which, known as Ismāʿīlī, inherited many of the functions, doctrines and followers of the vanished Ḥanafiyya. The transformation of the Caliphate in the 8th and 9th centuries from an agrarian, military state to a cosmopolitan Empire with an intensive commercial and industrial life, the growth of large cities and the concentration of capital and labour, subjected the loose social structure of the Empire to grave strain, and engendered widespread discontent. The rapid growth of the intellectual life of Islam, and the clash of cultures and ideas resulting from outside influence and internal development, again helped to prepare the way for the spread of heretical movements which, in a theocratic society, were the only possible expression of moral or material dissent from the existing order. The endemic disorders and upheavals of the late 9th and early 10th centuries brought these strains to breaking point, and the caliphs were called upon to deal with a series of challenges ranging in form from the revolutionary violence of the Ḳarmaṭians [q.v.] in Baḥrayn, Syria-Mesopotamia and Southern Arabia, to the more subtle and ultimately more effective criticism of peaceful moralists and mystics in Bagh dād itself. Al- Muʿtaḍid died after a defeat at the hand of the Ḳarmaṭians, but his successor al-Muktafī managed to crush the Ḳarmaṭian revolt in Syria and Mesopotamia, and, at the time of his death in 295/908, was leading a successful counter-attack against the Byzantines, who had sought to exploit the anarchy of the Muslim Empire. The Sh ī ʿite danger was however far from ended. After a brief struggle for power, al-Muktafī was succeeded by his brother al-Muḳtadir, still a boy of 13. During his minority, and the long and ineffective reign that followed it, the destructive tendencies halted by the regent al-Muwaffaḳ and his two successors reappeared. The Ḳarmaṭians resumed their activities, and from their bases in Baḥrayn threatened the life- lines of the Caliphate, while in the west another wing of the Ismāʿīlī movement established a Fāṭimid anti-Caliphate in Tunisia. In North Syria the beduin Ḥamdānid dynasty established itself, while in Persia another Sh ī ʿite family, the Būyids, began to build a new dynasty that soon threatened even ʿIrāḳ. In the capital, growing disorder and confusion culminated in the death of the caliph, while fighting his general Muʾnis. Under his successors al-Ḳāhir and al- Rāḍī, the decay of the authority of the Caliphate was completed. The event that is usually taken to symbolise this process was the grant to the governor of ʿIrāḳ, Ibn Rāʾiḳ, of the title amīr al-umarāʾ—Commander of Commanders. This title, apparently intended to assert the primacy of the military commander of Bagh dād over his colleagues elsewhere, served at the same time to give formal recognition to the existence of a supreme temporal authority,

34 exercising effective political and mili-¶ tary power, and leaving the caliph only as formal head of the state and the faith and representative of the religious unity of Islam. In 334/945 came the ultimate degradation, when the Būyid Amīr Muʿizz al-Dawla entered Bagh dād, and the title of amīr al-umarāʾ, and with it the effective control of the city of the caliphs, passed into the hands of a Sh ī ʿite dynast. Almost two centuries had passed between the enthronement of al-Saffāḥ and the arrival of Muʿizz al-Dawla. Though most of the period still awaits adequate investigation, certain broad lines of development can be discerned. In government, the early ʿAbbāsid caliphs continued along the lines of the late Umayyads, with far less break in continuity than was at one time believed. Certain changes, begun under the preceding dynasty, continued at an accelerated pace. From an Arab super-sh ayk h governing by the intermittent consent of the Arab aristocracy, the caliph became an autocrat, claiming a divine origin for his authority, resting it on his armed forces, and exercising it through a vast and growing bureaucratic organisation. Stronger in this respect than the Umayyads, the ʿAbbāsids were nevertheless weaker than the old oriental despots, in that they lacked the support of an established feudal caste and a priestly hierarchy, and were themselves theoretically subject to the Holy Law, of the authority of which their office was the supreme embodiment. With the transfer of the capital to the East and the entry of increasing numbers of Persians into the service of the caliphs, Persian influences grew in the court and the administration, which was organised in a series of dīwāns [q.v.] or ministries, under the supreme control of the wazīr [q.v.]. Provincial government was carried on jointly by the amīr [q.v.] (Governor) and ʿāmil [q.v.] (financial administrator), under the general surveillance of the capital, exercised through the agents of the ṣāḥibal-barīd (Director of Posts and Intelligence) (see BARĪD). In the army the Arab element gradually lost its importance, and the pensions formerly paid to Arabs were discontinued except for serving soldiers. The core of the early ʿAbbāsid army consisted of the Ḵhurāsānīs, a term that is to be understood in a regional rather than national sense, and covering both Arabs and Persians from Ḵhur āsān. In time these gave way to the Turkish slave troops, who from the time of al-Muʿtaṣim onwards became the main element in the army and, in consequence, the main source of political authority for the various amīrs and commanders whose power replaced that of the caliphs. The ʿAbbāsids came to power through a religious movement, and sought in religion the basis of unity and authority in the Empire they ruled. While broadly successful in this purpose, they had throughout to contend with a series of religious opposition movements, and with the mistrust or reserve of the more conscientious elements among the Sunnī religious leaders. The political breakdown of the 9th and 10th centuries, resulting in the fragmentation of power in the Empire as a whole and the decline and eventual collapse of authority in the capital, had no immediate ill-effects on the economic and cultural life of the Caliphate. The ʿAbbāsid accession had been followed by a great economic revival, based on the exploitation of the resources of the Empire through industry and trade, and the development of a vast network of trade relations both within the Empire and with the world outside. These changes brought¶ important social consequences. The Arab warrior caste was deposed, and replaced by a ruling class of landowners and bureaucrats, professional soldiers and literati, merchants and men of learning. The Islamic town was transformed from a garrison city to a market and exchange, and in time to the centre of a flourishing and diversified urban culture. The literature, art, theology, philosophy and science of the period is examined elsewhere (in individual articles). Here it need only be remarked that this was the classic age of Islam, when a new, rich and original civilisation, born of the confluence of many races and traditions, came to maturity.

^ 334/945—656/1258 During the long period from the Būyid occupation of Bāgh dād to the conquest of the city by the Mongols, the Caliphate became a purely titular institution, representing the headship of

35

Sunnī Islam, and acting as legitimating authority for the numerous secular rulers who exercised effective sovereignty, both in the provinces and in the capital. The caliphs themselves, except for a brief revival towards the end, were at the mercy of the secular rulers, who appointed and deposed them at will, and only one of them, al-Nāṣir, has left any mark on history. The appointment of Ibn Rāʾiḳ as amīr al-umarāʾ was the first of a long series, and marked the formal recognition of the office of secular sovereign. The main history of the period will be found in the articles on the various dynasties that held it. In the second quarter of the 10th century a number of princes of the Sh ī ʿite Persian house of Būya (or Buwayh), originating in the highlands of Daylam, extended their rule over most of western Persia, and forced the caliphs to grant them legal recognition. In 334/945 the Būyid prince Muʿizz al-Dawla entered Bagh dād, and wrung from the caliph al-Mustakfī the title of amīr al-umarāʾ. For over a century the caliphs were compelled to submit to the final humiliation of accepting these Sh ī ʿite mayors of the palace as absolute masters. Despite their Sh ī ʿism, the Būyids made no attempt to install an ʿAlid caliph—the twelfth Imām of the Ith nā - ʿash arī Sh ī ʿa had disappeared some 70 years earlier—but gave outward homage to the ʿAbbāsids, retaining them as an orthodox cover for their own power and an instrument of their policy in the Sunnī world. It was from the extremist Sh ī ʿa that the real threat to the ʿAbbāsids came. In 356/969 the Ismāʿīlī Fāṭimids from Tunisia conquered Egypt, and were soon able to extend their power into Syria and Arabia. For the first time a powerful independent dynasty ruled in the Middle East that did not recognize even the titular authority of the ʿAbbāsids, but on the contrary founded a Caliphate of their own, challenging the ʿAbbāsids for the headship of the whole Islamic world. The political and military power of the Fāṭimids was supported by an elaborate religious organisation, commanding a multitude of agents, propagandists and sympathisers in the ʿAbbāsid dominions, and also by a skilful economic policy aimed at diverting the Eastern trade from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea, and thus at the same time strengthening Egypt and weakening ʿIrāḳ. (See B. Lewis, The Fatimids and the Route to India, Istanbul Iktisat Fak. Mecm., 1950, 355-60). It is indeed arguable that the diversion of Sh ī ʿite energies due to the predominance of the Būyids in the East was one of the factors that saved the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate from extinction at this time (see H. A. R.¶ Gibb, The Caliphate and the Arab States, in History of the Crusades, Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, vol. i.). In time the Būyid Empire broke up into a number of smaller states, under Būyid and other rulers, while in Persia the power of a new dynasty, the Seldj uḳs, was steadily growing. By the middle of the 11th century Būyid power was at an end, and a Turkish general called al- Basāsīrī was able to occupy Bagh dād and proclaim the kh uṭba in the name of the Fāṭimidcaliph. This brief episode was the high water mark of Fāṭimid power. In 447/1055 the Seldj uḳ Ṭugh r l -beg entered Bagh dād, and had himself proclaimed as Sulṭān. This title is often attributed by the chroniclers to earlier rulers who exercised a sovereignty not greatly different from that of the Seldj uḳs. The Seldj uḳ sulṭāns of Bagh dād appear however to be the first to have used the title officially and inscribed it on their coins. In effect the Seldj uḳ Great Sultanate, which lasted about a century, was the logical development of the office of amīr al- umarāʾ, and the title has remained in use ever since for the holder of supreme secular power. The Seldj uḳs brought several important changes. Unlike their predecessors they wereTurks and Sunnīs, and with their advent the power of the Turks, that had been growing intermittently since the time of al-Muʿtaṣim, was finally established. By now the Turks in the Middle East were no longer all slave or freed soldiers, imported from Central Asia; whole clans of free, nomadic Turks began to migrate westwards, playing an increasingly important role and in time changing the ethnic configuration of the Middle East. The replacement of a Sh ī ʿī by a Sunnī ruler increased the prestige though not the power of the caliphs, as did also the extension of the rule of the central government, and therefore of the nominal sovereignty of the caliphs, over many hitherto independent lands. The period of the Seldj uḳs, and of the Seldj uḳid and Atābeg dynasties that followed the break-up of the Great Sultanate, brought two major changes. One was the regularisation of the economic and social changes that had

36 been taking place in the preceding period, and the elaboration of a new social and fiscal order of quasi-feudal character; the other was the campaign against the Sh ī ʿite menace, both on the political and military level through the suppression of Sh ī ʿite dynasties and movements, and on the intellectual level through the creation of a network of madrasas [q.v.] to serve as centres for the formulation and defence of Sunnī orthodoxy against the Sh ī ʿite propagandists. Both changes encountered a vigorous reaction in the form of the Assassins (see NIZĀRĪS), an active and energetic revolutionary movement that rose from the ruins of the Fāṭimiddaʿwa and offered a bitter and sustained challenge to Seldj uḳ rule and Sunnī orthodoxy. The Assassins ultimately failed, and thereafter Sh ī ʿism was never again a major political factor until the rise of the Ṣafawids. After the break-up of the Great Sultanate, ʿIrāḳ fell under the domination of a local dynasty of Seldj uḳ princes, the last of whom was Ṭugh r l II (573-590/1177-1194). The collapse of his power and the absence of any alternative enabled the ʿAbbāsid caliphal-Nāṣir to make a final attempt to restore the lost authority of the Caliphate. The moment was favourable—of the two major dynasties of the Middle East, the Ayyūbids in Egypt and Syria were preoccupied with the struggle against the Crusaders, the Ḵh wārizm-sh āh in the East with his wars against other Turkish dynasties and then against the Mongols. In this power vacuum, al-Nāṣir attempted¶ to create a kind of State of the Church for the Caliphate in Bagh dād and ʿIrāḳ, and to buttress his authority by seeking popular support through the futuwwa [q.v.] organisations and making adroit use of pro-ʿAlid sentiment. It was however only the diversion of their energies to meet the Mongol threat in the East that saved him from destruction by the Ḵh wārizm-sh āhs. Al-Nāṣir's successors were weak and incompetent, and when the Mongol general Hūlākū, having already conquered Persia, appeared before Bagh dād in 656/1258, the last caliph al-Mustaʿṣim was unable to offer any serious resistance. The Mongol conquest of Bagh dād and the destruction of the Caliphate are usually described as a major catastrophe in the history of Islam. Certainly they mark the end of an epoch—not only in the outward forms of government and sovereignty, but in Islamic civilisation itself, which after the transformation wrought by the great wave of Tatar invasion flows in new channels, different from those of the preceding centuries. But the immediate moral effects of the destruction of the Caliphate have been overrated. The Caliphate had long ceased to exist as an effective institution, and the Mongols did little more than lay the ghost of something that was already dead. To the real organs of temporal power the Mongol invasions made little difference, the only change being that the Sultanate now began to acquire de jure recognition, and sultans began to arrogate to themselves titles and prerogatives formerly reserved to the caliphs. The ʿAbbāsid Caliphs of Egypt The establishment by Baybars of an ʿAbbāsid shadow-Caliphate in Cairo in 659/1261 has been explained by R. Hartmann as follows: the disappearance of the Caliphate in Baghdad created a political vacuum, affecting not so much the theologians as the secular rulers, who still felt the need for a legitimating authority. Abū Numayy, the Sh arīf of Mecca, gave formal recognition to the Ḥafṣid ruler of TunisiaAbūʿAbdAllāh, who had assumed the title of caliph, with the regnal name of al-Mustanṣir, in 650/1253. This assumption, made before the fall of Bagh dād, was not in the Sunnī juristic sense of the word caliph, but in that of North Africa, con- ¶ ditioned by Almohad claims and practices. It acquired a new value from Abū Numayy's recognition, confirmed by Mamlūk action in sending a report on the victory of ʿAyn Ḏjālūt to AbūʿAbdAllāh and addressing him as amīr al-muʾminīn—Commander of the Faithful. Baybars, stronger than his predecessor, preferred not to give this recognition to a powerful and possibly dangerous neighbour, and instead solved the problems of legitimacy and continuity by installing an ʿAbbāsid refugee as caliph in Cairo, with the same regnal name of al- Mustanṣir.

37

For the next two and a half centuries a line of ʿAbbāsids succeeded one another as nominal caliphs under the rule of the Mamlūk Sultans in Cairo. Except for a brief interval in 815/1412, when the caliph al-Mustaʿīn became a stop-gap ruler for six months in the course of a feud between rival claimants to the Sultanate, the caliphs in Cairo were completely helpless and powerless, being in effect little more than minor court pensioners with purely ceremonial duties to perform on the accession of a new sultan. Attempts by the Mamlūk sultans to use their ʿAbbāsid protegés as a means of gaining recognition in other Muslim countries met with some limited success, notably in India and in the Ottoman Empire where Bāyezīd I applied to the Cairocaliph in 1394 for a diploma granting him the title of sulṭān. But the Ottoman view of the Cairo Caliphate is perhaps best expressed by the 15th-century historian Yaz d j - ogh lu ʿAlī, who in describing the role of the patriarch at the Byzantine court calls him ―the caliph of the Christians‖—a comparison that is far nearer the truth than the more common one between the caliph and the Pope (cf. P. Wittek, in BSOS, 1952, 649 f.). In 1517 the last caliph al-Mutawakkil was deposed by Selīm I, the Ottoman conquerer of Syria and Egypt, and the ʿAbbāsid shadow-Caliphate abolished. A story that al-Mutawakkil transferred his title to Selīm, and through him, to the Ottoman house, was first published by Mouradgea d'Ohsson in 1788 (Tableau général de l'Empire Ottoman, i, 269-70), and thereafter won wide acceptance. Barthold however showed this story to be completely without foundation, and it is now generally rejected by scholars

[see KH ALĪFA ].

(Table)¶ (genealogical table of the ʿabbāsid caliphs

38 of bagh dād) (genealogical table of the ʿabbāsid caliphs in egypt (after Ḵhalīl Edhem, Düwel-i islāmīye, p.

21))¶ (ʿabbāsid caliphs in egypt) The sources for the history of the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate are too numerous for anything more than a general statement to be possible. A fuller discussion of the literature will be found in J. Sauvaget, Introduction a l'histoire du monde musulman, Paris 1943, 126 ff., and of the historians in D. S. Margoliouth, Lectures on Arabic Historians, Calcutta 1930 (cf. TAʾRĪKH ). The first group to be considered are the chroniclers. While a large proportion of these have been published, especially for the earlier period, surprisingly little use has been made of them, and most of the ʿAbbāsid period still awaits its monographers. Still less attention has been paid to the adabliterature, perhaps the best expression of the outlook and attitude of the secular literate classes who administered the Empire, and a fruitful source of historical information. Travel and geography, poetry, theology and law all have an important contribution to make to historical knowledge, and except for the first two, have been little used. To the vast Muslimliterature may be added the smaller but still valuable literatures of the Christians and Jews, in Arabic, Syriac, Hebrew, and some other languages. Finally, there remains archeology. A useful summary and Bibliography of archeological work will be found in the above- mentioned book of Sauvaget. No general history of the ʿAbbāsids has been produced for many years, and the reader must still have recourse to early and out-of-date works like G. Weil,Geschichte der Chalifen 5 vols., Mannheim-Stuttgart 1846-62; idem, Geschichte der islamischen Vö1ker, Stuttgart 1866 (abridged English translation by S. Khuda Bukhsh, Calcutta 1914); A. Müller, Der Islam im Morgen- und Abendland, 2 vols. Berlin 1885-7; W. Muir, The Caliphate, its Rise Decline and Fall, revised by T. H. Weir, Edinburgh 1915 and 1924. More recent but more summary treatments are given by P. K. Hitti, History of the Arabs, London 1937 and later editions; C. Brockelmann, Geschichte der

39

islamischen Völker und Staaten, Munich-Berlin 1939 (English and French translations); Gaudefroy-Demombynes and Platonov, Le monde musulman et byzantin jusqu'aux Croisades, Paris 1931; Ch. Diehl and G. Marçais, Le monde oriental de 395 a 1081, Paris 1936. Many interesting and provocative ideas on the nature of the ʿAbbāsid state and society¶ will be found in A. J. Toynbee, A study of history, London 1934 ff. Only the accession and the first few reigns have been monographed in any detail. On the ʿAbbāsid revolution Van Vloten and Wellhausen are mentioned in the article. Th. Nöldeke's Orientalische Skizzen Berlin 1892 (English translation by J. S. Black, London 1892), includes studies on Manṣūr, the Zandj rising, and the Ṣaffārids. The most valuable work to date on the early ʿAbbāsid period will be found in the studies of F. Gabrieli (Amīn, al-Maʾmūn) and S. Moscati (Abū Muslim, Mahdī, al-Hādī), which, with other monographs, will be found listed under the appropriate articles. For two studies by S. Moscati on particular problems connected with the ʿAbbāsid victory see Il “Tradimento” di Wāsit, Muséon 1951, 177-86, and Le massacre des Umayyades, ArO 1951, 88-115. Reference may also be made to Nabia Abbott, Two queens of Baghdad, Chicago 1937, dealing with the mother and wife of Hārūn al-Rash īd and giving a description of some aspects of court life, and A. F. Rifāʿī, ʿAṣral-Maʾmūn, Cairo 1927. The period from 892 to 946 has been studied in great detail by H. Bowen, The life and times of ʿAlī ibnʿĪsā, Cambridge 1928. This must now be supplemented by an important additional source—the Akh bāral -Rāḍī wa l-Muttaḳī of al-Ṣūlī (ed. J. H. Dunne, Cairo 1935; annotated French translation by M. Canard, 2 vols. Algiers 1946-50). Two important works of a more general character deal with the middle period: A. Mez, Die Renaissance des Islams, Heidelberg 1922 (English translation by S. Khuda Bukhsh and D. S. Margoliouth, London 1938), and ʿAbdal-ʿAzīz al-Dūrī, Studies on the economic life of Mesopotamia in the 10th century, (in Arabic), Baghdad 1948. Reference may also be made to general works in Arabic by Aḥmad Amīn, ʿA. ʿA. Dūrī, ḤasanIbrāhīmḤasan and others. On the Cairo Caliphate see R. Hartmann, Zur Vorgeschichte des ʿAbbasidischen Schein-Chaliphates von Cairo, Abhandlungen der deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, Phil.-hist. Kl. 1947, nr. 9, Berlin 1950, and Annemarie Schimmel, Kalif und Kadi im spätmittelalterlichen Ägypten, WI, 1943, 3-27. (B. Lewis) [Print Version: Volume I, page 15, column 1] CITATION: Lewis, B. "ʿAbbāsids (Banu 'l-ʿAbbās)." Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Edited by: P. Bearman; , Th. Bianquis; , C.E. Bosworth; , E. van Donzel; and W.P. Heinrichs. Brill, 2011. Brill Online. K.U. Leuven - University Library. 17 February 2011

ʿAbbāsid Revolution ʿAbbāsid Revolution is the term used to describe the process that led to the fall of the Umayyads and the establishment of the ʿAbbāsid dynasty in the mid-second/eighth century.

^ The daʿwa Information about the origins and development of the ʿAbbāsid Revolution may be found in the usual corpus of classical Islamic historical texts, with the most important account still being that of al-Ṭabarī, although it can now be supplemented in important ways by texts that have been more recently edited and published, notably al-Balādhurī's Ansāb al-ashrāf (vol. 3, ed. ʿA. al-Dūrī, Beirut 1978) and, above all, the anonymous text known as the Akhbār al- ʿAbbās(ed. ʿA. al-Dūrī and ʿA. Muṭtallibī, Beirut 1971). These sources offer a wealth of information about the origins and course of the revolution, but they are also riddled with inconsistencies, contradictions, myths, and fragments of enigmatic propaganda written at

40 different times for different purposes with nuances of meaning and intent that are today elusive and difficult to interpret. A fundamental theme of the traditional accounts is that the overt and militant phase of the revolution was preceded by a covert period of proselytising and subversion known as the daʿwa and linked to a sectarian movement called the Hāshimiyya, a subsect of the Kaysāniyya. After the death of Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya in 81/700–1, some of his followers, breaking with more radical elements of the Kaysāniyya, recognised his son Abū Hāshim ʿAbdallāh as imām. Thus they became known as the Hāshimiyya. Abū Hāshim befriended, or was befriended by, Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. ʿAbdallāh b. al-ʿAbbās, the de facto head of the ʿAbbāsid family. As Abū Hāshim had no son of his own, he arranged to bequeath his position as imām and the Hāshimiyya organisation to Muḥammad b. ʿAlī. He and a core of key followers, who are identified in the Akhbār al-ʿAbbās (183, 191–2), made their way to al- Ḥumayma, an estate in al-Sharāt where the ʿAbbāsids were living in a kind of semi-exile, and Abū Hāshim died there c. 98/716. How much of this is literally true is difficult to say; the ʿAbbāsids apparently promoted the story at one point to bolster their claim as the intended beneficiaries of the revolution but then, after securing the caliphate, were embarrassed by it and tried, unsuccessfully, to modify the story and then to suppress it in favour of the claim that they had inherited a right to the caliphate from the Prophet Muḥammad himself. Ḥumayma, a site in Jordan currently in the process of archaeological excavation, supposedly served as the headquarters of the movement. It was remote enough to avoid scrutiny but close enough to an important caravan route to facilitate contact between the ʿAbbāsid leadership and the Hāshimiyya organisation; there are many reports of the members visiting Ḥumayma under the guise of commerce or pilgrimage to convey messages or bring financial offerings. The theatre for daʿwa activities continued to be Kufa, where the movement had originated, but that was too pro-ʿAlid and too closely watched by the Umayyads to be a successful recruiting ground; after some time perhaps thirty people had joined (Akhbār al-ʿAbbās, 194). According to a clearly legendary report (al-Ṭabarī, 2:1358), Muḥammad b. ʿAlī himself ordered the establishment of the daʿwa apparatus in Khurāsān in the appropriately symbolic year 100/718–19. More credible reports attribute the expansion of the daʿwa to the east to the vision and energy of Bukayr b. Māhān, a wealthy mawlā of Sīstānī origin, who emerged as the leader of the Kufan cell of the Hāshimiyya. He was eligible to be registered in the dīwān and had served with Yazīd b. Muhallab in Jurjān and had traveled extensively in the East. He is said to have recognised that the people in that area, especially the Persian population, were generally sympathetic to the family of the Prophet, and he is said to have won the allegiance of Sulaymān b. Kathīr, an Arab veteran living near Marw (Akhbār al-ʿAbbās, 198). Bukayr persuaded Muḥammad b. ʿAlī to conduct the daʿwa there, and a founding member of the Kufan organisation, Abū ʿIkrima Ziyād b. Dirham, a mawlā of Hamdān, was dispatched to oversee the mission. The date of this is uncertain but was likely about the time Bukayr became head of the Kufan cell (c. 105/723). From that beginning, the daʿwa gradually attracted members and established cells throughout most of Khurāsān. The orders given to Abū ʿIkrima are quoted in detail in the Akhbār al-ʿAbbās (202–4) and, even if the report is somewhat fabricated, are quite revealing of methods and ideas that recur throughout the traditional story of the daʿwa. One is the extensive use of taqiyya and kitmān: Abū ʿIkrima was to operate under the pseudonym of Abū Muḥammad and in the guise of a merchant; the name of the imām was to be kept concealed; preaching should only use the ambiguous slogan of al-Riḍā min āl Muḥammad; the actual goals of the movement should be revealed only to those who had shown they could be trusted absolutely. This emphasis on secrecy and ambiguity about the identity of the imām could have been ideological (in accordance with a doctrine of taqiyya), tactical (to guard against detection and arrest as well as to mislead potential recruits who had other candidates in mind), or strategic (to keep open the option of whom the da'wa would ultimately put in power). A second characteristic was the strict avoidance of any sign of overt political activity or violence (even while busily fanning the flames of sedition): one should not be so active as to draw the

41 attention of the authorities, there should be no appeal ―to draw a sword,‖ and there should be no association with known pro-ʿAlid militants. Finally, the daʿwa should be addressed not just to certain trusted Arab tribes but especially to the indigenous non-Arab population: ―Seek many of the Persians (al-aʿājim), for they are the people of our daʿwa and God will assist it through them.‖ It appears, however, that these directives were implemented imperfectly. Al-Ṭabarī (2:1501–2) reports that Abū ʿIkrima preached on behalf of the Banū al-ʿAbbās, distributed food and money to the populace, and allowed himself to become involved in a dispute with a propagandist from Abrashahr (Nīshāpūr) who supposedly argued for the superiority of the family of Abū Ṭālib over the Banū al-ʿAbbās. He attracted the attention of Umayyad agents, and he along with a collaborator was executed by the governor, Asad b. ʿAbdallāh, in 109/727– 28. Another of the missioners was exposed and executed in 113/731–32 (al-Ṭabarī, 2:1560). Virtually the entire top leadership of the daʿwa fell into the hands of Asad b. ʿAbdallāh in 117/735–36; one was badly beaten, but they were eventually released either because of their tribal connections or by posing as the victims of a vendetta by the Muḍar for having been outspoken in their opposition to Qutayba b. Muslim (al-Ṭabarī, 2:1587–88). One key question is whether the daʿwa apparatus in Khurāsān was actually the creation of the ʿAbbāsids and the Kufan Hāshimiyya or rather was an autonomous, if like-minded, organisation that was infiltrated and eventually hijacked by them. Another question is how much control the Kufan leadership or the ʿAbbāsids at Ḥumayma actually exercised over the movement and their erstwhile agents in Khurāsān. Both issues are apparent in reports about the first major crisis faced by the daʿwa with the appearance of the missioner ʿUmāra (or ʿAmmār) b. Yazīd, who called himself, or was called pejoratively, by the pseudonym Khidāsh. He is barely mentioned in most sources, probably because of later efforts to suppress the episode; there are two rather contradictory accounts of him. In one, it is implied that Khidāsh, supposedly a non-Arab Christian posing as a Muslim, wrested control of the movement from Kathīr b. Saʿd, the representative sent to replace Abū ʿIkrima after his execution, by virtue of his superior knowledge and debating skills (al-Ṭabarī, 2:1503; al-Balādhurī, Ansāb, 3:116–7; this would have been c. 111/729 by the estimate of Sharon, Black banners, 167). In the other, he is said to have been sent to Khurāsān in 118/736–37 by either Bukayr b. Māhān or Muḥammad b. ʿAlī himself, but that upon settling in Marw he began to preach extremist doctrines like those of the neo-Mazdakites (Khurramiyya)—apparently quite effectively since people, including some top daʿīs, flocked to him, listened, and obeyed (al-Ṭabarī, 2:1588; Ibn al- Athīr, Kāmil [Beirut], 5:196). These charges are generally considered to be slanders designed to discredit Khidāsh, whose real offense was preference for an ʿAlid imām. By most accounts, the Khidāsh problem was not solved by the ʿAbbāsids, but by Asad b. ʿAbdallāh, who arrested Khidāsh, tortured and mutilated him, and finally had him crucified at Āmul on the Oxus. All of this is supposed to have shocked Muḥammad b. ʿAlī, who cut off contact with the movement until 120/737–38. Then Sulaymān b. Kathīr emerged as the new leader of the daʿwa in Khurāsān, or a faction within it, and set off to restore relations with Muḥammad b. ʿAlī, who of course is said to have denounced Khidāsh and to have admonished his followers not to accept any representative or instruction opposed to the Qurʾān and the Sunna. Even then, when Muḥammad b. ʿAlī sent Bukayr b. Māhān on a return mission to Khurāsān there were members of the movement ―who did not believe him and mocked him‖ (al-Ṭabarī, 2:1640), and followers of Khidāsh, known as the Khālidiyya, were still active years later. All of this suggests very clearly that for much of its history, ʿAbbāsid direction of the movement was tenuous or nil; that the ʿAbbāsids actually had to compete for the allegiance of the movement, which was far from assured to them; and that the movement as a whole was stirring up and drawing on sentiments far removed from the official ideology of the daʿwa. It was probably after this episode that a more formal organisation was imposed on the movement, both to make it more effective and to maintain better control over its membership. The fullest description of this organisation is found in the Akhbār al-ʿAbbās (213– 23). There was a core leadership at Marw of twelve chiefs (nuqabāʾ), mentioned in many

42 sources, plus a group of fifty-eight missioners (daʿīs), thus making up the inner cadre of seventy members as required by Qurʾānic and prophetic precedent. There were forty daʿīs for Marw, seven for Abīward, six for Nasā, two for Balkh, and one each for Marw al-Rūdh, Khwārazm, and Āmul. Finally, there were thirty-six duʿāt al-duʿāt, whose function is not certain. The names of all these officials are listed in theAkhbār al-ʿAbbās, providing significant, but much debated, evidence regarding the geographic range and ethnic composition of the critical strata of thedaʿwa. In general, they suggest that the daʿwa was a broad-based and diverse movement and not the universal or exclusive property of any one ethnic or social group.

^ The revolt A critical point in the history of the daʿwa came in 125/743, a year marked by both the death of the imām Muḥammad b. ʿAlī and the revolt and execution of Yaḥyā b. Zayd in Khurāsān, and 126/744, with the outbreak of a virtual civil war among the factions of the Umayyad elite throughout the empire. The tragic death of Yaḥyā b. Zayd electrified public opinion in Khurāsān and stimulated anti-Umayyad sentiment and the desire for vengeance. Meanwhile, the struggle between the governor, Naṣr b. Sayyār; the leader of the old guard, al-Ḥārith b. Surayj; and their mutual nemesis, the interloper Judayʿ al-Kirmānī, paralysed the administration in Khurāsān. As the daʿwa unfolded against this background of increasing turmoil and violence, and conditions for revolution became ripe, the loyalty of the movement to the ʿAbbāsids was still far from automatic. After Muḥammad b. ʿAlī's death, Bukayr b. Māhān had to return to Khurāsān to solicit the support of the daʿwa leadership for Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad as the new imām. The return delegation to Ibrāhīm was clearly eager for action and chaffing at the passivity imposed on the movement by Muḥammad b. ʿAlī, but Ibrahim continued to urge caution and restraint. He did, however, authorise the display of the black banners that were to become the symbol of revolt (Akhbār al-ʿAbbās, 245). The delegation apparently did not return to Khurāsān until 127/744–45; that same year Bukayr died and leadership of the Kufan cell was assumed by Abū Salama Ḥafṣ b. Sulaymān. The transition in the history of the ʿAbbāsid Revolution from covert propaganda to armed revolt is marked above all by the appearance of a new, charismatic leader of the Khurāsānī daʿwa, Abū Muslim, one of the most mysterious figures in Islamic history. The much discussed problem of who he was and how he ascended to the position of ṣāḥib al-daʿwa is beyond any clearly historical resolution because of the myriad of conflicting reports to be found in the source material. It is unlikely that this anonymity was due, as is sometimes suggested, to either a desire to make an ideological statement or to the general policy of kitmān; as with his precursor Khidāsh, it is more probably the result of a deliberate effort to blot an accurate recollection of him from the historical record. In general, one set of traditions make him out to be a man of uncertain ethnic origin and lowly social background, usually a slave in the employ of a imprisoned saddler loyal to the ʿAbbāsid cause, who was plucked from obscurity and dispatched by the imām Ibrāhīm to direct the daʿwa at the most crucial phase of its development. Others intimate that he was instead a powerful local magnate who ―ruled the world justly when no one had ever heard of the sons of ʿAbbās b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib‖ (Tarjama-yi tafsīr-i Ṭabarī, ed. Ḥ Yaghmāʾī (Tehran1960–6), 1:23) and thus it should rather be said that he was the kingmaker who elevated the ʿAbbāsids from the obscurity of Ḥumayma. The former, of course, can be read as part of the ʿAbbāsid effort to show that they were in control of the daʿwa all along and that Abū Muslim was nothing more than a dispensable servant, while the latter mesh with what came to be a widespread resentment in the East of ʿAbbāsid perfidy and treachery symbolised above all in al-Manṣūr's murder of Abū Muslim. The dates given for Abū Muslim's appearance as a leader of the daʿwa in Khurāsān range from 127/744 to 129/747, and the uncertainty may arise from the extended negotiations this required among all the parties involved: Ibrāhīm, Abū Muslim, the Kufan cell, and the Khurāsānī leadership. It is also clear that there was strong resistance to Abū Muslim from the

43 older leadership, and Sulaymān b. Kathīr vehemently objected to the assumption of authority by ―this nameless one‖ (Akhbār al-ʿAbbās, 269) but to no avail. Abū Muslim's formidable political, diplomatic, and military skills and his shrewd ability to manipulate and profit from events in Khurāsān quickly became obvious. For one thing, it appears to be under his guidance that dissident elements from the army, in contrast to the merchants, artisans, and retired veterans of earlier periods, began to be integrated into the daʿwa. It can hardly be accidental that his emergence and the turn to militancy coincided with the death of al-Ḥārith b. Surayj (128/746), whose movement so strongly resembled that of the daʿwa and whose former adherents might be co-opted. Likewise, he seems to have had an ability as great as that of Khidāsh to attract a mass following and to bring not just mawālī but non-Arabs in general into the movement (Akhbār al-ʿAbbās, 280). In one day alone, he is supposed to have attracted followers from sixty villages (al-Ṭabarī, 2:1952, cf. 2:1965). Given the fortuitous circumstances that had developed, Abū Muslim pushed forward the planned date for the revolt from Muḥarram 130 (September 747) to Ramaḍān 129 (June 747). He also decided to authorise diversionary attacks in outlying areas but to focus the initial military effort on the capital, Marw. This was eminently sensible, since an uprising concentrated in a remote district would have created logistical problems and given Naṣr b. Sayyār time to rally a counter-offensive. As it was, Naṣr's efforts to build a coalition against Abū Muslim were derailed when, in the course of what were supposed to be negotiations for a reconciliation, Naṣr's forces attacked and murdered Judayʿ al-Kirmānī, driving his son and supporters to the side of Abū Muslim. With few allies and no hope of reinforcement, Naṣr's position was untenable. No later than Jumādā I 130/January 748, Abū Muslim was able to make a triumphal entry into Marw and take possession of the dār al-imāra. Naṣr managed to flee, with a revolutionary army under the command of Qaḥṭaba b. Shabīb al-Ṭā'ī in pursuit. From that point on, the history of the revolution becomes essentially the story, on the one hand, of Abū Muslim's establishment of a provisional government for the eastern provinces that had been assigned to him and, on the other, the operations of the revolutionary army to destroy what remained of Umayyad power and install a new caliph. In the first case, Abū Muslim proceeded with his usual ruthlessness and efficiency to liquidate all opposition, including former allies (such as ʿAlī b. Judayʿ), rivals in the daʿwa (notably Sulaymān b. Kathīr), other sectarian contenders for rule (ʿAbdallāh b. Muʿāwiya), and various troublesome new figures (such as Bihāfarīd). In the latter, the revolutionary army won repeated victories, taking Jurjān (Dhū l-Ḥijja 130/August 748) and Rayy (Ṣafar 131/October 748), smashing the army of Ibn Ḍubāra at Jābaliq (Rajab 131/March 749), and occupying Kufa (Muḥarram 132/August 749). The final and essential step in the course of the revolution, the installation of an ʿAbbāsid as caliph, is perhaps the most curious and puzzling episode in the entire drama. Despite all the secrecy shrouding the identity of the imām, known only to the innermost circles of the daʿwa, somehow Naṣr b. Sayyār is supposed to have found out that Abū Muslim was working on behalf of Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad and to have notified the Umayyad authorities, who promptly arrested him, but not the other members of his family, at Ḥumayma. Ibrāhīm died or was killed in prison, and Qaḥṭaba, the officer in the army who should have known the most about the intentions of the daʿwa, drowned while crossing the Euphrates before reaching Kufa. The victorious army was aware that Abū Salama was the leader of the daʿwa in Kufa and expected him to produce an imām, but who should it be? It is unlikely under the circumstances that Ibrāhīm could have named a successor or that the leaders of the daʿwa even knew for sure that he was dead. Moreover, they had never before automatically accepted a transmission of the imāmate; it always involved some act of designation and consent (perhaps even selection on their part). There are hints that the Kufan leadership still was not committed exclusively to the ʿAbbāsids; Abu Salama was later accused of delaying in an attempt to secure recognition of an ʿAlīd imām and he was executed. He certainly hesitated for some time before presenting Ibrāhīm's brother, Abū l-ʿAbbās, to be proclaimed as the new caliph al-Saffāḥ in Rabīʿ II 132/October-November 749. Thus, ironically, the revolution resulted in the completely

44 unexpected installation of a ruler who must have been totally unheard of to virtually all of the people who had brought it about.

^ The effects of the revolution Modern historians generally agree that the ʿAbbāsid Revolution was an event of great importance in Islamic history that represented much more than a change of dynasty. But what exactly was revolutionary about it? Among the often cited and most obvious effects were an eastward shift in the centre of political power; a transformation of the concept of the caliphate; an end to the ethnic distinctions that had made Islam seem to be an Arab religion and probably a consequent increase in the rate of conversion; and a rise in the influence of Persians and Persian culture in the new Islamic oecumene. Most of these changes, however, began long before the revolution, have little apparent connection to the agenda of the daʿwa, or were altered by a reaction amounting to a counter-revolution under al-Manṣūr. Behind the nebulous piety preached by the daʿwa, the critical if unspoken issues raised by the revolution, and perhaps driving it, were the problems of how to distribute the resources of an empire whose dynamic period of expansion had ended and how to balance the interests and power of regional magnates with those of the central government. Those issues would not be resolved for more than a century. Perhaps the more important question to ask is what did the revolution intend to change? Leaving aside the messianic and utopian expectations it clearly excited but could not possibly fulfill, about all that can be said is that it professed to seek a government based on Islamic principles and under the leadership of al-Riḍā min āl Muḥammad. That it secured, at least to the satisfaction of some but hardly to all. L. Daniel

^ Bibliography Extensive listings of source material may be found in several of the works listed below. For a survey of the historiographical issues, see Humphreys, R. S.,Islamic history. A framework for inquiry (Princeton 1991), 104–27. Other sources Āghā, Ṣ. S., The Revolution which toppled the Umayyads. Neither Arab nor ʿAbbāsid, Leiden 2003 Amabe, F., The emergence of the 'Abbāsid autocracy, Kyoto 1995 Blankinship, K. Y., The end of the jihâd state, Albany 1994 Idem, The tribal factor in the ʿAbbāsid revolution. The betrayal of the Imam Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad, JAOS 108 (1988), 589–603 Cahen, C., Points de vue sur la ‗Révolution abbaside,‘ in Revue Historique (1963), 295–338 Crone, P., On the meaning of the ʿAbbāsid call to al-Riḍā, in The Islamic world. Essays in honor of Bernard Lewis, ed. C. E. Bosworth et al. (Princeton 1989), 95–111 Idem, The significance of wooden weapons in al-Mukhtār's revolt and the ʿAbbāsid revolution, in Studies in honour of Clifford Edmund Bosworth, ed. I. R. Netton (Leiden 2000), 1:174–87 Daniel, E. L., The political and social history of Khurasan under Abbasid rule, Minneapolis and Chicago 1970 Idem, The ‗Ahl al-Taqaddum‘ and the problem of the constituency of the Abbasid Revolution in the Merv Oasis, in JIS 7 (1996), 150–79 Frye, R., The role of Abū Muslim in the Abbasid revolt, in MW 37 (1947), 28–38 Idem, The Abbasid conspiracy and modern revolutionary theory, in Indo-Iranica 5 (1952–3), 9– 14

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Guzmán, R. M., Popular dimensions of the 'Abbasid Revolution, Cambridge MA 1990 Kennedy, H., The early Abbasid caliphate, London 1981 Lassner, J., The shaping of ʿAbbāsid rule, Princeton 1980 Idem, Islamic revolution and historical memory, New Haven 1986 Madelung, W., Religious trends in early Islamic Iran, Albany 1988 Idem, The Hāshimiyyāt of al-Kumayt and Hāshimī Shiʿism, in SI 70 (1989), 5–26 Mélikoff, I., Abū Muslim, le porte-hache de Khorassan, Paris 1962 Moscati, S., Studi su Abū Muslim, in Rendiconti della Reale Accademia dei Lincei 8/4 (1949–50) 323–35, 474–95, 8/5 (1950–51), 89–105 Nagel, T., Untersuchungen zur Entstehung des abbasidischen Kalifates, Bonn 1972 Omar, F.,The Abbasid caliphate, Baghdad 1969 al-Qāḍī, W., al-Kaysāniyya fī l-taʾrīkh wa-l-adab, Beirut 1974 Sadighi, G. H., Les mouvements religieux iraniens, Paris 1938 Shaban, M. A., The Abbasid Revolution, Cambridge, 1970 Sharon, M., Black banners from the East, Jerusalem and Leiden 1983 Idem, Revolt. The social and military aspects of the 'Abbāsid Revolution, Jerusalem 1990 van Vloten, G., De opkomst der Abbasiden in Chorasan, Leiden 1890 Wellhausen, J., Das Arabische Reich und sein Sturz, Berlin 1902 Zakeri, M., Sāsānid soldiers in early Muslim society, Wiesbaden 1995. Citation: Daniel, E. L. "ʿAbbāsid Revolution." Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE. Edited by: Gudrun Krämer, ; Denis Matringe, ; John Nawas and ; Everett Rowson. Brill, 2011. Brill Online. K.U. Leuven - University Library. 17 February 2011

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Adab Literature: 9th to 13th Century Adab encompasses various literal and metaphorical meanings. Conventionally, adab has been used to refer to the profane literature as distinct from ʿilm, which refers to the religious sciences. It has been defined to include the ―best‖ of what had been said in the form of verse, prose, and anecdotes on every subject which an educated man, an adīb, is supposed to know. The task was that of transmitting a canon of knowledge belonging to general culture, offering an education in aesthetics, and inculcating ethical values (Leder and Kilpatrick 1992). Adab literature is heterogeneous, organized in varying ways. Adab texts can be either encyclopedic or monographic in nature. Organized into books and chapters, the material illustrates aspects of the human condition. For each subject, the compiler collected a number of anecdotes and extracts of poetry or proverbs. These independent literary units, ranging in length from a few lines to a few pages, traveled from one work to another. Important variations over space and time are masked by adherence to canonical forms established by the fourth/tenth century. This literature has been seen as a literature of repetition and compilation, one that lacks originality. While it is true that adab attempts to reconstruct values, the originality of a particular text exists precisely in the choice of the reproduced texts, in their arrangement, their nuanced rewriting and in the new contexts where they are inserted (Cheikh-Moussa et al. 1999). While material on women, sex, and gender is generally scattered in encyclopedic adabworks, sometimes women are assigned a special section of the work. The last portion of the adab anthology Kitāb ʿuyūn al-akhbār by Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889), entitled Kitāb al-nisāʾ, defines women's physical and moral qualities. It includes sections such as: women's character and manners and who should be chosen or rejected; those who are fit to be husbands; marriage; beauty; ugliness; old women and old men; being tall or short; beards; bad smell; dowry; times of marriage contracts; advice to women on the eve of marriage; singing slave-girls; kissing; intercourse; procurement; adultery and iniquity; women's wickedness; and divorce. One significant observation about Kitāb al-nisāʾ is that whereas it contains material which was normally associated with women, men are, ¶ --> --> -- > --> --> --> --> --> -->nevertheless, included in almost all the sections. Al-ʿiqd al-farīd by Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih (d. 328/940) also includes a book on women divided into the following sub-sections: the characteristics of women on marriage; the characteristics of women and their natural disposition; the characteristics of wicked women; prolific women; stories of women; divorce; those who divorced their wives and regretted it; women's deceit; concubines; those whose mother is non-Arab; bastards; and sexual potency. The ʿUyūn and al-ʿIqd share a similar organizational orientation, directing the material toward themes rather than people. The material clusters around the definition and attributes of the ideal spouse. Women are the targets of complex prescriptions for proper behavior. We are informed that a woman was prized for her looks, smell, discipline, obedience, humility, and general support for her husband. In men, more stress was placed on social status, lineage, generosity, piety, and wealth. The texts do not maintain that both members of a couple must share equally in the efforts to make a successful marriage. The core of the behavioral requirements focuses on women (El Cheikh 2002). Among the monographic compilations is Akhbār al-nisāʾ by Pseudo Ibn al-Jawzī, which includes among its sources Ibn Qutayba's ʿUyūn and Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih'sal-ʿIqd. The book is divided into the following chapters: the description of women; those driven by passionate love to mental disorders and madness; two chapters on jealousy; women's fidelity; women's treachery; fornication and warnings about its consequences; and women's physical constitution. The main interest of the authors in including women in their material is often the presentation of elegant verses as well as female witticisms and ruses revolving around female sexuality and women's bodies (Malti-Douglas 1991). Balāghāt al-nisāʾ, compiled in the third/ninth century by Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr (d. 280/893) is a prime example of such material

47 on female eloquence. Similar material is found in monographs such as Akhbār al-adhkiyāʾ of Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 597/1200), which includes a chapter on women's tricks, intelligence, and cunning. Literary specimens by women are embedded in adab anthologies. Wājida al-Aṭraqjī (1981) has ¶ --> --> --> --> --> --> --> --> --> --> -->studied the variety of women's literary contributions in the ʿAbbāsid period, including the genres of poetry, epistles, and disputations. However, while women used the classical language, they did so in a way dictated by a male-empowered discourse (Toorawa 2005) and in male-authored compilations. Concerned with slave poetesses, al-Imāʾ al-ṣawāʾir by Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī provides information on women's literary activity during the ʿAbbāsid period. Devoted to 33 women poets, it includes significant material on the slave-girls ʿInān, Faḍl, and ʿArīb. The singing slave-girls, qiyān, are a main subject of this sub-genre. Al-Jāḥiẓ wrote a famous epistle on the musical talents and attractive qualities of the qiyān. Laṭāʾif al-luṭf by al-Thaʿālibī (d. 429/1038) also includes a brief chapter on slave-girls and women. Aspects of the lives of the qiyān appear in the famous Kitāb al-aghānī of Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī (d. 363/972/3) as well as in Murūj al- dhahab wa-maʿādin al-jawhar by al-Masʿūdī (d. 345/956). The Muwashshā by al-Washshā (d. 325/937) contains material illustrating the ravages caused by the qiyān in the hearts of their suitors. The information in these widely varied works date from different periods, a factor that fragments the picture further. The two adab anthologies of al-Muḥassin b. ʿAlī al-Tanūkhī (940–94 C.E.), al-Faraj baʿda al-shidda and Nishwār al-muḥāḍara wa-akhbār al- mudhākara purportedly take their examples from the anecdotal repertory of the present and of the preceding generation. Al-Tanūkhī thus privileges his personal heritage over the literary heritage (Bray 2005). These anthologies convey not only historical information but also social values and the art of social conduct (Leder and Kilpatrick 1992). The relevant anecdotes, rich in details on various aspects of ʿAbbāsid society, including women and gender relations, illustrate vividly many practices and attitudes. Even if one is not to accept these anecdotes literally, it is not impossible to extricate their historical significance. Indeed, the main issue is how to read these texts in order to tease out historical meaning. Al-Tanūkhī's works are important for informing us that a particular sentiment existed, that it was possible for women to be involved in specific productive activities, and that a number of them could become influential and wealthy. Adab compilations define ideals. Ideals are an important and influential component in the system of meanings determining the psychological experiences for women and men. The fact that we are dealing with stereotypes and ideals is not irrelevant ¶ because these are partly formed through the perception of roles and because they serve as guidelines in developing gender roles. Although it is difficult to disentangle fact from fiction, it is possible to decipher certain aspects of the value system in which these works were comprehensible. Adab is representative inasmuch as a work of adab would never include matter which was not in concert with the accepted world values of the author/compiler and his audience. In addition, the literary form of adab often required the presention of all sides of controversial subjects. Adab makes it possible to see things from a different angle serving as a source to penetrate official attitudes and gain an insight into what people thought and how they judged actions (Rosenthal 1979). Literary texts are prescriptive. Adab compilations in particular are concerned with what people should be and do, rather than with what they are. They are main carriers of a particular gender ideology. These texts are concerned with the cultural construct of expectations built up around women. Such compilations reflect long-standing official discourses, which allow us to better understand the cultural construct of expectations built up around both men and women in adab during the ʿAbbāsid period. Nadia Maria El Cheikh

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Bibliography PRIMARY SOURCES Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih, al-ʿIqd al-farīd, ed. A. Amīn et al., Cairo 1940–9. Pseudo Ibn al-Jawzī, Akhbār al-nisāʾ, Beirut 2000. Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn al-akhbār, ed. Y. Ṭawīl, Beirut 1985. al-Tanūkhī, Nishwār al-muḥāḍara wa-akhbār al-mudhākara, ed. ʿA. al-Shaljī, Beirut 1971. ——, Kitāb al-faraj baʿda al-shidda, ed. ʿAbbūd al-Shaljī, Beirut, 1978. SECONDARY SOURCES W. al-Aṭraqji, al-Marʾa fī adab al-ʿaṣr al-ʿabbāsī, Baghdad 1981. S. A. Bonebakker, Adab and the concept of belles-lettres, in J. Ashtiani et al. (eds.), The Cambridge history of Arabic literature. Abbasid belles-lettres, Cambridge 1990, 16–30. J. Bray, Abbasid myth and the human act. Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih and others, in P. Kennedy (ed.), On fiction and adab in medieval Arabic literature, Wiesbaden 2005, 1–54. Cheikh-Moussa, H. Toelk, and K. Zacharia, Pour une relecture des textes littéraires arabes. Elements de réflexion, in Arabica 46 (1999), 523–40. N. El Cheikh, In search for the ideal spouse, in Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 45 (2002), 179–96. Kilpatrick, Women as poets and chattels. Abū l-Farag al-Iṣbahānī's al-Imāʾ al-Ṣawāʿir, in Quaderni di Studi Arabi 9 (1991), 161–76. S. Leder and H. Kilpatrick, Classical Arabic prose litera¶ ture. A researcher's sketch map, in Journal of Arabic Literature 23 (1992), 1–26. F. Malti-Douglas, Woman's body woman's word. Gender and discourse in Arabo-Islamic writing, Princeton, N.J. 1991. F. Rosenthal, Fiction and reality. Sources for the role of sex in medieval Muslim society, in A. L. al-Sayyid Marsot (ed.), Society and the sexes in medieval Islam, Malibu 1979, 2–22. S. Toorawa, Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr and Arabic writerly culture. A ninth century bookman in Baghdad, London 2005. [Print Version: Volume 6, page 3, column 1] Citation: El Cheikh, Nadia Maria. "Adab Literature: 9th to 13th Century." Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures. General Editor Suad Joseph . Brill, 2011. Brill Online. K.U. Leuven - University Library. 17 February 2011

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Women Literature: 9th to 15th Century Women's literature thrived in many localities during this period of Islamic history, but it did not usually present itself as women's literature as such, in a package neatly segregated from men's literature; instead its specimens tended to be embedded in larger collectively-written texts generally ascribed to male authors, either by attribution, or, in the case of anonymous works, by default. Therefore, the sources one would consult for women's literature tend to be the same as those one would consult for men's, and the question for the student or researcher of women's texts is not ―What did women write?‖ but rather ―How did women contribute to what was written?‖ The answers to this question are as varied as the richness and diversity of the empire at that time would suggest; for this period of Islamic history, falling between the ʿAbbāsid overthrow of the Umayyads in 132/750 and the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 857/1453, is characterized by political decentralization and ethnic, linguistic, and cultural pluralism. The gradual weakening of the central authority in Baghdad led to the emergence of more localized seats of power, many of them vying with each other in their patronage of the arts. The resultant aesthetic cross-fertilization caused literature to blossom, such that the period witnessed the development of Arabic prose and the seeds of its fiction, the rise of Persian poetry, the golden age of Hebrew literature, and the emergence of Romance vernacular verse. This period also produced the multi-voiced and multilingual muwashshaḥ, the picaresque maqāma, and the fantastical Thousand and One Nights. On the Arabic front, the transition from an oral to a textual culture was well underway, as knowledge and folklore found newer and faster means for dissemination. The importance of the more accessible and ―popular‖ literature remained, however, and its influence may be felt in literary texts' exploitations of vernacular rhythms. At the beginning of the period, Arabic figures as the dominant vehicle for Islamic literary culture, even though, paradoxically, it was often non-Arabs drawing on their native literary traditions who were producing literary texts. But during the middle of the period, that is under the Samanids (204/819–395/1005) and the Ghaznavids (366/977–582/1186), Persian becomes a favorite language of the courts. It is sources written in these two languages upon which this essay will focus, but with the underlying assumption that sources of women's literature exist in other languages current in the Islamic empire at this time. Of particular interest in this regard is a Turkish romance entitled Jamshīd wa-Khurshīd, a work listed in Kashf al-ẓunūn which is attributed to a Cappadocian poet named Janī Khātūn and which Ḥājjī Khalīfa had seen in the handwriting of someone who died in 815/ca. 1412 (Khalfa 1835–58, ii, 609). Traditionally, verbal craft in Arabic has been divided into naẓm (verse) and nathr (prose or plain speech). While women from this time period spoke, wrote, composed, and extemporized in each category, their poetry was better preserved or anthologized and is thus better remembered today. Although some women do appear to have had careers as scribes, scholars, and secretaries, very few book-length works from this time period have been identified as female-authored and even fewer survive today. Short epistolary pieces abound but are scattered throughout a great range of sources. (Examples may be found in Ṣafwat 1937, iii, 374 and 527–9, iv, 393–4 and 402–3). Hence women's compositions from the era are predominantly poetic. Furthermore, those textual phenomena (namely, vocal citations) that may be considered women's contributions to prose genres, from popular romantic epics to highly ornate and stylized epistles, are often versified. Indeed, Arabic and Persian literary genres often inextricably link prose and verse forms, and the dimensions and implications of this admixture, which is known as ―prosimetrum,‖ have begun to garner the attention of scholars of Middle Eastern literatures (Harris and Reichl 1937, 225–348). Prosimetrum bears heavily on issues of female authorship in particular, and literary constructions of gender and sexuality in general, because for the most part women contribute to prose forms as quoted speakers of verse whose poems are narrated by predominantly male narrators, compilers, and editors. Historically, women throughout the empire during this time period had considerable power to compose texts, but they had less power to frame these texts for posterity in their own names, or so it would seem, given the dearth of book-length manuscripts attributed to

50 women. To my knowledge it is not until the late fifteenth century that one finds a female Arabic prose and prose/verse writer, in the figure of the religious Damascene scholar ʿĀʾisha al-Bāʿūniyya (d. 922/1516) who has several extant works to her name. In this regard the historical picture looks quite different from the fantastical one. Perhaps no figure has as much power to frame, narrate, cut, and paste as the legendary Shahrazād. By contrast, actual women's voices are often encased in so many diegetic levels that one is tempted to read them as masculine authorial fictions, as the words that a succession of men would have women say. Although women's poems and sayings of the Jāhiliyya and early Islam are customarily framed by a chain of transmitters, or isnād , their words are often memorized and recited for their own sake as literary units. In subsequent eras, the frame, whether it be in the form of an isnād or not, undergoes a gradual epistemological shift, especially in the context of secular adab , transforming from a record of attestation to a narrative device. As a result, theʿAbbāsid or Andalusian woman's text often presents itself as a ―voice‖ in a narrative pastiche, a direct quotation casually overheard by a witness or eavesdropper to an occasion in an anecdotal setting which may itself form a story within a story. Hence it is not unreasonable to suggest that women's extant verse and verse-prose compositions from this period, whatever their method of preservation, should normally be read as part of a dialogic continuum and not treated in isolation. What follows is a discussion of sources of women's literature, categorized by method of preservation, and considered in light of frame and prosody. Textsincludes sources that relay women's words, usually poems or poetic fragments, as units of literature in their own right, with brief interpolations of commentary or narrative. This category is comprised of single- author dīwān s, collective anthologies, and certain biographical compendia. The second category, Contexts, looks at adab compilations, popular romance and song. Here, women's voices are intimately intertwined with men's, and accepting their words verbatim often requires us to reconfigure our concept of authorship; otherwise, one is tempted to read feminine quotations as masculine hearsay. The final category, Signs, deals with epigraphic sources, or texts that are framed by material objects rather than other texts. This category, which roots women's voices tangibly in history like no other, has enormous interdisciplinary potential.

^ TEXTS Generally speaking, women from this time period are not particularly well-represented in canonical medieval poetry anthologies. The standard Arabic anthologies, to the extent that they do include women's poetry, heavily privilege the ―ancients‖ (mutaqaddimāt) over the ―moderns‖ (muḥdathāt). In his anthology devoted to ―modern‖ poets Ṭabaqāt al-shuʿarāʾ, Ibn al- Muʿtāzz (d. 296/908) highlights the work of a smattering of women poets associated withʿAbbāsid court culture (1956, 421–7). The staple Persian anthologies, such as ʿAwfī's Lubāb al-albāb (617/1220) and Dawlatshah's Tadhkirat al-shuʿarāʾ(892/1487), do cite a few key female poets, but women are under-represented there as well. Nevertheless, these resources should not be overlooked, since they provide a formal poetic framework, or textually aesthetic context, for women's poetry. Moreover, they yield important clues as to the niches that women may have carved out for themselves in the literary marketplace. For example, Jajarmī's Persian anthology Muʾnis al-aḥrār fī daqāʾiq al-ashʿār(741/1342) relays three dozen quatrains by the eleventh- or twelfth-century poet Mahsatī, 22 of which appear in their own independent chapter (1350/1971, ii, 1151–5). These 22 poems are of the shahrāshūb genre, a type of poem in which a tradesman is either praised or mocked. Their arrangement in an independent chapter suggests both that Mahsatī was a premier poet of the genre and that, conversely, the genre held a special place in Mahsatī's corpus. Finally, when perusing anthologies, it is important to consult the less canonical collections. Peripheral anthologies, especially those that focus on specific geographical locations or marginal literary forms, sometimes contain gems of women's literature that go largely unnoticed by scholars who rely too heavily on a corps set of texts. For example, a collection of Andalusian muwashshaḥāt,

51 the ʿUddat al-jalīs of Ibn Bishrī, contains a full-length piece attributed to the twelfth-century Granadan Nazhūn 1 (1992, 360–1), an attribution which tends to escape her biographical notices, both classical and modern. In addition to the general anthologies, there exists a sub-category of gender-specific collections dating as far back as the early ʿAbbāsid era. Two keyʿAbbāsid monographs on women's verbal craft in Arabic, Balāghāt al-nisāʾ by Ibn Abī Ṭayfūr (d. 280/893) and Ashʿār al- nisāʾ by al-Kātib al-Marzubānī (d. 384/994), focus on women of the Jāhiliyya and early Islam, leaving us with little or no impression of women's poetry and prose of their day. What they do offer us is insight into the status of specific genres of women's writing within their community. Ibn Ṭayfūr organizes his book along a moral continuum: he begins with the sacred ( ḥadīth and other utterances of female figures associated with the Prophet Muḥammad), moves on to the profane (such as wise sayings or ḥikma, dialogues with the Caliph Muʿāwiyya and elegiac poetry) and ends with the downright obscene (mujūn). Al- Marzubānī organizes his poetry anthology by the tribe of the poet, reflecting ʿAbbāsid scholarly interest in genealogies. Both of these works feature detailed isnād s for specific entries, and in them one finds that certain names recur frequently, perhaps suggesting a kind of ―women's studies‖ specialization on the part of individual transmitters. Sadly, only a small fraction of al-Marzubānī's anthology survives. Two other classical Arabic monographs that are devoted to women writers or poets who lived during this time period and that are available in published form are Al-Imāʾ al-shawāʿir by Abū al-Faraj al- Iṣbahānī (d. 356/967) andNuzhat al-julasāʾ fī ashʿār al-nisāʾ by Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505). Neither of these is as substantial as either Balāghāt al-nisāʾ or Ashʿār al-nisāʾ, in that their entries are brief and presented out of context, but they are the only two extant anthologies devoted to women's poetry originating after the pre- and early Islamic periods. Unfortunately, two other important works on women poets, Ashʿār al-jawārī by the Shiʿi poet al-Mufajjaʿ (d. ca. 320/932) and the multi-volumed al-Nisāʾ al-shawāʿir by Ibn al-Ṭarāḥ (d. ca. 694/1295), appear to have been lost. It is tempting to view the preponderance of pre- and early Islamic women's writing in early ʿAbbāsid anthologies as a result of two key epistemological factors: 1) the cultural importance and scholarly emphasis on the founding years of Islam, which made all linguistic and historical pursuits relating to the period meritorious almost by definition and 2) the favorable position of women speakers, poets, and storytellers in oral traditions, specifically that of pre-Islamic Arabia. In other words, the cultural centrality of the Book (the Qurʾān) in the early Islamic era ensured the oral transmission and ultimate written preservation of women's words at a specific moment in Arab history when ―high‖ literary culture was primarily oral while the gradual rise of the book (i.e. written culture with all its accoutrements and specialist training) corresponded with, and may have contributed to, a diminishment of women's access to the literary marketplace in the subsequent era. In Arabic, the benefit of an individual female poet's dīwān originating in this time period is, unfortunately, rare; for personal anthologies would help us to find patterns of themes and tropes characterizing a woman's corpus, to gauge her formal development and to compare her œuvre to that of her contemporaries, predecessors, and scions. Although al-Nadīm lists some 15 women's dīwān s, they were, for the most part, very short; the longest were those of Hārūn al-Rashīd's sister ʿUlayya bt. al-Mahdī, ʿInān, an associate of Abū Nuwās, and Faḍl, a slave of al-Mutawakkil, which he measures at 20 leaves each (1970, ii, 361–2). Occasionally, biographical dictionaries contain a sizeable portion of a poet's corpus in an entry, and it may be worth perusing such sources for these types of entries, especially since certain non- canonical sources have eluded scholars collating biographical material on women. One poet of considerable standing who has often been overlooked is the thirteenth-century itinerant panegyrist Sāra al-Ḥalabiyya.2 A substantial body of her work, including a sample of her prose, is included in a biographical dictionary of prominent inhabitants of Fez, namely Aḥmad Ibn al-Qāḍī al-Miknāsī's Jadhwat al-iqtibās fī man ḥalla min al-aʿlām madīnat Fās (1973–4, ii, 522–9). Mahsatī, sometimes known as Mahsatī Ganjawī, is a Persian poet of legendary status who

52 probably lived during the eleventh or twelfth century. Her precise dates are unknown, but various classical writers place her in the courts of Maḥmūd of Ghazna (388/998–421/1030) and the Seljuk Sultan Sanjar (511/1118–552/1157). It may be that her association with the former derives from a confusion between his historical figure and that of Sanjar's governor in Azerbaijan, Sultan Maḥmūd b. Muḥammad b. Malik-Shāh (Rypka 1968, 199). Her birthplace is variously recorded as Ganja, Nishapour, Badakhshan, and Khojand (Ishaque 1949, 12); hence modern-day Azerbaijan, Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan can all lay claim to her. The story of her love affair with fellow poet Amīr Aḥmad, son of a preacher from Ganja, is the subject of a romance in which prose narrative is interwoven with poetic verse. Her fictional biography, as it is inscribed in this romance, follows a rags-to-riches trajectory: orphaned as a young child, Mahsatī was forced to find her keep in a kharābāt, which is a tavern or a house of ill repute, but due to her refinement, musical training, and talents, she quickly became a frequent guest and admired entertainer of the ruling elites. Regardless of the veracity of her life story, she ranks among the pioneers of the Persian quatrain or rubāʿī (de Blois 1994, 409). She is known, in particular, for her mastery of the shahrāshūb, a type of poem in which a tradesman, such as a butcher, a smith, or a carpenter, is either praised or mocked, often through elaborate puns and sexual innuendos. She has a reputation for bawdiness (de Bruijn EI2 ), but her penchant for sexually explicit imagery does not seem to have detracted from her respectability. Indeed, in his Ilāhī-nāma, the Sufi mystic Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār refers to Mahsatī as ―the scribe‖ (dabīr) endowed with ―pure essence‖ (218). (See the illustration section following page 314.) There are published dīwān s of two women poets of Persian from this period. Mahsatī's has been collated from a variety of sources, including general anthologies, histories, and legends, and is available in more than one edition. There is conflicting information about whether or not a version of her dīwāncirculated as a manuscript in premodern times. (De Bruijn EI2 , Ishaque 1949, 11n.) The size of Mahsatī's corpus compares very favorably to that of her Arabic-writing female contemporaries, but an even more astounding legacy comes down to us from the fourteenth-century Jahān Khātūn.3 Her dīwān may turn out to be the richest and most significant source of women's literature in the Islamic world from this period. The first published edition, which was collated from three manuscripts, contains four qaṣīda s, over 1,400 short lyric poems (ghazaliyyāt), a strophic poem (al-tarjīʿband), an elegy (marthiyya), and a number of poetic fragments (muqaṭṭaʿāt). The sense of wholeness that accompanies such an extensive anthology with its wealth of integral (as opposed to excerpted) verse forms puts her corpus on an analytical par with the celebrated male poets of her age. Although E. G. Brown mentioned in A Literary History of Persia (1902–24) that he possessed a manuscript of her poetry (iii, 233n), the edited anthology was not published until the late 1990s, and the fact that scholars overlooked her work for so many decades gives one reason to pause. On the one hand it reminds us that the marginalization of women in literary canons is not a premodern phenomenon but rather a gradual process of exclusion and neglect that continues to this day. On the other hand, however, it gives one hope that other gems of Islamic women's literature are waiting to be recuperated. Last but not least, works about women that are not specific to poets or writers sometimes contain poems and excerpts from women's text. This is due to the fact that they tend to deal with elite and educated segments of the female population such as noblewomen, the slaves and clients of nobles and dignitaries, scholars, and mystics. These works include Nisāʾ al- khulafāʾ by Ibn al-Sāʿī (d. 674/1275 or 1276), Al-Mustaẓrif fī akhbār al-jawārī by Jalāl al-Dīn al- Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505) and Dhikr al-niswa al-mutaʿabbidāt al-Ṣūfiyyāt by al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021), which Rkia Cornell has cross-referenced with the section on women in Ibn al-Jawzī's biographical dictionary Ṣifat al-ṣafwa (263–327). Ultimately, they are too numerous to be listed here. Readers may wish to consult Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Munajjid's article on classical books about women, both extant and lost, entitled ―Mā ullifa ʿan al-nisāʾ‖ (1941). It is still useful but needs to be updated. It is important to bear in mind when consulting these and other sources of women's literature that obscenities are often censored in published editions and that it may therefore be necessary to consult alternative editions and/or manuscripts. It is perhaps appropriate to end this section with reference to a rare tome compiled by a woman: now

53 apparently lost, it is a book about Andalusian qiyān (singing slave girls) attributed to an author named Fatḥūna bt. Jaʿfar al-Mursiyya, which she is said to have composed in imitation of Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣbahānī (Al-Tāzī 1992, 119–20).

^ CONTEXTS This category covers those sources in which what may be identified as a woman's text is embedded in another text and framed in such a way as to cast doubt on the authorial authenticity of the woman's text in question. One is more apt to consider it as a narrative voice, created by a third-person narrator/author if we take the source to be fictional, or by a third-person reporter/witness if we take it to be factual. In this category, even when woman's speech is understood to represent what was actually said or written, it loses its originative force and comes across as a subsidiary text: hence the woman speaker is rarely identified as an author or even as a contributing author to the frame text. Here, a male, or potentially female, narrator or editor always exerts some control over woman's text, but not always to the same degree, and sometimes woman's text may influence the way man – or woman – frames it. In this category one finds first and foremost adab . The term applies to a wide variety of predominantly secular works meant to edify, enlighten, and entertain. They are often constructed around exemplary, historical or legendary anecdotes, or akhbār, cited to illustrate a point. An isnād often serves to frame the akhbār, but the narratological transitions between anecdotes and the thematic connections amongst them also function as hermeneutic structures that frame women's words and their meanings. To attempt to inventory all the adab works that include potentially authorial women's citations would be cumbersome, suffice it to highlight just a few. One branch of adab that is particularly rich with women's words, witticisms, and verses is that which Bray dubs the ―palace tradition‖ (1999, 75–6). It refers to sources that relay anecdotes about the noblewomen, jawārī, and courtesans who occupied or frequented ʿAbbāsid (and, in Iberia, Umayyad) palaces, as well as those of subsequent regimes. These sources include Kitāb al-aghānī by Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣbahānī (d. 356/967), Al-ʿIqd al-farīd by Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih (d. 328/940) and Nafḥ al-ṭīb min ghuṣn al-Andalus al- raṭīb by al-Maqqarī (d. 1041/1631), but there are countless others. The question is not so much what adab to read but how to read it. Incidentally, like the poetry anthologies of their day, these sources often privilege women's writing of preceding eras, but they are still rich with quotations of the latter-born. Another fecund branch of adab includes epistles composed on a variety of topics by the likes of al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 255/869). In epistles such as al-Qiyān, al-Bayān wa-al- tabyīn, and Kitāb al-ḥayawān, as well as many lesser known works, al-Jāḥiẓ cites women with great frequency. One work which is attributed to him pseudonymously is al-Maḥāsin wa-al- aḍdād. The work features a series of vignettes about women, and the way in which it is organized, with passages focusing on the nādiba (mourner), the mājina(dissolute), the aʿrābiyya (woman from Arabia), the mutakallima (speaker or theologian), the nāshiza (sex- withholding wife), etc., lends insight into how women and their words were socially classified, potentially with regard to how non-Arab women were gradually assimilated into an Arabic- speaking society and the linguistic and literary influences that permeated cultural exchanges. These anecdotes, in other words, provide us with scenes of cultural interface that help us to tease out the threads interweaving, in most cases, the Persian- and Arabic-speaking literary milieus. Bray discusses the work in connection with an article exploring the generic status of ―bleeding poetry,‖ that is poems composed by both men and women dedicated to an important figure on the occasion of his or her bloodletting ( faṣd ) (1999, 75–92). This type of poetry, especially insofar as it is associated with women, brings up at least two potentially provocative points of comparison between tropes that recur in Islamic literature across temporal and geographical boundaries. First, one finds an interesting opposition between the bleeding poems, which are basically short panegyrics offered to a ―bled‖ – and hence ―cured‖ – patron, and pre-Islamic elegies of blood vengeance, in which the spilt blood of the slain kinsman is likened to the menses and therefore synonymous with a state of pollution that can

54 only be cleansed through retaliation. (Stetkevych 1993, 161–205) The second point of comparison occurs in the thematic syncretism between Arabic and Persian blood imagery. Mahsatī's erotic poems are rife with allusions to blood, and she occasionally addresses or refers to the phlebotomist or faṣṣād (Ishaque 1949, 16 and 28). Indeed, blood provides rich and multifaceted metaphors for literature in general, and for Arabic and Persian poetry in particular, and examples of women writers' usage of blood imagery may give us insight into the mechanisms by which women transform objectifying tropes into sources of subjective agency. In assessing the authoritative power of woman's word within a given text, it may be useful to consider its didactic or aesthetic purposes, since the contexts of content and form impact directly on matters of authorial intent. When an author subjects the quotations of others to his or her own moral or aesthetic framework, those quotations assume a degree of fictitiousness. The Persian-language Ilāhī-nāma by Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār (d. circa 616/1220), for example, contains brief stories about two legendary women, Mahsatī and the mystic Rābiʿa al- ʿAdawiyya (d. ca. 135/732) (1976, 115, 153, 218–19). At times the women speak in the first person, but the citations do not seem to be meant as authentic attributions, for the words put into their mouths conform to the rhyme and meter of ʿAṭṭār's mathnawī. However, to the extent that the lines may reflect the aesthetic and philosophical viewpoints of their speakers, they in some way conform to their legendary authority and should, perhaps, at least be considered as echoes of authorial presences. Since the stories terminate with bits of mystical wisdom, it is not hard to see how a legendary Sufi figure such as Rābiʿa would emerge as an authority in a text like the Ilāhī-nāma. Still, formalistic and didactic considerations cast doubt on the authenticity of the citations and compromise the book's value as an accurate source of women's literary history. In some cases, however, women's words seem to shape their frames, rather than being shaped by them. Consider the example of a satirical poem by Nazhūn, which appears, in more or less identical forms but in different contexts, in Al-Mughrib fī ḥulā al-Maghrib by Ibn Saʿīd al- Maghribī (or al-Andalusī, d. 685/1286), Al-Iḥāṭa fī akhbār Gharnāṭa by Lisān al-Dīn b. al-Khaṭīb (d. 776/1374), and al-Maqqarī's Nafḥ al-ṭīb. In the first two sources, the poem surfaces in biographical entries on the object of Nazhūn's satire, a male poet and satirist himself. There is a difference, however, in the editorial designs of the sources' compilers; for whereas the thirteenth-century Ibn Saʿīd cites Nazhūn's poem for its slander against the satirized party's hometown of Almodóvar, as is evidenced by an introductory anecdote depicting the town as a dangerous backwater (1953, i, 222–3), the fourteenth-century Ibn al-Khaṭīb cites the poem for its slander of the satirized party himself, as is demonstrated by the editor's own defamation of his character, which opens his biographical entry (1955, i, 432–3). In the third source, al- Maqqarī cites the poem, as well as the occasion on which it was uttered, as an example of the ferocity with which Andalusian satirists verbally assaulted one another (1968, i, 190–3). In this instance, Nazhūn's text behaves as a formal unit somewhat independently of its framework. When others appropriate her words for their own purposes, they are, in effect, offering interpretations of her text, rather than manipulating or distorting it. Beyond adab, the contextual category includes the popular genres of romance and song. Here women's voices are cited with great frequency and often by anonymous, and thus theoretically unsexed, authors. One Persian-language romance that is constructed in part on the verses of a female poet is the story ofAmīr Aḥmad u Mahsatī . It recounts the star-crossed amorous adventures of Mahsatī and another poet, Aḥmad b. al-Khaṭīb. While the romance is sometimes ascribed to Jawharī of Bukhara, the version found in a manuscript at the British Library which dates from 867/1462 is unattributed. In it the two protagonists and various other characters recite quatrains to each other, at times conversationally, and their verses are interspersed with omniscient narration and dialogue. Obvious questions arise as to the authenticity of both the events recounted and the poetry cited, since history and legend, fact and fiction, are deftly interwoven. How does one interested in the historical limits and bounds of female authorship approach such a text? How cynically should one read Mahsatī's words?

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In a prosimetrical case such as this, where it would seem that the constituent poetry, or at least a key portion of it, historically precedes the narration, it is helpful to give equal weight to prose and verse when considering the plot and structure of the fictionalized account; for sometimes the quoted figure seems to direct the narrator/scribe through the course of the narrative. For example, the romance features a trip to the bazaar, where Mahsatī and Amīr Aḥmad address various tradesmen, and the episode acts as a showcase for the shahrāshūb (Anon. 867/1462, 91b–95a). Thus one can see how Mahsatī's celebrated compositions in a certain genre give shape to a predominantly fictitious account of her life. Another popular genre in which women's voices are routinely cited is the song/poem known as the muwashshaḥ . This form, with compositions in Arabic and Hebrew, originated in Andalusia by the eleventh century and differs from the paradigmatically dominant Arabic qaṣīda in two key ways: first, it is divided into stanzas with varying meters and rhymes, unlike the qaṣīda , which maintains the same meter and rhyme throughout; and second, it tends to exploit vernacular language, either Arabic or Romance, especially in the final refrain, known as the kharja or ―exit‖ which is often written in a grammatically, if not musically, ―feminine‖ voice and introduced as a direct quote with a phrase such as ―he said‖ or ―she said.‖ Much ink has been spilled over the kharja , its colloquial and uninhibited expressions of sexual desire, and its association with women and ephebes. Some scholars have adopted the view that many kharja s, especially romance kharja s, were pre-existing songs, coopted by the muwashshaḥ composers, while others argue that they were constructed by those composers as a conceit. The kharja s contain some of the earliest specimens of Romance lyric, and they have therefore piqued the interest of scholars of European literatures, some of whom, most notably Theodor Frings, found in them evidence that medieval European courtly love poetry evolved out of a kind of primordial female emotiveness (Monroe 1974, 16). But few have analyzed the ―femininity‖ of the kharja in the context of a gender dynamic running throughout the form as a whole. Is the muwashshaḥ an inherently masculine paradigm, as has been said of the polythematic qaṣīda ? (al-Sajdi 2000, 121–46). Must a woman's voice be confined to the exit? If so, how does one account for the aforementioned muwashshaḥ attributed to Nazhūn? Up till now, discussions about women's potential involvement in the authorship of the muwashshaḥ have been limited to its final refrain. This would seem to place them in a subordinate position vis-à-vis the poem's author who would appropriate their words to his own devices. Hence a woman's authorship of the entire lyric would seem to be by definition subversive, unless of course the feminine voice is more integral to the entire form than its scholarly relegation to the kharja would have one believe. Nazhūn's biographers do not mention her involvement with this strophic genre, and the attribution may be incorrect, but questions provoked by the historical fact of female authorship of the muwashshaḥ remain; for other women, such as the eleventh-century Andalusian poet Umm al-Kirām, are known to have been muwashshaḥ composers.

^ SIGNS Throughout the previous category, women's voices are often buried under many layers of male narratives. Indeed, it sometimes seems that textual excavations are required to locate those sites in Islamic literature where women contributed, as authors, to hybrid textual forms, be they anecdotal compilations, episodic and prosimetrical romances, or multi-voiced lyrics. These texts come down to us framed in other texts. But what of those texts that are framed by objects, materials into which their words are inscribed, carved, and stitched? Literary histories cite numerous examples of women's verses punctuating all kinds of objects from fruit to garments and vessels. The Cordoban princess and poet Wallāda bt. al- Mustakfī 4 (d. 484/1091), for instance, famously wore a robe embroidered with provocative verses. While most of these objects may have receded into oblivion, the few that do remain may be immensely helpful in situating women writers in their historical, social, political, cultural, and material contexts. Two significant examples of artefacts bearing on women's literature from this period are (1) a ceramic bowl at the Victoria and Albert Museum in

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London whose exterior is decorated with a quatrain ascribed to Mahsatī (see the illustration section following page 314) and (2) the tombstone of Maymūna al-Hudhaliyya (RCEA 9, no. 3306), which features a poem written in the voice of the deceased, and is currently located at the Archaeological Museum in the Citadel, on the Maltese island of Gozo. While the texts themselves are brief and may be of limited value to students and researchers of literary styles and forms, they have an enormous amount to teach us about outlets for women's poetry, its historical settings and circumstantial occasions. In this way they root women's words in time and place much more firmly than the scribes and copyists of manuscripts. In a seminal article entitled ―Mahsati Ganjavi et les potiers de Rey,‖ Firouz Bagherzadeh sorts through textual, archaeological, art-historical, and religio-political evidence in order to determine the probable source of a quatrain appearing on the outside of the aforementioned ceramic bowl. Bagherzadeh notes that the poem is attributed both to Mahsatī and to the Seljuk panegyrist Anwarī (d. ca. 586/1190) and sets out to determine which attribution is correct. By considering information about the bowl's provenance and its Haft-rang variety, the author is able to pinpoint the date (1155–1223 C.E.) and the location (ʿIrāq-i ʿAjam) of its origin. Then, by contemplating the geopolitical and social history of the region, Bagherzadeh is able to deduce that Mahsatī is more likely to have been the quatrain's composer than Anwarī. The latter, a committed Sunni, would not have been a popular choice of poets in ʿIrāq- i ʿAjam during that period of intense sectarianism due to the predominantly Shiʿi sympathies of the inhabitants of the region (Bagherzadeh 1992, 166). Moreover, Mahsatī's reputed poetic dalliance with tradesmen and artisans suggests that she would have been a favorite for the Haft-rang master ceramists (1992, 173). In sum, this unlikely source of women's literature helps to authenticate an attribution, and this is no small feat in the case of a poet whose career has been overshadowed by her legend. The bowl also underscores Mahsatī's importance as a poet for the mercantile classes and not merely for the ruling elite. At about the same time that the bowl was created in ʿIrāq-i ʿAjam, or, to be more precise, in 569/1174, a woman named Maymūna bt. al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī al-Hudhalī died in the Mediterranean, perhaps on the Maltese island of Gozo, where her gravestone is said to have been found in a field by the road from Xewkija to Sannat (Grassi 1989, 35). This woman whose name is etched in stone lies in authorial obscurity today. Nevertheless, a brief poem of self-mourning written in her voice lives on in a marble stele that apparently once marked her grave. The poem, along with the rest of the funerary inscription, was preserved in stone and hence theoretically free from the distortions and mistakes inflicted on texts passed down by imperfect copyists and scribes, but it was subjected instead to the erosive forces of nature and time. Variations of the text thus exist as a result of divergent readings of its single source. The renowned nineteenth-century scholar Michele Amari remarked that few epigraphs, in Arabic or in any other language, yielded as many interpretations as Maymūna's tombstone (Grassi 1989, 219), also known as ―Majmūna's tombstone‖ or the ―Sciara inscription.‖ While the poem itself may not have been written by the deceased woman, the fact that it was written in her voice is significant; for it demonstrates that women had access to semantic authority even in the remote corners of the Islamic world and even beyond its geopolitical boundaries. Indeed, the Christian Normans captured Malta in 483/1090, more than eight decades before Maymūna's death, and many Muslims remained and prospered there until Frederick II expelled them in 647/1249. On the outside, texts are always framed, either by an object or by another text. How one handles that frame influences their meanings and our interpretation of them. Sometimes a frame seems permanent and unbendable, as in the case of a gravestone. At other times a frame seems logically constructed around resemblances and identities, as in the case of collective poetry anthologies and individual dīwān s. But the vast majority of frames, such as those that occur in adab , contain and circumscribe with a great measure of malleability. In order to assess the strength of women's words within these frames, thereby broaching the subject of women as agents of collective authorship, one needs, first and foremost, to deconstruct the frame. In the vast majority of cases, this will be, at least in part, a

57 narratological endeavor, since women's words are most often narrated by men. On the inside, in the middle of the frame, lies the core of woman's word; since this is usually a poem, one must work with poetics. Do woman's devices ever trump man's frame? Or, narrated by man, does woman herself figure as his trope? If we open up texts of masculine or anonymous transmission and edition to the possibility of feminine co-authorship, even if only in a fraction of cases, then we lend historical agency to female personages, both real and imaginary, who would otherwise remain trapped in a realm of symbolism and allegory. Notes

^ BACK TO TEXT1. Nazhūn bt. al-Qilāʿī, a twelfth-century Andalusian poet known for her satire (hijāʾ) and obscenity (mujūn), has poems and poetic fragments scattered throughout biographical dictionaries and adab compilations. In addition, Ibn Bishrī attributes a full- length muwashshaḥ to her. Her precise dates and social circumstances are unclear, but anecdotal evidence places her in the company of the pioneering vernacular poet Ibn Quzmān (d. 555/1160), and she is said to have been the daughter of a judge (di Giacomo 1947, 17n).

^ BACK TO TEXT2. Sāra al-Ḥalabiyya is a thirteenth-century poet who found patronage in the Ḥafṣid and Mārinid courts of the Islamic west. Many of her panegyrics are dedicated to the ʿAzafī family of Ceuta. Her eastern origins are evident both in her nisba (―the Aleppan‖) and in her verse, where she often expresses longing for the east.

^ BACK TO TEXT3. Jahān Khātūn, a fourteenth-century poet from Shiraz, has the most extensive extant textual legacy of any woman from the period. Despite the enormity of her corpus, citations of her work in canonical Persian sources seem to be somewhat limited; nevertheless her rounds of flyte with ʿUbayd-i Zākānī (d. ca. 772/1371) are celebrated. She married Amīn al-Dīn Jahramī, a minister to the Injuid ruler Shāh Shaykh Abū Isḥāq.

^ BACK TO TEXT4. Wallāda bt. al-Mustakfī (d. 484/1091) was the daughter of an Umayyad caliph of Cordoba. She led an independent life, remaining unveiled and unmarried, and hosted literary gatherings. She is quite famous for having had a tortuous affair with the canonical male poet Ibn Zaydūn (d. 463/1071) and slightly infamous for having had a romantic liaison with the female poet Muhja al-Qurṭubiyya. Wallāda's compositions, mostly love poems and satires, are playful and provocative. Marlé Hammond

^ Bibliography PRIMARY SOURCES Anon., Amīr Aḥmad u Mahsatī, in Three romances, Or. 8755, British Library, London, 867/1462, 22b–108a. F. D. ʿAṭṭār, The Ilāhī-nāma or Book of God, trans. J. A. Boyle, Manchester 1976. Ibn Bishrī, ʿUddat al-jalīs. An anthology of Andalusian Arabic muwashshaḥāt, ed. A. Jones, Cambridge 1992. Ibn al-Jawzī, Ṣifat al-ṣafwa, ed. I. Ramadān and S. al-Laḥḥām, 4 vols., Beirut 1989. Ibn al-Khaṭīb, al-Iḥāṭa fī akhbār Gharnāṭa, i, ed. M. ʿA. ʿUnān, Cairo 1955. Ibn al-Muʿtāzz, Ṭabaqāt al-shuʿarāʾ, ed. ʿA.-S. A. Farrāḥ, Cairo 1956. Ibn al-Qāḍī al-Miknāsī, Jadhwat al-iqtibās fī man ḥalla min al-aʿlām madīnat Fās, 2 vols., Rabat 1973–4. Ibn al-Sāʿī, Nisāʾ al-khulafāʾ. Jihāt al-aʾimma al-khulafāʾ min al-ḥarāʾir wa-al-imāʾ, ed. M. Jawād, Cairo 1960. Ibn Saʿīd, al-Mughrib fī ḥulā al-Maghrib, ed. Sh. Ḍayf, 2 vols., Cairo 1953.

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Ibn Ṭayfūr, Balāghāt al-nisāʾ, Beirut 1987. al-Iṣbahānī, al-Imāʾ al-shawāʿir, ed. N. Ḥ. al-Qaysī and Y. A. al-Sāmirrāʾī, Beirut 1984. Jahān Malak Khātūn, Dīwān-i Kāmil, ed. K. Rād and K. A. Nazād, Tehran 1374/1995 or 1996. al-Jāḥiẓ, al-Maḥāsin wa-al-aḍdād, ed. Y. Farḥāt, Beirut 1997. Jajarmī, Muʾnis al-aḥrār fī daqāʾiq al-ashʿār, ed. M. Ṣ. Ṭabībī, ii, Tehran 1350/1971. Mahsatī, Dīwān, ed. Ṭ. Shihāb, Tehran 1957. al-Maqqarī, Nafḥ al-ṭīb min ghuṣn al-Andalus al-raṭīb, ed. I. ʿAbbās, 8 vols., Beirut 1968. al-Marzubānī, Ashʿār al-nisāʾ, eds. S. M. al-ʿĀnī and H. Nājī, Baghdad 1976. as-Sulamī, Early Sufi women. Dhikr an-niswa al-mutaʿabbidāt aṣ-Ṣūfiyyāt, ed. and trans. R. E. Cornell, Louisville, Ky. 1999. al-Suyūṭī, al-Mustaẓrif min akhbār al-jawārī, ed. Ṣ.-D. al-Munajjid, n.p. 1963. ——, Nuzhat al-julasāʾ min ashʿār al-nisāʾ, ed. ʿA.-L. ʿĀshūr, Cairo 1986. SECONDARY SOURCES

Ḥ. Ḥ. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Shahīrāt al-Tūnisiyyāt, Tunis 1934, 19662. M. Abu-Rub, La poésie galante des femmes poétesses, in La poésie galante andalouse, Paris 1990, 233–80. F. A. al-ʿAlāwī, ʿĀʾisha al-Bāʿūniyya al-Dimashqiyya. Ashhar aʿlām Dimashq awākhir ʿahd al-Mamālīk. Dirāsa wa-nuṣūṣ, Damascus 1994. M. Amari, Le epigrafi arabiche di Sicilia, Palermo 1881, repr. 1971. W. M. ʿA. al-Aṭruqjī, al-Marʾa fī adab al-ʿaṣr al-ʿAbbāsī, Baghdad 1981. F. Bagherzadeh, Mahsati Ganjavi et les potiers de Rey, in J. Bacqué-Grammont and R. Dor (eds.), Varia turcica XIX. Mélanges offerts à Louis Bazin, Paris 1992, 161–76. F. de Blois, no. 235, in Persian literature. A bio-bibliographical survey 5.2. Poetry ca. A.D. 1100 to 1225, London 1994, 409. J. A. Bray, Third- and fourth-century bleeding poetry, in Arabic and Middle Eastern Literatures 2:1 (1999), 75–92. E. G. Browne, A literary history of Persia , 4 vols., Cambridge 1902–24.

J. T. P. de Bruijn, Mahsatī, EI2 . P. Dawlat Ābādī, Manẓūr kharadmand. Jahān Malak Khātūn wa-Ḥāfiẓ, Tehran 1374/1995. L. Di Giacomo, Une poétesse andalouse du temps des Almoḥades. Ḥafṣa Bint al-Ḥājj ar- Rukūnīya, in Hesperis 34 (1947), 9–101. S. al-Dīwahjī, Wallāda bt. al-Mustakfī, in S. al-Dīwahjī, ʿAqāʾil Quraysh, Mosul 1955, 99–109. Epitaphe no. 3306, in Répertoire chronologique d'épigraphie arabe 9 (1937), 73–4. F. Fresnel, Lettre à M. le Dr. C. Vassallo, in Journal asiatique, series 4:10 (1847), 437–43. S. ʿA.-W. Furayyiḥ, al-Jawārī wa-al-shiʿr fī al-ʿaṣr al-ʿAbbāsī, Kuwait 2002. T. Garulo, Una poetisa oriental en al-Andalus. Sāra al-Ḥalabiyya, in al-Qantara 6 (1985), 153–77. ——, Dīwān de las poetisas de al-Andalus, Madrid 1986. V. Grassi, L'épigrafia araba nella isole Maltesi, in Studi Magrebini 21 (1989), 9–92. Gruendler, Lightning and memory in poetic fragments from the Muslim west. Ḥafṣah bint al-Ḥājj (d. 1191) and Sārah al-Ḥalabiyyah (d.c. 1300), in A. Neuwirth and A.

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Pflitsch (eds.), Crisis and memory. Dimensions of their relationship in Islam and adjacent cultures, Beirut 2001, 435–52. M. Hammond, He said ‗she said‘. Narrations of women's verse in classical Arabic literature: a case study. Nazhūn's hijāʾ of Abū Bakr al-Makhzūmī, in Middle Eastern Literatures 6:1 (2003), 3– 18. J. Harris and K. Reichl (eds.), Prosimetrum. Cross-cultural perspectives on narrative in prose and verse, Cambridge 1997. Sh. Ḥasanayn, Mahsatī wa-nishāṭuhā al-adabī, in Nisāʾ shahīrāt fī al-siyāsa wa-al-adab fī al-ʿaṣr al- Saljūqī, Cairo 1989, 67–104. Huart, La poétesse Fadhl. Scène de moeurs sous les khalifes abbasides, in Journal asiatique 7:17 (1881), 5–43. M. Ishaque, Mahsatī of Ganja, in Indo-Iranica 3:4 (1949), 11–28. ——, Four eminent poetesses of Iran, Calcutta 1950 (useful appendix 45–95). Khalfa, Lexicon bibliographicum, ed. G. Fluegel, 7 vols., Leipzig 1835–58. M. Y. Khulayyif, al-Shiʿr al-nisāʾī fī adabinā al-qadīm, Cairo 1991. F. Meier, Die schöne Mahsatī, i, Wiesbaden 1963. T. Monroe, Introduction, in Hispano-Arabic poetry. A student anthology, Berkeley 1974, 3–71. ʿA. Muhannā, Muʿjam al-nisāʾ al-shāʿirāt fī al-Jāhiliyya wa-al-Islām, Beirut 1990. Ṣ. al-D. al-Munajjid, Mā ullifa ʿan al-nisaʾ, in Majallat majmaʿ al-ʿilmī al-ʿArabī 16 (1941), 212–19. al-Nadīm, The fihrist. A tenth-century survey of Muslim culture, ed. and trans. B. Dodge, New York 1970. F. Nawzād (ed.), Mahsatī-nāma, Tehran 1999. M. al-Raysūnī, al-Shiʿr al-niswī fī al-Andalus, Beirut 1978. Rossi, Le lapidi sepolcrali arabo-musulmane di Malta, in Revista degli studi orientali 12 (1930), 428–44. Rypka et al., History of Iranian literature, Dordrecht 1968. Z. Ṣafwat (ed.), Jamharat rasāʾil al-ʿArab, 4 vols., Cairo 1937. al-Sajdi, Trespassing the male domain. The qaṣīdah of Laylā al-Akhyaliyyah, Journal of Arabic Literature 31:2 (2000), 121–46. Salīmī, Zanān sukhanvār, Tehran 1957. Schimmel, A nineteenth century anthology of poetesses, in M. Israel and N. K. Wagle (eds.), Islamic society and culture. Essays in honour of Professor Aziz Ahmad, New Delhi 1983. M. al-Shakʿa, Shāʿirāt al-Andalus, in M. al-Shakʿa, Ṣuwar min al-adab al-Andalusī, Beirut 1971, 85–217. S. P. Stetkevych, The mute immortals speak. Pre-Islamic poetry and the poetics of ritual, Ithaca, N.Y. 1993. ʿA.-H. al-Tāzī, al-Marʾa fī tārīkh al-Gharb al-Islāmī, Casablanca 1992. M. J. Viguera, Aṣluhu lil-maʿālī. On the social status of Andalusī women, in S. K. Jayyusi (ed.), The legacy of Muslim Spain, Leiden 1992. Citation: Hammond, Marlé. "Literature: 9th to 15th Century." Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures. General Editor Suad Joseph . Brill, 2011. Brill Online. K.U. Leuven - University Library. 17

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Overview The word ― harem‖ refers to the female members of a household, or to the dedicated architectural enclosure in which they live. Few Islamic institutions can rival the harem in the concerted – even obsessive – manner in which it has been represented in art, literature, social theory, and political discourse. Although there is today a relatively consistent tissue of images that defines popular conceptions of the harem, this vision is thrown into question by the historical and geographical variability revealed by scholarly research. For its part, some of this research has tended to approach its subject teleologically, attempting to trace the historical unfolding, maturation, and institutionalization of an ideal, and thereby exhibiting totalizing tendencies of its own. In fact, ―harem‖ is a word that has corresponded to many realities in different times and places – realities not necessarily organized within a logically coherent developmental program. ETYMOLOGY The Arabic root ḥ-r-m, from which ―harem‖ is derived, generally refers to prohibition, unlawfulness, veneration, sacredness, inviolability – in other words, it conveys the notion of a taboo (Ibn Manẓūr 1988, 615–19). Although its derivatives occur no fewer than 83 times in the Qurʾān – referring to dietary laws and prohibitions during the pilgrimage, the holy months, and the sacred precincts of Mecca in which it is forbidden to kill – not once does the word refer to women or to women's quarters. That connection is, however, established in certain classical Arabic dictionaries, where ḥurma is said to refer to something held sacred and inviolable, something which it is one's duty to honor and defend, and only in this specific sense to a man's wives and family (al-Jawḥarī 1287 A.H., 486; al-Fayrūzābādī 1289 A.H., iv, 110). Another word derived from the same root is ḥarīm, which refers to those parts of a house or property (for example a well) whose use is forbidden to all but the rightful owner, and more particularly to ―the part of the house into which one enters and upon which the door is closed‖ (al-Zabīdī n.d., viii, 240, al-Azharī 1964–6, v, 47). Once again, it is in this quite specific sense of the private quarters of a house that the women's apartments came to be known as the harem. The Persian word andarūn, which means ―interior‖ and denotes the women's quarters of a house, is precisely equivalent to this term. The common practice of referring to this arrangement as ―sexual segregation‖ is inexact, as it is not based on sex alone. Adult men and women who are forbidden ( maḥram , another derivative of the same root) from marrying each other by virtue of kinship – for example a brother and sister – can share a common space; in this sense, if the harem is a zone occupied by women, then it is necessarily forbidden (ḥarām) to men other than their kin. RELIGIOUS BASIS Though ―harem‖ does not denote women or women's quarters in the Qurʾān, there is a verse that has been taken as laying the foundation for the separation of men and women. It reads, in part: ―And when you ask them [feminine] for something, ask from behind a veil (ḥijāb); that makes for greater purity for your hearts and for theirs‖ (33:53). Although commentators agree that ―them‖ in this verse refers specifically to the Prophet's wives, they have usually generalized it to include all Muslim women, and have taken this verse as ordaining that men and women must be spatially separated (al-Qurṭubī 1364 A.H., xiv, 227). The degree to which such separation is fundamental to Islam has been debated. Fatima Mernissi argues that the Prophet's home in Medina ―created a space in which the distance between private life and public life was nullified,… in which the living quarters opened easily onto the mosque, and which thus played a decisive role in the lives of women and their relationship to politics‖ (1991, 113). However, there are prophetic traditions (ḥadīth) that suggest that this practice did not last – for example one that describes how the Prophet

62 stretched a curtain between Ṣafiyya and the people to emphasize that she was his wife; and another that relates how ʿĀʾisha refused to admit the brother of her foster uncle into her apartment following the revelation of the ―verse of the veil,‖ until the Prophet gave her leave on the grounds of kinship. There is even a tradition that admonishes men to ―Beware of entering upon the ladies‖ (al-Bukhārī 1979, 62: 22, 89; 40, 166; 159). The ―verse of the veil‖ is, incidentally, the origin of the word purdah – after the Persian word for ―curtain‖ or ―veil‖ – that denotes female seclusion in India. Relatedly, the women's quarters are known there as zenana , after zenān, Persian for ―women.‖ The segregation of women from non-maḥram men was generalized following the death of the Prophet, both under the leadership of the Caliph ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb (r. 634–44 C.E.), known for his strict views concerning women, and as a result of the growing influence of peoples with whom the Arabs came into contact through military conquest (Ahmed 1992, 41–78). HISTORY Since residences with separate quarters for women were the province of only the wealthiest few, it has historically been royal and imperial harems that have provided the paradigm for discussions and representations of the harem. Evidence suggests that the first royal harems appeared during the Umayyad period (661–750 C.E.); by the ʿAbbāsid period (750–1258 C.E.), they had become established not only as fact, but also as mythology. Thus, within less than a century of his death, the Caliph al-Mutawakkil (r. 847–61 C.E.) was related by al-Masʿūdī to have had 4,000 concubines in his harem, ―with all of whom he enjoyed conjugal relations‖ (1861–77, vii, 276); al-Khwārizmī went even further a few decades later, placing the number at 10,000 (1297 A.H., 137). Hārūn al-Rashīd (r. 786–809 C.E.), whose name is indelibly linked to tales of fabulous harems thanks to the Thousand and One Nights , is another illustrious ʿAbbāsidcaliph known to have had many concubines. But the importance of this period for the institution of the harem transcends caliphs and their concubines. Historically, the establishment of Islamic orthodoxy was deeply imbued with the mores and material reality of the ʿAbbāsid elite, and that is true in particular of gender relations. Thanks to successive military victories, upper-class ʿAbbāsid men had gained the ability to procure large numbers of female slaves unencumbered by the legal rights and protections enjoyed by freeborn Arab women. As foreign women thus became traded commodities, harems populated by chattels gradually replaced more equal matrimonial unions, heralding an acute decline in the status of women (Abbott 1946, 67). This is one of several ways in which the harem has played a determining role in the construction of gender in the Muslim world. To varying degrees, Islamic societies established after the collapse of the ʿAbbāsid dynasty continued the practice of keeping harems. For instance, the Mughal Emperor Akbar (r. 1556– 1605 C.E.) had many consorts, placed by his contemporary Abū al-Faḍl at ―more than 5,000.‖ Such numbers, however, are better understood as indicators of a ruler's stature and prestige; thus, Abū al-Faḍl suggests that ―the large number of women – a vexatious question even for great statesmen – furnished his majesty with an opportunity to display his wisdom‖ (1843– 1949, i, 44). This is doubtless why the fact that the Mamluk ruler al-Ashraf Ināl (r. 1453–61 C.E.) had only one wife, Zaynab, and no concubines led the biographer al-Sakhāwī to write: ―In that respect, he was indeed unique among kings‖ (n.d., xii, 44–5). Of course this statement pertains specifically to royal households; there is scant information on how the common people lived at the time, and what does exist tends to be circumstantial. For instance, Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Rāziq has argued on the basis of architectural evidence – oblique entrances and screened windows to block the view from the outside – that Mamluk women must have been secluded at all levels of society. While he also claims that this practice forced Mamluk-era builders to distinguish between the parts of the house reserved for women and those parts open to visitors, this view is not unanimously shared (1973, 178–81). One context in which residences – at least those of the wealthier families – were separated

63 into such sections was the Ottoman Empire. Known as harem (orharemlik) and selâmlık , women's quarters and ―greeting place,‖ this dichotomous spatial arrangement is commonly viewed as based strictly on gender; in fact, it is more aptly representative of a private/public cleavage, provided that this cleavage is not conceptualized in too close an analogy with its Western manifestations. On the one hand, the harem was an inner sanctuary for both male and female members of the household, while the selâmlık was a public stage for welcoming and entertaining guests of both genders; on the other hand, however, women engaged in social, economic, and even political activities from behind harem walls, suggesting that the word ―private‖ fails to capture the full range of experiences in which women partook there (Hegland 1991, al-Sayyid Marsot 1978). Interpreting these concepts at least for late Ottoman Istanbul, it is also worth noting that only 2.29 percent of all married men were polygynous; among those, furthermore, the average number of wives was only 2.08 (Duben and Behar 1991, 148–9). Thus, the harem was much more likely to be a monogamous (albeit extended) family's private quarters than a space dedicated to housing multitudes of women. The low numbers just quoted are not unusual; surveys indicate that the proportion of polygynous households in North Africa and South Asia does not exceed 5 percent. Although much higher proportions – sometimes over 40 percent – are reached in Sub-Saharan Africa, harems are not common there. In Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, communal ownership of land and the predominance of women in agricultural work make polygyny widespread, but seclusion impractical; by contrast, individual ownership of land and the predominance of male-dominated plough farming in Eurasia and North Africa make seclusion possible, but polygyny undesirable (Boserup 1970, 37–52, Goody 1973). This underscores the fact that ―harem‖ is principally a system of female seclusion, and not just polygyny by another name. Ultimately, as Islamic countries engaged in modernization attempts modeled after the West, women came to be viewed as gauges of success, and harems as embarrassing relics of a past best forgotten. It is no coincidence that a book describing such an experiment in Westernization is entitled Turkey without Harems (Olivero 1952). A PLETHORA OF IMAGES Throughout history, women have played a significant role in masculinist symbolic economies. Accordingly, the harem has figured prominently as a carrier of meaning, both in the Muslim world and elsewhere. And, as often happens with such laden concepts, it has had many different and sometimes contradictory meanings. One of the characteristics most commonly attributed to the harem in Western thought is oppression. In the works of Montesquieu and other Enlightenment thinkers, the harem was viewed as a microcosm of oriental despotism – the master representing the sultan, and the subservient women, his ―effeminate‖ subjects (Grosrichard 1979, 147–9). In nineteenth- century religious tracts, the harem was invoked to garner support for missionary work under the guise of restoring Eastern women's dignity through Christianity (Başcı 1998). In the writings of feminists such as Brontë and Wollstonecraft, it provided a tool with which both to mark the oppression of women as alien to civilized Europe, and to render feminism less threatening by displacing its target to distant lands (Zonana 1993). In the hands of anti- feminists, the confinement of harem women was used as a cautionary tale of what might happen to European women if they were granted the sexual freedoms that feminists supposedly demanded (Ridley 1983, 74). In contrast to the Western view of the harem as pure oppression, many Muslim historiographers represented it as an instrument of power and den of intrigue, claiming that royal harem women brought ruin upon their countries by usurping sovereignty which was rightfully the ruler's. In ʿAbbāsid, Fāṭimid, Ottoman, and many other contexts, misogyny thus provided a vocabulary of protest when economic crises or military defeats made it useful to find a scapegoat. In truth, these women's social and political activities were not the exception but the rule, as they performed key mediating functions between the ruler and his subjects

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(Peirce 1993). Another staple of Western discourse on the Orient was eroticism: the harem was represented as a monument to male scopic desire, a phallocratic fantasy where an army of women existed only to sexually service a unique master. Among the most common tropes in this discourse were the device of representing harem inmates as European, and therefore ―safe‖ for transgressing Western men; the tendency to portray them as unindividuated pluralities; the careful attention given to their grooming practices such as the application of henna and the depilation of pubic hair; the great popularity of images such as the Turkish bath and the slave market; and the wildly exaggerated notions of harem women's sexual desires, including accounts of lesbianism, bestiality, and masturbation (Schick 1999, 197–226). By contrast, some Muslim writers have approached the harem as an inviolable sanctum analogous to the Ḥaramayn – the holy sanctuaries of Mecca and Medina. The Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy has given the equation of domesticity with femininity the weight of divine law: writing that ―The Arabic namesakan, to denote the house, is related to the word sakina, peaceful and holy, while the word harim, which means ‗woman,‘ is related to haram, ‗sacred,‘ which denotes the family living quarters in the Arab house,‖ he warns against constructions that might violate the home's ―womanly inwardness‖ (1973, 57). Stripped of such masculinist essentialism, the idea that seclusion engenders a female spatial autonomy that affords Muslim women freedoms their Western counterparts have historically lacked is articulated by Leila Ahmed, who views the harem as a system that ―enables women to have frequent and easy access to other women in their community, vertically, across class lines, as well as horizontally,‖ and where ―women share living time and living space, exchange experience and information, and critically analyze – often through jokes, stories, or plays – the world of men‖ (1982, 524, 529). This echoes the observations of the eighteenth- century British travelers Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Lady Elizabeth Craven, that thanks to seclusion and veiling, Ottoman women ―have in reality more liberty than we have‖ (Montagu 1763, ii, 33–4). By its proximity to Europe, the Ottoman Empire was best situated to provide most of the stock images that came to constitute Western conceptions of the harem. In the seventeenth century, works like Michel Baudier's Histoire généralle du serrail, Ottaviano Bon's A Description of the Grand Signor's Seraglio, and Jean-Baptiste Tavernier's Nouvelle relation de l'intérieur du serrail du Grand Seigneur laid the basis for fantastic descriptions of imperial harems that remain as alive today as they were when first written. But these authors had never been inside a harem, and had to rely on native informants of dubious truthfulness, as well as each other. Though first-person narratives by the women who actually inhabited the harems are rare, they do exist and constitute valuable sources of information. For example, the Humāyūn-nāmah of Gulbadan Begum, daughter of the Mughal Emperor Bābur (r. 1526–30 C.E.) and sister of Humāyūn (r. 1530–56 C.E.), offers a fascinating account of the lives of royal harem women in India – as well as the political events during the reigns of the first three Mughal emperors. Most extant first-person narratives by harem women are more recent: Gayatri Devi's account of the Rajput court in Jaipur, Taj al-Saltana's memoirs of the Qājār court, and Leylâ Saz's account of the Ottoman court all belong to the early twentieth century (for a nineteenth- century view, see Fig. 5). SPACE AND GENDER CONSTRUCTION There is a great deal of variability in the ways the harem has been represented. But like any social institution, the harem is in essence a representation; and like the history of any social institution, its history is therefore largely that of its representation. Rather than searching for the true essence of the harem in religious texts or historical practices, it is more fruitful to conceptualize it primarily as a socially constructed space, often more imagined than physical, and to focus on how it has functioned to construct gender. Feminist geographers stress the mutually constitutive nature of space and gender, arguing that the differences in the ways men and women experience space are not only a consequence

65 of gender differences, but are also productive of them (McDowell 1999). As Doreen Massey writes, ―geography matters to the construction of gender, and the fact of geographical variation in gender relations… is a significant element in the production and reproduction of both imaginative geographies and uneven development‖ (1994, 2). Massey's reference to geography must be understood in the broadest sense, as encompassing spatial structures not only natural but also artificial, not only physical but also imagined. As a spatial construct, the harem has historically played a fundamental role in the construction and reproduction of gender – not just in the Muslim world, but also in the West, where it has been an omnipresent trope for centuries. Analyzing the relationship between space and alterity, David Sibley has shown that marginalization ―is associated not only with characterisations of the group but also with images of particular places, the landscapes of exclusion which express the marginal status of the outsider group‖ (1992, 107). Segregation reproduces itself: spaces of otherness become not only repositories of ―others,‖ but producers of alterity as well. Whether the locus of patriarchal oppression or an autonomous space of feminine liberty, the harem system has provided the spatial basis of gender difference. And since spatial differentiation often coexists with power differentiation, it has been implicated in the production and perpetuation of power assymetries along gender lines. But that necessarily means that it is also a site of resistance; indeed, the ongoing political struggle over veiling and seclusion can be viewed as an aspect of spatial politics, a contest over the restructuring of space. rv n Cem l Sch ck

^ Bibliography N. Abbott, Two queens of Baghdad. Mother and wife of Hārūn al-Rashīd, Chicago 1946. ʿAbd al-Rāziq, Les femmes au temps des Mamlouks en Égypte, Cairo 1973. Abū al-Faḍl b. Mubārak, Āʾīn-i Akbarī, trans. H. Blochmann, 3 vols., Calcutta 1873–1949. ——, Women and gender in Islam. Historical roots of a modern debate, New Haven, Conn. 1992. Abū Manṣūr Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Azharī, Tahdhīb al-lugha, ed. ʿA. Darwīsh, M. ʿA. al-Najjār, et al., 9 vols., Cairo 1964–6. Ahmed, Western ethnocentrism and perceptions of the harem, in Feminist studies 8 (1982), 521–34. P. Başcı, Shadows in the missionary garden of roses. Women of Turkey in American missionary texts, in Z. Arat (ed.), Deconstructing images of “the Turkish woman,‖ New York 1998, 101–23. Baudier, Histoire généralle du serrail, et de la cour du Grand Seigneur empereur des Turcs, Paris 1624. Bon, A description of the Grand Signor's seraglio, or Turkish emperours court, London 1650. Boserup, Woman's role in economic development, New York 1970. Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī, Ṣ;aḥīḥ, bilingual ed., trans. M. M. Khan, 9 vols., Chicago 1979. Lady E. Craven, A journey through the Crimea to Constantinople in a series of letters, London 1789. Duben and C. Behar, Istanbul households. Marriage, family and fertility, 1880–1940, Cambridge 1991. Fathy, Architecture for the poor. An experiment in rural Egypt, Chicago 1973. Originally Gourna. A tale of two villages, Cairo 1969. Majd al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Yaʿqūb al-Fayrūzābādī al-Shirāzī, Qāmūs al-muḥīṭ, 4 vols., Cairo 1289. Gayatri Devi and S. Rama Rau, A princess remembers. The memoirs of the Maharani of Jaipur,

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Philadelphia 1976. J. Goody, Polygyny, economy, and the role of women, in J. Goody (ed.), The character of kinship, Cambridge 1973, 175–90. Grosrichard, Structure du sérail. La fiction du despotisme asiatique dans l'Occident classique, Paris 1979. Gulbadan Begum, The history of Humāyūn (Humāyūnnāma), trans. A. S. Beveridge, London 1902. M. E. Hegland, Political roles of Aliabad women. The public-private dichotomy transcended, in N. R. Keddie and B. Baron (eds.), Women in Middle Eastern history. Shifting boundaries in sex and gender, New Haven, Conn. 1991, 215–30. [Ismāʿīl b. Ḥammād al-Jawḥarī], Mukhtār al-ṣiḥāḥ, comp. Muḥammad b. Abī Bakr b. ʿAbd al- Qādir al-Rāzī, Cairo 1287. Abū al-Faḍl Jamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Mukarram Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿArab al-muḥīṭ, ed. Y. Khayyāṭ, 7 vols., Beirut 1988. Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. ʿAbbās al-Khwārizmī, Rasāʾil, Istanbul 1297. Maçoudi [Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn al-Masʿūdī], Les prairies d'or [Murūj al-dhahab wa- maʿādin al-jawhar], bilingual ed., trans. C. Barbier de Meynard, 9 vols., Paris 1861–77. D. Massey, Space, place, and gender, Minneapolis 1994. L. McDowell, Gender, identity, and place. Understanding feminist geographies, Minneapolis 1999. F. Mernissi, The veil and the male elite. A feminist interpretation of women's rights in Islam, trans. M. J. Lakeland, Reading, Mass. 1991. [Lady M. Wortley Montagu], Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M–y W–y M–e. Written during her travels in Europe, Asia and Africa, 3 vols., London 1763. L. Olivero, Turkey without harems, London 1952. L. P. Peirce, The imperial harem. Women and sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire, New York 1993. Abū ʿAbdullāh Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Ansārī al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 20 vols., Cairo 1364. Ridley, Images of imperial rule, London 1983. Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Raḥman al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ li-ahl al-qarn al-tāsiʿ, 12 vols., Cairo 1935–7, repr. Beirut n.d. L. al-Sayyid Marsot, The revolutionary gentlewomen in Egypt, in L. Beck and N. Keddie (eds.), Women in the Muslim world, Cambridge, Mass. 1978, 261–76.

[Leylâ Saz], Souvenirs de Leïla Hanoum sur le harem impérial et les sultanes au XIXe siècle, trans. Y. Razi [Bel], Paris 1925. . C. Schick, The erotic margin. Sexuality and spatiality in alteritist discourse, London 1999. D. Sibley, Outsiders in society and space, in K. Anderson and F. Gale (eds.), Inventing places. Studies in cultural geography, Melbourne 1992, 107–22. Taj al-Saltana, Crowning anguish. Memoirs of a Persian princess from the harem to modernity, 1884– 1914, trans. A. Vanzan and A. Neshati, ed. A. Amanat, Washington 1993. J.-B. Tavernier, Nouvelle relation de l'intérieur du serrail du Grand Seigneur, contenant plusieurs singularitez qui jusqu'icy n'ont point esté mises en lumière, Paris 1675. Muḥammad Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī, Tāj al-ʿarūs min jawāhir al-qāmūs, 10 vols., Beirut n.d. Zonana, The sultan and the slave. Feminist orientalism and the structure of Jane Eyre, in V. A. Clark, R.-E. B. Joeres, and M. Sprengnether (eds.), Revising the word and the

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world. Essays in feminist literary criticism, Chicago 1993, 165–90. Citation: Sch ck , rv n Cem l . "Space: Harem." Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures. General Editor Suad Joseph . Brill, 2011. Brill Online. K.U. Leuven - University Library. 17 February 2011

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Sexualities and Queer Studies Interest in the various aspects of and possible common points between sexualities in the Islamic world through the ages has been a minor but continuous academic concern during the last three decades, boosted by the emergence of women's and gender studies, almost synchronously with gay/lesbian studies in the mid-1980s and then queer studies in the 1990s. Three groups of epistemological issues pertaining to gender and sexual identity in Islamic societies are addressed here: the constructionist vs. essentialist approach, the relevance of constructing ―Islamic sexualities‖ as a field of research, and the interactions between Western and traditional constructions of sexual identity in modern Islamic societies. This article will deal mainly with sources in Arabic, which remained the language of the cultured elite of the Islamic world until the twelfth century. Sources for other regions will be mentioned in the Bibliography. The field of women's studies, which deals primarily with contemporary societies from a sociological, ethnographic, or political perspective, has provided us with raw information on gender structures; however, studies devoted exclusively to male identity and culture have appeared only recently. Writers dealing with same-sex behavior in Islam or in Arab societies, although informative, often seem unaware of the deeper issues associated with the vocabulary they use. ―Homosexuality,‖ ―pederasty,‖ ―inversion,‖ and ―lesbianism‖ are used without questioning their meanings, while Arabic terms such as liwāṭ andtakhannuth are immediately equated or linked with ―homosexuality‖ and ―effeminacy‖ without further investigation. Although G.-H. Bousquet discusses the actual importance of zināʾ (profligacy) in North Africa, despite its harsh condemnation in fiqh, he merely notes that ―pederasty between children or young people does not cause great indignation… it is far from being unknown between adults. It is well known that a particular region of Tunisia is famous in this matter‖ (Bousquet 1953, 60). From a different perspective, al-Munajjid attempts to portray the sexual habits of the Umayyad and ʿAbbāsid eras, including same-sex relations, through anecdotes quoted in adab works. The author seems to understand these anecdotes as factual reflections of reality, concerning the whole of medieval society, without explaining that such words as liwāṭ do not bear the same meaning in classical and modern Arabic, whether because he assumes his readers' knowledge of the issue or, more likely, because he himself assumes that liwāṭ means homosexuality. The pervasiveness of sexual matters in adab causes him to call the ʿAbbāsid age the ―era of sex,‖ which he attributes to an alleged ―loss of religious feeling among the aristocracy‖ (al-Munajid 1958, 45) and, above all, to the ―Persian influence.‖ Whether hushed up, coyly alluded to, frowned upon, or rejected as products of foreign influence and past attitudes, same-sex relations have long been a blind spot in twentieth- century Arab sources. The subject is reluctantly addressed by Pellat in his 1983 Encyclopedia of Islam article, written from the perspective of normative discourses produced by Islamic societies concerning liwāṭ. With A. Bouhdiba's ground-breaking La sexualité en islam, however, sexuality in Islam was made into a specific, coherent object of study. More recent research has focused on the perceptions reflected in cultural production, essentially literature, whether classical or modern, but until recently there have been very few attempts at evaluating discursive praxis in the light of gender construction theory. Scholarly debates catalyzed by queer studies, primarily concerned with the relevance of the concept of (sexual) identity, are highly useful in the study of non-European cultures, which in turn could certainly benefit from academic debate on the construction of sexuality in Islamic societies. Interaction with non-European civilizations during the colonial era, particularly the Islamic ―East‖ as an epitomic cultural ―Other‖ (R. Burton's ―sotadic zone‖), is closely related to the Western construction of a homosexual identity, with the help of what R. C. Bleys calls the ethnographic imagination's mapping of the ―geography of perversion.‖ In return, this deconstruction may now apply to Islamic cultures and enrich a discipline that has been hitherto primarily concerned with early Greek and Roman homosexualities. The possible links

69 between pre-Islamic substratum conceptions of gender and same-sex relations, particularly Greek and Persian, and later Arabo-Islamic cultural features, have yet to be explored. The resemblances and differences between the classical Greek erastes/eromenos relationship and the Islamic poet/amrad (beardless youth) relation need to be studied as well. It has often been noted that the pervasiveness of homoerotic poetry begins with the ʿAbbāsid caliphate period (750–1259), when the Persian heritage merged into Islamic culture. But the mere fact that the love of boys is connected with shuʿūbiyya (pro-Persian claims) in some belles-lettristic works does not allow the researcher to attribute the appearance of ―homosexuality‖ in Islamic civilization to an outside influence. Much research has been devoted to the extent to which Western definitions of homosexuality and, recently, the gay liberation movement, have influenced Islamic societies' perception of same-sex behaviors, as well as perceptions by ―homosexuals‖ of themselves. An identity closely linked with heterosexuality probably first appeared in the nineteenth century during the age of encounters between colonial Europe and the Islamic world. The colonial era's influence on gender construction in Islamic countries often resulted in the imposition of a strict conception of heterosexuality, sometimes in a Victorian moral code that was eagerly and rapidly islamicized. B. Dunnes's work on the normalization of sexuality in Egypt shows how the colonial power pressured reluctant local authorities to outlaw homosexual practices. A similar process occurred in India and is analyzed by S. Bhaskaran. The impact of nineteenth-century European morality on the construction of Islamic sexualities is also underlined by A. Najmabadi in her work on Qājār Iran. Following Michel Foucault, particularly the English translation of the first volume of his Histoire de la sexualité, researchers began to look at how sexuality is historically constructed in discourse, and how culture normalizes sexual acts so as to define genders and limits. Historians have sought to analyze the construction of homosexuality, while literary scholars explore the various bonds that define male identity, and demonstrate how each culture at different periods has conceived of sexuality. These works show how, during a long period of maturation beginning in fifteenth-century Europe and gaining speed from the eighteenth century on, ―homosexuality was historically invented as a specific category and opposed to a norm that mainly defines itself by what it excludes‖ (Eribon 1998, 15), the assumption being that heterosexuality is not so much a natural or universal concept and way of living one's sexuality as a constructed definition of gender, excluding same-sex attraction and intercourse. Historians regarded as essentialists, on the other hand, have considered same-sex attraction to be a universal minoritarian paradigm, regardless of its crystallization as an independent concept in history, that can rightfully be subsumed as ―homosexuality‖ or ―gayness‖; they have subsequently endeavored to examine its developments at various periods and locations. Since the 1990s, queer theory can be seen as a later development of the constructionist approach, aimed at severing gay and lesbian studies from a minoritarian and identitarian approach. Although such epistemological issues have seldom been addressed per se in studies pertaining to the Islamic domain, most authors have noticed that both normative texts (Qurʾān, haḍīth, fiqh) and perceptions of sexuality (as reflected in literature or in interviews during fieldwork) deal primarily with acts linked to penetration (anal or vaginal) or behaviors seen as substitutes for penetration: intercrural intercourse (tafkhīdh), masturbation (nikāḥ al-yad, dalakor jald ʿumayra), and intervaginal intercourse (saḥq, literally ―pounding,‖ an analogy being made with the crushing of saffron leaves), with a puzzling lack of mention of oral- genital acts. All these forms of behavior are considered through the prism of licitness by doctors of the law, or through the prism of social and literary acceptability by littérateurs, but classical authorities never derive from them the definition of a minoritary identity. The first convincing attempt from a constructivist perspective to study the medieval understanding of sexual irregularities was made by E. K. Rowson, who highlighted a number of essential points concerning medieval perception of genders and sexual behaviors in his work on medieval Arabic vice lists. Modern prioritization of sexual object choice over sexual

70 activity does not fit this perception, which sees the adult male as penetrator and the female as penetrated. Within this framework, the preference of an other-sex or same-sex partner for the male is a matter of choice (both options are illicit outside the frame of nikāḥ) whereas the preference for the passive position in anal intercourse (called ḥulāq until the ninth century, then ubna or bighāʾ) is always perceived as an illness, and is widely discussed in adab literature, often in amusing fashion. Female refusal to accept male penetration is equally culpable. Parallels are drawn between active anal intercourse (liwāṭ) and fornication (zināʾ): they are both illicit but expectable attempts by the male to satisfy his instincts as penetrator whereas a beardless youth's acceptance of the role of passive partner for money, provided he derives no pleasure from it, is socially acceptable, though formally outlawed by religion. It should be stressed, however, that such analysis should not be seen as a key to understanding contemporary attitudes toward same-sex relationships, nor as a definitive refutation of essentialist views. The concept of bisexuality, only recently discussed in academic works, could also be used to describe some same-sex behaviors. More recently, the AIDS epidemic has focused the attention of researchers on sex workers and their customers. Some articles in the Aggleton collection on male prostitution and AIDs, such as S. Khan's investigation of the South Asian zone or Boushaba's study of Morocco, suggest the idea of bisexuality might help build a slightly more balanced idea of same-sex relations in modern Islamic societies. Particularly interesting is the case of khināth or takhannuth, which can be translated variously as effeminacy, transvestism, transsexualism, or hermaphroditism – a puzzling inconsistency that is solved when one considers that the term refers to various failings to achieve masculinity in its behavioral features. In his essay on the ―effeminates‖ of early Medina, Rowson argues that it was not until the ninth century that khināth was associated with homosexual intercourse. Although interesting studies on gender-crossing are included in Murray and Roscoe, there have been no monographs until now on the different realizations of khināth in Islamic societies. U. Wikan discusses at large the Omani khanīths she observed during fieldwork in the 1970s. The term is almost unattested in classical Arabic, ignored by Ibn Manẓūr in the Lisān al-ʿArab, and barely appears as an adjective in a verse by the fourteenth-century poet al-Aʿraj al-Ṣāfī, quoted by al-Ṣafadī in al-Wāfī bi-al-wafayāt, in which the beloved is called ―Ẓaby khanīth al-dalāl‖ (a kid withkhanīth coyness). It can be noted that modern East Arabian dialects use the term khanīth as a derogatory insult for the passive partner in homosexual intercourse, but the transvestite/transsexual figure described is highly reminiscent of the early Islamic mukhannath, with the exception of homosexual prostitution, a feature of the modern khanīth unmentioned in discourse concerning the mukhannath. Wikan's conclusion that ―it is the sexual act, not the sexual organs, which is fundamentally constitutive of gender‖ allows us to understand why ―the man who enters in a homosexual relationship in the active role in no way endangers his male identity‖ (Wikan 1982, 175). The high value placed on female purity renders seeking the company of a khanīth socially ambiguous: both a greater individual shame than seeking forbidden intercourse with a woman, through female prostitution or, worse, through intercourse with a married woman, and a lesser social shame given that it does not require the female to break sexual interdicts. The Omani institution of khanīth therefore sheds light not only on Islamic societies alone, but on the statute of same-sex relations in any society that puts strong emphasis on female virginity and chastity. For the same reason, khawals, male dancers in nineteenth-century Egypt who performed dressed as women, eventually replaced female dancers entirely after Muḥammad ʿAlī Pasha ordered a ban on female prostitutes and dancers in 1836. Research on the variations and permanencies of the terminology of same-sex relations in various languages used in Islamic countries is needed. In the case of Arabic, it is probable that neologisms such as shudhūdh jinsī, sexual deviationism (early twentieth century?),

71 and mithliyya jinsiyya, homosexuality (late 1990s), were coined to translate the European concepts of homosexuality. English words such as ―gay‖ (and to a lesser extent ―queer‖) have now become part of the usual vocabulary in the main urban centers of the Islamic world. But why and how did they partly replace traditional terms? In the Arabic-speaking world, when were the former meanings of lūṭī (enamoured of young men seeking the active role in anal intercourse), muʾājir (male prostitute),maʾbūn (grown man seeking the passive role in anal intercourse), musāḥiqa (woman flaunting penis-hate and practicing tribadism), and so forth, lost and replaced either by new meanings (lūṭī understood as a synonym of male homosexual, siḥāq identified with lesbianism) or by borrowed terms? To what extent do these neologisms cover the precise domain of homosexuality in mainstream Western culture? Do modern and ancient dialects (and urban slang or underworld languages) retain in their terminology the remembrance of premodern gender constructions, and are these consistent with elite adabconceptions? Language partly allows a tempering of the constructionist idea of a dividing line between sexual acts rather than sexual preferences in classical Islamic societies: the repetition of homosexual acts, even by the active partner, might turn a mere amusement or ersatz into an illness, or something that could remotely evoke an identity; moreover, when a man often sleeps with other men, one cannot be sure of what really takes place between them, and as al- Tawḥīdī mischievously said of the tenth-century Persian vizier Ibn ʿAbbād, ―kam ḥarbatin fī al- qawmi ṣārat jaʿbatan‖ (many a spear has become a quiver). Frédéric Lagrange Bibliography Primary sources in Arabic – classical period All information concerning the early period is to be sought in eighth-century and later sources, and commands caution in terms of its historical value. Keyword searches (liwāṭ, siḥāq, ubna, ḥulāq, etc.) can be conducted on the www.alwaraq.com site, which offers more than a million pages of classical Arabic works online. Although awkward to use, A. Schmitt's Bio- Bibliography on male-male sexuality and eroticism in Muslim societies (Berlin 1995) is useful. Same-sex relations are widely mentioned in tenth-century adab works such as al- Iṣfahānī, Kitāb al-Aghānī, al-Rāghib al-Aṣbahānī, Muḥāḍarāt al-udabāʿ, al-Qāḍī al-Jurjānī, al- Muntakhab min kināyāt al-udabāʾ, pseudo-Tawḥīdī, al-Risāla al-Baghdādiyya, etc. Sukhf (ribaldry) related literature at later periods offers many examples of same-sex erotica, the most famous of which is the thirteenth-century al-Tīfāshī, Nuzhat al-albāb. See also shadow plays by Ibn Dāniyāl, fourteenth-century al-Nawājī, or even eighteenth-century al-Shirbīnī, Hazz al-quḥūf. Primary sources – internet ―Gay Islamic‖ websites calling for a reinterpretation of Qurʾānic verses condemning the People of Loth include www.al-fatiha.net, www.queerjihad.org, andwww.angelfire.com/ca2/queermuslims. Many gay and lesbian groups of Islamic cultural heritage in the United States and Europe have sites. See, for instance, the sites of the Gay and Lesbian Arab Society (http://www.glas.org/), Gays and Lesbians in African Studies (http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/ASA/glas.html), Kelma (http://www.kelma.org/kelma.html), Gay Maroc (http://gay.ma.tripod.com/fr/), Homan (www.ho-man-iran.org), and Sangat for South-Asian gays (http://members.aol.com/youngal/sangat.html). Similar groups have appeared in a more timid manner in Muslim countries and countries with important Muslim communities such as Malaysia. See, for example, the site of Lambda Magazine,www.qrd.org/www/world/europe/turkey/dergi/index.html, and that of Out, www.outinmalaysia.com/index1.html. Further study of the impact of the internet on gay attitudes in Islamic countries (through personal computers or internet cafés) is much needed. Secondary sources GENERAL

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D. F. P. Aggleton (ed.), Men who sell sex. International perspectives on male prostitution and AIDS, Philadelphia 1998. R. C. Bleys, The geography of perversion. Male-to-male sexual behaviour outside the West and the ethnographic imagination 1750–1918, New York 1995. Bouhdiba, La sexualité en islam, Paris 1975. ——, Sexuality in Islam, trans. A. Sheridan, London 1985. M. Chebel, L'esprit de sérail, Paris 1988. D. Eribon, Traverser les frontières, in D. Eribon (ed.), Les études gay et lesbiennes, Paris 1998, 11– 25. M. Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité. La volonté de savoir, Paris 1976. ——, The history of sexuality, trans. R. Hurley, New York 1980. D. F. Greenberg, The construction of homosexuality, Chicago 1988. M. Ghoussoub and E. Sinclair-Webb (eds.), Imagined masculinities, London 2000. E. Kosofsky, Construire des significations queer, in D. Eribon (ed.), Les études gay et lesbiennes, Paris 1998, 109–16. G. H. A. Juynboll, Siḥāq (tribadism) in Encyclopédie de l'islam, 1997. S. O. Murray and W. Roscoe (eds.), Islamic homosexualities, New York 1997. Pellat, Liwāṭ (sodomy), in Encyclopédie de l'islam, 1983. SOUTH ASIA S. Asthana and R. Oostvogels, The social construction of male ―homosexuality‖ in India. Implications for HIV transmission and prevention, in Social Science and Medicine 52 (2001), 707– 21. S. Khan, Through a window darkly. Men who sell sex to men in India and Bangladesh, in P. Aggleton (ed.), Men who sell sex, Philadelphia 1999, 195–212. ——, Culture, sexualities, and identities. Men who have sex with men in India, in Journal of Homosexuality 40 (2001), 99–115. R. Vanita and S. Kidwai (eds.), Queering India. Same-sex love in India. Readings from literature and history, New York 2000. SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA W. Roscoe and S. O. Murray (eds.), Boy-wives and female-husbands. Studies of African homosexualities, New York 1998. Vangroenweghe, Sida et sexualité en Afrique, Anvers 2000. See also Dakan (1997), a film by Guinean director Mohamed Camara, the first African film to deal with homosexuality. MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA G.-H. Bousquet, L'éthique sexuelle de l'islam, Paris 1953. Dunne, Sexuality and the ―civilizing process‖ in modern Egypt, Ph.D. diss., Washington, D.C. 1996. Hayes, Queer nations. Marginal sexualities in the Maghreb, Chicago 2000. Ibrāhīm Maḥmūd, al-Mutʿa al-maḥẓūra, al-shudhūdh al-jinsī fī tārīkh al-ʿArab (The forbidden pleasure. Homosexuality in Arab history), Beirut 2000.

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G. Menicucci, Unlocking the Arab celluloid closet. Homosexuality in Egyptian film, in Middle East Report 206 (1998), 32–6. Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Munajjid, al-Ḥayāt al-jinsiyya ʿind al-ʿArab (Sex life of the Arabs), Beirut 1958. Najmabadi, Male lions and female suns. The gendered tropes of Iranian modernity, University of California Press, Berkeley (forthcoming). K. Rowson, The effeminates of early Medina, in Journal of the American Oriental Society 111 (1991), 671–93. ——, The categorization of gender and sexual irregularity in medieval Arabic vice lists, in J. Epstein and K. Straub (eds.), Body guards. The cultural politics of gender ambiguity, New York 1991, 50–79. Sprachman, Suppressed Persian. An anthology of forbidden literature, Costa Mesa 1995. U. Wikan, Behind the veil in Arabia. Women in Oman, Baltimore 1982. W. Wright, Jr. and E. K. Rowson (eds.), Homoeroticism in classical Arabic literature, New York 1997. ISRAEL Sumakai Fink, Independence Park. The lives of gay men in Israel, Palo Alto 1999. Walzer, Between Sodom and Eden. A gay journey through today's changing Israel, New York 2000. CITATION: Lagrange, Frédéric. "Sexualities and Queer Studies." Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures. General Editor Suad Joseph . Brill, 2011. Brill Online. K.U. Leuven - University Library. 17 February 2011

74 al-Hās h imiyya , name of the administrative capital of the ʿAbbāsids before the building of Bagh dād, referring not to a single place but to wherever the Caliph chose to establish his residence. The confusion as to the location of Hāsh imiyya stems from the existence of more than one place of that name, as each in turn was occupied for a period as the official residence of the ʿAbbāsid Caliph. The founder of the dynasty, al-Saffāḥ (d. 132/754), after leaving al-Kūfa, settled at a site opposite Ḳaṣr Ibn Hubayra [q.v.], where he built a city and named it Hāsh imiyya (situated midway between al-Kūfa and Bagh dād; cf. Yāḳūt, iv, 946—confuses with Madīnat b. Hubayra; Iṣṭakh rī, BGA, i, 85; Ibn Ḥawḳal, BGA, ii, 166; Muḳaddasī, BGA, iii, 53, 115, 130i). Previously the Caliph had begun construction at Ḳaṣr Ibn Hubayra itself, but he abandoned this location when the¶ populace, in preference to Hāsh imiyya, persisted in referring to the town by the name of its founder, the last Umayyad governor of ʿIrāḳ, Yazīd b. ʿUmar b. Hubayra. This same Yazīd originally built a city on the Euphrates near al-Kūfa, but was forced to abandon this site by order of the Umayyad Caliph Marwān II (presumably MadīnatIbn Hubayra, which Ṭabarī and Yāḳūt confuse with Ḳaṣr Ibn Hubayra; cf. Annales, iii/1, 80, 183; Muʿdj am , i, 680, iii, 208; iv, 123, 946; Balādh urī, Futūḥ, 287). In 134/752, al-Saffāḥ moved once again and established his capital near al-Anbār, formerly the Persian city Fīrūz Sābūr, but he died in 136/754 before completing it (Futūḥ, 287; Yaʿḳūbī, ii, 429- 30;Buldān, 237; Ibn Ḳutayba, K. al-Maʿārif, 189; Dīnawarī, Akh bār , 372-3; Ibn Rustah, BGA, vii, 109; Ṭabarī, iii/1, 80, 87; Masʿūdī, Tanbīh, 339; K. al-ʿUyūn in Fragmenta Historicorum Arabicorum, i, 211). The authorities report that Manṣūr, who now became Caliph, established his residence at a new location in the general vicinity of al-Kūfa which, according to al-Ṭabarī, was adjacent to MadīnatIbn Hubayra (Yaʿḳūbī, ii, 450; al-Ṭabarī, iii/1, 271, 272, 319). This site is not to be confused with Ḳaṣr Ibn Hubayra, which, as previously noted, was situated midway between al- Kūfa and Bagh dād. These accounts seem to suggest that the centre of al-Manṣūr's administration was the city near al-Kūfa which was first built and later abandoned by the governor of Marwān II. There were, therefore, no less than four ʿAbbāsid capitals: the three capitals of al-Saffāḥ at Ḳaṣr Ibn Hubayra, at the site opposite that town, and at al-Anbār, and also the capital of Manṣūr at MadīnatIbn Hubayra. The proclivity of the ʿAbbāsid Caliphs for this constant moving is still unexplained; but it does suggest that they were searching for a site which could satisfy certain particular needs. Following a riot in the court of his palace, Manṣūr began the journey which led to the founding of Bagh dād. In 146/763, the administrative agencies of the government were moved to the new location signifying the formal transfer of the capital (al-Ṭabarī, iii/1, 129-33, sub anno 141/758, 271, 418 ff. also gives dates 136, 7; Ḵhaṭīb, Cairo ed., i, 67 = Paris ed., 2; Muʿdj am , i, 680). (J. Lassner) Bibliography In addition to the works mentioned in the text: T. Nöldeke, Sketches from Eastern History, London 1892, 123-30 Streck, Die alte Landschaft Babylonien, 54 G. Le Strange, Baghdad during the Abbasid Caliphate, London 1900, 6-10 Reitemeyer, Die Städtegründungen der Araber im Islam, Leipzig 1912, 41 ff., 49 J. Lassner, Some speculative thoughts on the search for an ʿAbbāsid capital, in MW, lv (1965), 135-7

see also ḳAṣR IBN HUBAYRA. [Print Version: Volume III, page 265, column 2] CITATION: Lassner, J. "al-Hāsh imiyya." Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Edited by: P. Bearman; , Th. Bianquis; , C.E. Bosworth; , E. van Donzel; and W.P. Heinrichs. Brill, 2011. Brill Online. K.U.

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Bag h dād . Bagh dād is situated on both banks of the Tigris, at 33° 26 18'' Lat. N. and 44° 23 9'' Long. E. respectively. Founded in the 8th century A.D. it continued to be the centre of the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate till its fall, and the cultural metropolis of the Muslim world for centuries. After 1258 it became a provincial centre and remained under the Ottomans the centre of the Bagh dād wilāyet. In 1921 it became the capital of modern ʿIrāḳ.

^ History. The name Bagh dād is pre-Islamic, related to previous settlements on the site. Arab authors realise this and as usual look for Persian origins (cf. Maḳdisī, al-Badʾ, iv, 101; Ibn Rusta, 108). They give different hypothetical explanations, the most common of which is ―given by God‖ or ―Gift of God‖ (or the Idol). (see Ḵhaṭīb, i, 58-9 (Cairo); Yāḳūt, i, 678-9; Abu 'l-Fidāʾ, i, 292; Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Manāḳib, 6; Bakrī, i, 169; Ibn al-Faḳīh, Mash had MS. f. 29 b). Modern writers generally tend to favour this Persian derivation (cf. Salmon, Introduction, 23-4; Le Strange, Baghdad, 10-11; Streck, Landschaft, i, 49-50; Herzfeld, Paikuli, 153; W. Budge,By Nile and Tigris, i, 178; JRIA., i, 46-94). Others tend to give the name an Aramaic origin meaning, ―the home or enclosure of sheep‖ (Y. Ghanīma and A. Karmalī in Lugh at al-ʿArab, iv, 27; vi, 748. Note Tabarī's reference to Sūḳal-Baḳar, ―the cow market‖, on the site of Bagh dād (iii, 277). Delitzsch favours an Aramaic origin without explaining the meaning (Delitzsch, Paradies, 206, 238). A legal document on the time of Hammurabi (1800 B.C.) mentions the city of Bagdadu (Schorr, Altbabylonische Rechtsurkunden No. 197 l. 17.) This indicates that the name was in use before Hammurabi and definitely before any possible Persian influence. Bag and Hu are rendered by the same sign. However a boundary stone from the time of the Kassite King Nazimaruttaš (1341-1316 B.C.) mentions the city Pilari on the bank of ―Nah. Sharri‖ in the district of Bagdadi (De Morgan, Délégation en perse, i, 86-92). This with the mention of Bagdatha several times in the Talmud makes Bag the more acceptable reading (Obermeyer, Landschaft Babylonien, 1929, 147 ff.; Jewish Encyc., Baghdad). Another boundary stone of the reign of the Babylonian king Mardukapaliddin (1208-1195 B.C.) mentions the city Bagh dād (Délégation en Perse, iii, 32-39). Adad-nirari II (911-891 B.C.) plundered places amongst which was Bagda(du) (Synchronistic History, iii L. 12 = K BI, 200). In the 8th century B.C. Bagh dād became an Aramaean settlement. Tiglatpilasser III (745-727 B.C.) mentions Bagdadu in connexion with an Aramaean tribe (Delitzsch, Paradies, 238). From it is only fair to admit that the origins of the name are not clear. The fact that Bag was adopted by the Iranians about the 8th century B.C. to denote ―God‖, and that it figured in personal names does not change the situation (Reallexikón, i, 341). Manṣūr called his city Madīnatal-Salām (city of peace), in reference to paradise (Ḳurʾān, vi, 127; x, 26). This was the official name on documents,¶ coins, weights etc. Variations of the name, esp. Bugh dān and appelations such as Madīnaṭ Abī Ḏja ʿfar, MadīnatManṣūr, Madīnat al- Ḵhulafā ʾ and Al-Zawrāʾ were used (Ibn al-Faḳīh, f. 29b; Yāḳūt, i, 678; Ibn Rusta, 108). Zawrāʾ seems to be an old name as the Fakh rī states (al-Fakh rī , 145; cf. Mustawfī, Nuzha, 41). For later explanations see Masʿūdī, al-Tānbīh (Cairo), 312; Yāḳūt, ii, 954). Arab authors state that Manṣūr built his city where many pre-Islamic settlements existed, the most important of which was the village of Bagh dād , (see Ṭabarī, ii, 277; and i, 2067; Ibn Ḏjawzī, Manākib, 7; Yaʿḳūbī, Buldan, 237), on the west bank of the Tigris north of Ṣarāt (Ṭabarī, iii, 277). Some consider it of Badūryā and refer to its annual fair (Ḵhaṭīb, i, 25-7; Ibn Ḏjawzī, Manaḳib, 6; Yaʿḳūbī, Buldān, 275) and this would help to explain why Karkh was later the quarter for merchants. A number of old settlements, chiefly Aramaean, were on the western side in the vicinity of Karkh . Among these is Ḵhaṭṭābiyya (by Bābal-Sh ām), Sh arafāniyya, and north of it Wardāniyya which

77 became within al-Ḥarbiyya quarter, Sūnāya near the junction of Ṣarāt with the Tigris (later al- ʿAtīḳa) Ḳaṭuftā at the corner where the Rufayl canal flows into the Tigris, and Barātha where the Karkh āya canal branches from the ʿĪsā canal. Three small settlements were between the Karkh āya canal and Ṣarāt, i.e., Sāl, Warthālā (later Ḳallāʿīn quarter) and Banāwrā. Karkh itself (Aramaic karkh a meaning a fortified town) takes its name from an earlier village, which Persian traditions attribute to Sh āpūr II (309-379 A.D.) (Mustawfī, 40; see Ṭabarī, iii, 278 9; Ḵhaṭīb, 27, 33, Ibn al-Ath īr, ii, 342-3, Yāḳūt, iii, 613 and Ibn al-Ḏjaw zī, Manāḳib, 7). According to Xenophon the Achaemenids possessed vast parks in the district of Bagh dād (at Sittake). Arab authors refer to two such gardens (cf. Ḵhaṭīb, 28; Mustawfī, 40). Near the mouth of the ʿĪsā canal, there was a Sasanian Palace (ḳaṣrSābūr) where Manṣūr later built a bridge. The old Ḳanṭara (al-ḳanṭara al-ʿatīḳa) across the Ṣarāt canal, south-west of the Kūfā gate, was Sasanian. On the eastern side, Sūḳ al-Th alāt h ā ʾ and Ḵhayzurān cemetery were pre-Islamic. There were some monasteries in the area which are pre-Islamic like Dayr Mārfathion (al-Dayr al-ʿAtīḳ) where al-Ḵhuld palace was built, Dayr Bustān al-Ḳuss, and Dayr al-Ḏjāt h alīḳ near which Sh ayk h Maʿrūf was buried. (Ṭabarī, iii, 274, 277; Ibn al-Faḳīh, f. 36-37a; Ḵhaṭī b, 46, 28; Masʿūdī, al-Tanbīh, 312; Ḏhahabī, Duwal, i, 76; Mustawfī, 40). None of these ancient settlements attained any political or commercial importance, so that the city of Manṣūr may be regarded as a new foundation.Bagh dād is very often confused with Babylon by European travellers in the middle ages and sometimes with Seleucia, and appears in their accounts as Babel, Babellonia, etc. The erroneous application of the later name to Bagh dād is likewise common in the Talmudic exegetic literature of the Babylonian Geonim (in the ʿAbbāsid period) as well as in later Jewish authors. Pietro della Valle who was in Bagh dād (1616-7) was the first to refute this error, widely spread in his time. Down to the 17th century the name Bagh dād was generally known in the West in the corrupted form Baldach (Baldacco) which might be derived from the Chinese form of the name (cf. Bretschneider, Medieval Researches, i, 138; ii, 124; Travels of Marco Polo, ed. Frampton, 29, 126). The ʿAbbāsids turned to the east and looked for a new capital to symbolise their dawla. The first caliph, al-Saffāḥ, moved from Kūfa to Anbār. Al-¶ Manṣūr moved to Hāsh imiyya near Kūfa, but he soon realised that the turbulent pro-ʿAlid Kūfa was a bad influence on his army, while Hāsh imiyya was vulnerable as was proved by the Rāwandiyya rising (cf. Yāḳut, i, 680-1; Ṭabarī, iii, 271-2; Fakh rī (Cairo), 143). He looked, therefore, for a strategic site. After careful exploration, he chose the site of Bagh dād for military, economic and climatic considerations. It stood on a fertile plain where cultivation was good on both sides of the river. It was on the Ḵhurāsān road and was a meeting place of caravan routes, and monthly fairs were held there, and thus provisions could be plentiful for army and people. There was a net of canals which served cultivation and could be ramparts for the city. It was in the middle of Mesopotamia, and enjoyed a temperate and healthy climate and was fairly safe from mosquitoes (Yaʿḳūbī, 235-8; Ṭabarī, iii, 271-5; Yāḳūt, i, 679-80;Manāḳib, 7-8; Muḳaddasī, Aḥsan al-Taḳāsīm, 119-120; Ibn al-Ath īr, v, 426-7; Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, 7; Yaʿḳūbī, ii, 449; Fakh rī , 143-5). Apocryphal stories about its merits and al-Manṣūr's destiny to build it found circulation later (cf. Yaʿḳūbī, Buldān, 237; Fakh rī , 144; Ṭabarī (Cairo), vi, 234-5; Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Manāḳib, 7-8). Bagh dād was to succeed Babylon, Seleucia and Ctesiphon and to outshine them all.

Yaʿḳūbī (278-891), and Ibn al-Faḳīh (290/903), give early detailed descriptions of Bagh dād by quarters, while Suhrāb (c. 900 A.D.) describes the net of canals in the area. The city with its fortifications and its inner plan looks like a big fortress. There was first a deep ditch, 40 dh irā ʿ (= 20.27 m.) wide, surrounding the city, then a quay of bricks, then the first wall 18 dh irā ʿ (= 9 m.), at the base, followed by a space 56.9 metres in width (= 100 dh irā ʿ, see for measures Rayyis,Ḵharād j ) left empty for defensive purposes. Then came the main wall of sun- burnt bricks—34.14 metres high, 50.2 metres wide at the bottom and 14.22 metres at the top—

78 with great towers numbering 28 between each two gates except those between the Kūfa and Baṣra gates which numbered 29. On each of the gates a dome was built to overlook the city, with quarters below for the guards. Then came a space 170.70 metres wide where houses were built. Only officers and loyal followers (mawālī) were allowed to build here, and yet each road had two strong gates which could be locked. Then came a simple third wall enclosing the large inner space where only the caliph's palace (Bābal-Ḏhahab), the great mosque, the dīwāns, houses of the sons of the caliph, and twosaḳīfas, one for the chief of the guard and the other for the chief of police, were built. To ensure control of the city and facilitate communications internally and with caravan routes externally, the city was divided into four equal parts divided by two roads running from its equidistant gates. The Ḵhurāsāngate (also called Bābal-Dawla) was to the N.E., the Baṣragate to the S.E., the Syria gate to the N.W. and the Kūfagate to the S.W. To get to the inner circle, one had to cross the ditch and to pass five doors, two at the outer wall, two huge doors at the great wall and one door at the inner wall (see Yaʿḳūbī, Buldān, i, 238-242; Ṭabarī, iii, 322-3, Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Manāḳib, 9-10; Ḵhaṭīb, 9-12; Ibn al-Ath īr, v, 427-8, 439; Yaʿḳūbī, ii, 449; Ibn al-Faḳīh, MS, f. 33a). Ancient imperial traditions are also noticeable in the plan. The seclusion of the caliph from his people, the grandiose plan of the palace and the mosque to show the greatness of the new dawla, the division of the people in separate quarters which could be¶ locked and guarded at night—all testify to that. Manṣūr granted some devoted followers and captains tracts of land by the gates outside the city, and gave his soldiers the outskirts (arbāḍ) to build and granted some of his kinsfolk outlying places (aṭrāf) (Yaʿḳūbī, ii, 449-50; cf. Ibn Ḥawḳal, i, 240). The glory of the Round City was the Green Dome, 48.36 metres high, towering over the palace with a mounted horseman on top. It fell in 329/941 on a stormy night, probably struck by a thunderbolt (Ṣūlī, Rāḍī, 229, Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, vi, 317-18; Manāḳib, 11; Abu 'l-Maḥāsin, iii, 270; Ḵhaṭīb, 11). However its walls lasted much longer, and they finally crumbled in 653/1255 A.D. (Ibnal-Fuwaṭī, 303, SibṭIbn al-Ḏjawzī, Mirʾātal-Zamān, viii, 67). Marble and stone were used in the building of the Bābal-Ḏhahab, and gold decorated its gate. It continued to be the official residence for about half a century, and though Rash īd neglected it, Amīn added a new wing to it and built a ―maydān‖ around it. During the siege of Bagh dād in 198/814 it suffered much damage. Then it ceased to be the official residence and was neglected (cf. Ibnal- Fuwaṭī, 303). The mosque (Ḏjāmi ʿManṣūr) was built after the palace and thus was slightly divergent from the Ḳibla (cf. Ṭabarī (Cairo), vi, 265, Ibn al-Ath īr, v, 439). In 191/807 Rash īd demolished it, and rebuilt it with bricks. It was enlarged in 260-1/875 and finally in 280/893. Muʿtaḍid added another court to it and renewed parts of it (Muntaẓam, v, 21, 143). The mosque had a minaret (Ḵhaṭīb, v, 125) which was burnt in 303/915 (Muntaẓam, vi, 130), but was rebuilt again (cf. Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Muntazam, vii, 284). It continued to be the great mosque of Bagh dād during the period of the caliphate. It was flooded in 653/1255 and survived this and the Mongol invasion.

The plan of Bagh dād reflects social ideas. Each quarter had a responsible personage, and generally had a homogeneous group, ethnically (Persian, Arabs, Ḵhwārizmians), or by vocation. Soldiers had their homes outside the walls, generally north and west of the city, while merchants and craftsman had their centres south of the Ṣarat in Karkh (see Ibn al- Faḳīh, MS. f. 37b; 33b, 29b). Markets play a prominent part in the plan of Bagh dād . Initially, along each of the four ways from the great wall to the inner wall were high arched rooms (ṭāḳāt) where shops were put, thus constituting four markets (cf. Ṭabarī, iii, 322). Besides, the Caliph ordered that each of the four sections outside the wall should have ample space for markets, so that each section should have a great market (Yaʿḳūbī, Buldān, 242). Safety considerations prompted Manṣūr in

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157/773 to order the removal of markets from the Round City of Karkh . He wanted to keep the turbulent populace away from the city and to ensure that gates of quarters are not left open at night for the markets, and to guard against possible spies infiltrating into the city. He drew a plan for the markets to be built between the Ṣarāt and ʿĪsā canals (Ṭabarī, iii, 324-5; Ibn al- Ḏjawzī, Manāḳib, 13-4; Yāḳūt, iv, 254). Each craft or trade had its separate market or road (darb). Among the markets of Karkh , were the fruit market, the cloth market, the food market, the money—changers' market, the market of bookshops, the sheep market (Yaʿḳūbī, Buldān, 241, 245, 246, 253; Isṭakh rï, 84, Ibn Ḥawḳal, 242; Ḵhaṭīb, 22, 31, 67, Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Manāḳib, 26-28). With the growth of the city we hear of merchants from Ḵhurāsān and Transoxania, Marw, Balkh , Bukh ārā, ¶ Ḵhwārizm, and they had their markets at Ḥarbiyya quarter, and each group of these merchants had a leader and a chief (Yaʿḳūbī, Buldān, 246-248). It seems that each craft had its chief chosen by the government (see Dūrī, Taʾrīkh al -ʿIrāḳ al-Iḳtiṣādī, 81). There is a tradition that Manṣūr wanted to pull down a part of the white Palace in Ctesiphon to use the bricks in his buildings, but that he stopped because expenditure did not justify the operation. Another report attributes to Manṣūr the idea of repairing that palace, but says that he did not have the time to carry it through. Both traditions are reminiscent of the Sh u ʿūbiyya controversy. The city was built mainly of sun-burnt bricks. Yaʿḳūbī reports that the plan was drawn in 141/755 (Yaʿḳūbī, Buldān, 238) but work started on 1 Ḏjumādā 145/2 Aug. 762 (Ḵhwārizmī's report in Ḵhaṭīb 2; cf. Wiet, Yaʿḳūbī, 11, n. 4). Four architects worked on the plan of the city. Ḥadj d j ād j b. Arṭāt was the architect of the mosque (Ṭabarī (Cairo), vi, 265, 237; Yaʿḳūbī, 241). Manṣūr assembled 100,000 workers and craftsmen to work in the construction (Yaḳubī, 238, Ṭabarī, iii, 277). A canal was drawn from Karkh āya canal to the site to provide water for drinking and for building operations (Yaʿḳūbī, 238). It seems that in 146/763 the palace, mosque and dīwāns at least were completed and Manṣūr moved to Bagh dād (Ṭabarī, iii, 313, Ḵhaṭīb, 2). By 149/766 the Round City was completed (Ṭabarī, iii, 353; Ḵhaṭīb, 2-3). The 'Round City' of Manṣūr is a remarkable example of town planning. It was circular so that the centre was equidistant from the different parts and could be easily controlled or defended. Arab traditions consider this design unique (Yaʿḳūbī, 238; Ibn al-Faḳīh, f. 33b; Ḵhaṭīb, 67; Ḏhahabī, Duwal, i, 76). However, the circular plan is not unfamiliar in the Near East. The plan of Uruk is almost circular (V. Christian, Altertumskunde, ii, table 13). Assyrian military camps are circular enclosures. Creswell enumerates eleven cities that were oval or circular, amongst which are Ḥarrān, Agbatana, Hatra and Dārābdj ird. Dārābdj ird bears a remarkable resemblance to the city of Manṣūr in its plan (Creswell, Early Muslim Arch. (short), 171-3; Meissner, Babylonien und Assyrien, i, table 161). It is likely that the architects of the Round city knew of such plans. Ibn al-Faḳīh indicates that the choice of the plan was between the square and the circle and that the latter is more perfect (Buldān, MS, f. 33b). It is however more probable that the idea of the circular fort was responsible for the plan. Ṭabarī states ―al-Manṣūr made four gates (for the city) on the line of military camps‖ (Ṭabarī (Cairo), vi, 265). There are different reports on the dimensions of the city of Manṣūr. A report makes the distance from the Ḵhurāsāngate to the Kūfagate 800 dh irā ʿ (= 405.12 metres) and from the Syrian gate to the Baṣragate 600 dh irā ʿ, (= 303.12 metres), (Ḵhaṭīb, 9-11; Ibn al-Faḳīh, MS, f. 33b). Another report from Wakīʿ makes the distance between each two gates 1200 dh irā ʿ (= 608.28 m.) (Ḵhaṭīb, 11). Both reports underestimate the size of the city. A third report given by Rabāḥ, one of the builders of the city, gives the measurement as one mile between each two gates (or 4000 dh ira ʿmursala or 1848 metres: D. Rayyis, 278; Ḵhaṭīb, 8. This estimate is given in Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Manākib, 9; Yāḳūt, i, 235; Abu 'l-Maḥāsin, i, 341; Irbillī, Tibr, 54). This is confirmed by the measurement carried by the orders of Muʿtaḍid and reported¶ by Badr al- Muʿtaḍidī (Ḵhaṭīb, 5; Abu 'l-Maḥāsin, i, 341). This makes the diameter of the city 2352 metres.

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Yaʿḳūbī's estimate of the distance between each pair of gates outside the kh andaḳ as 5000 black dh irā ʿ (or 2534.5 metres) becomes probable in this light (Buldān, 238-9). Various reports are given of al-Manṣūr's expenditure on the city. One report makes the cost 18 million, understood to mean dīnārs (Ḵhaṭīb, 5; Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Manāḳib 34; Yāḳūt, i, 683; Irbillī, Tibr, 543). A second puts it at a hundred million dirhams (Abu 'l-Maḥāsin, i, 341). However the official report based on caliphal archives states that Manṣūr spent on the Round City four million, eight hundred and eighty three dirhams (Ṭabarī, iii, 326; Muḳaddasī, Aḥsan al-Taḳāsīm, 121; Ḵhaṭīb, 5-6; see also Ibn al-Ath īr, v, 419; Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Manāḳib, 34). This is understanble if we take into account the low cost of labour and provisions and the strictness of Manṣūr in supervising his accounts. In 157/773 Manṣūr built a palace on the Tigris below the Ḵhurāsāngate, with spacious gardens, and called it al-Ḵhuld. The place was free of mosquitoes and noted for the freshness of its air. The name was reminiscent of paradise (Ṭabarī, iii, 379; Ḵhaṭīb, 14; Yāḳūt, ii, 783; Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Manāḳib, 12; Ibn al-Ath īr, vi, 71; Ibn al-Faḳīh f. 37b). Strategic considerations, al-Manṣūr's policy of dividing the army, and lack of space soon led the caliph to build a camp for his heir Mahdī on the East side of the Tigris. The central part was the camp of Mahdī (later called Ruṣāfa after a palace built by al-Rash īd), where his palace and the mosque were built, surrounded by the houses of officers and followers. The commercial side was soon expressed in the famous sūḳs of Bāb al-Ṭāḳ. The military side is shown by a wall and a ditch surrounding the camp of Mahdī. Work started in 151/768 and ended in 157/773. Ruṣāfa was almost opposite the city of Manṣūr (Yaʿḳūbī, Buldān, 251-3; Isṭakh rī, 83-4; Ḵhaṭīb, 23-5; Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Manāḳib, 12-13; Muḳaddasī, 121; Abu 'l-Maḥāsin, ii, 16; Yāḳūt, ii, 78). Bagh dād expanded rapidly in buildings, commercial activities, wealth and population. People crowded into east Bagh dād , attracted by al-Mahdī's gifts, and later by the Barmakids who had a special quarter at the Sh ammāsiyya gate (Yaʿḳūbī, Buldān, 251; Agh ānī (Būlāḳ), vi, 78, v, 8; Ibn Ḵhal likān (Būlāḳ), ii, 311). Yaḥyā the Barmakid built a magnificent palace and gave it the modest name Ḳaṣral-Ṭīn (Agh ānī , v, 8). Ḏja ʿfar built a great luxurious palace below easternBagh dād , which was given later to al-Maʾmūn. At the time of al-Rash īd, the eastern side extended from the Sh ammāsiyya gate (opposite the Ḳaṭrabbul gate) to Mukh arrim (its southern limit is the modern Maʾmūn bridge) (Yaʿḳūbī, Buldān, 253-4). On the other side Amīn returned from the Ḵhuld palace, where al-Rash īd resided, to Bābal-Ḏhahab, renewed it and added a wing to it and surrounded it by a square (cf. Ḏjahs h iyārī, Cairo 1938, 193, Ibn al-Ath īr, xi, 152). Queen Zubayda built a mosque on the Tigris (called after her) near the Royal palaces and another splendid mosque at her Ḳaṭīʿa north of the city (Yāḳūt, iv, 211; Ibn Ḵhallikān, 188; Mustaṭraf (Būlāḳ ed.), i, 289). She also built a palace called al-Ḳarār near al-Ḵhuld (cf. Ḵhaṭīb, i, 87). The western side expanded between the Ḳaṭrabbul gate in the north and the Karkh quarter, which in turn extended as far as great ʿĪsā canal (this flowed into the Tigris at the present Tulūl Ḵhas h m al-Dawra); to the west it almost reached Muḥawwal (Mash riḳ , 1934, 89; cf. poem in Yāḳūt, i, 686;¶ Masʿūdī, vi, 454, Ṭabarī, iii, 874, 876). Poets extol the beauty of Bagh dād and call it ―paradise on earth‖. Its wonderful gardens, green countryside, its splendid high palaces with sumptuous decorations on the gates and in the halls, and their exquisite rich furniture were famous (cf. Ṭabari, iii, 873, 874; Ḳālī, Amālī, ii, 237; Yāḳūt, i, 686). Bagh dād suffered a severe blow during the conflict between Amīn and al-Maʾmūn. War was brought to the city when it was besieged for fourteen months (Masʿūdī, vi, 456). Exasperated by the stubbornness of the defence, Ṭāhir ordered the destruction of the houses of the defenders, and many quarters ―between the Tigris, Dāral-Raḳīḳ, (north of the Ḵhurāsāngate), the Syrian gate, the Kūfagate up to Ṣarāt, the Karkh āya canal and Kunāsa‖ were devastated (Ṭabarī, iii, 887). The work of destruction was completed by the rabble and the lawless volunteers and the ʿayyārūn. The Ḵhuld palace, other palaces, Karkh , and some quarters on the

81 east side suffered heavily. ―Destruction and ruin raged until the splendour of Bagh dād was gone‖, as Ṭabarī and Masʿūdī put it (see Ṭabarī, iii, 870-879, 925-6; Masʿūdī, vi, 454-459; Ibn al- Ath īr, vi, 188 ff.). Chaos and trouble continued in Bagh dād until the return of al-Maʾmūn from Marw in 204/819. Al-Maʾmūn stayed at his palace, enlarged it considerably to add a race- course, a zoo, and quarters for his devoted followers (Yāḳūt, i, 807). Then he gave this palace to Al-Ḥasan b. Sahl —to become al-Ḥasanī palace—who bequeathed it to his daughter Būrān. Bagh dād revived again under al-Maʾmūn. Al-Muʿtaṣim built a palace on the eastern side (Yaʿḳūbī, 225; cf. Ḵhaṭīb 47). Then he decided to look for a new capital for his new Turkish army.Bagh dād was too crowded for his troops and both the people and the old divisions of the army were antagonistic to his Turks and he feared trouble. During the period of Sāmarrā (836-892) Bagh dād missed the immediate attention of the caliphs (cf. Yaʿḳūbī, ii, 208; Irbillī, 161) but it remained the great centre of commerce and of cultural activities. Bagh dād also suffered from Turkish disorders, when al-Mustaʿin moved there from Sāmarrā and was besieged by the forces of al-Muʿtazz, throughout the year 251/865-6. At this period, Ruṣāfa extended to Sūḳ al-Th alāt h ā ʾ (up to modern Samawʾal St.). Al-Mustaʿīn ordered the fortification of Bagh dād ; the wall on the eastern side was extended from the Sh ammāsiyya gate to Sūḳ al-Th alāthā ʾ, and on the western side from Ḳaṭīʿāt Umm Ḏja ʿfar around the quarters up to Ṣarāt, and the famous Ṭāhir Trench was dug around it (Ṭabarī, iii, 1851). During the siege, houses, shops and gardens outside the eastern wall were devastated as a defensive measure (Ṭabarī, iii, 1571) and the eastern quarters of Sh ammāsiyya, Ruṣāfa and Mukh arrim suffered heavily. In 278/892 al-Muʿtamid finally returned to Bagh dād . He had asked Būrān for the Ḥasanī palace, but she renewed it, furnished it to suit a caliph and handed it to him (cf. Ibn al- Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, v, 144). Then in 280/893, al-Muʿtaḍid rebuilt the palace, enlarged its grounds and added new buildings to it, and built prisons on its grounds (maṭāmīr). He added a race-course and then surrounded the area with a special wall. It was to be Dāral-Ḵhilāfa and remained, with additions, the official residence (Ḵhaṭīb, 52; Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, vi, 53; Manāḳib, 15; Tanūkh ī, Nish wār , viii, 15; Abu 'l-Maḥāsin, iii, 85; Irbillī, 173). Then he laid the foundations of the Tādj palace on the Tigris nearby, but later saw much smoke from the city. He decided to build another palace, two miles to the north-east. He built the magnificent and¶ lofty al-Th urayyā, linked it with an underground passage to the Ḳaṣr (al-Ḥasanī), surrounded it with gardens, and brought water to it from the Mūsā canal (see the description of Ibn al-Muʿtazz, Dīwān (Beirut ed. 1913), 138-9). He also ordered, in order to keep the air pure, that no rice and palm trees be cultivated around Bagh dād (see Ibn al- Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, v, 142). The Th urayyā lasted in good condition till 469/1073-4 when it was swept by the flood and ruined (Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Manāḳib, 15; Yāḳūt, i, 808). The ruin of the Round City started now. Al-Muʿtaḍid ordered the demolition of the City wall; but when a small section was pulled down, the Hāsh imites complained, as it showed ʿAbbāsid glory, so al- Muʿtaḍid stopped. People however gradually extended their houses at the expense of the wall and this led ultimately to the demolition of the wall and the ruin of the City (Tanūkh ī, Nish wār , i, 74-5). Al-Muktafī (289-295/901-907) built the Tādj with halls and domes, and a quay on the Tigris. He built a high semi-circular dome on its grounds, so that he could reach its top mounted on a donkey. (Ḵhaṭīb, 48; Irbillī, 175, Yāḳūt, i, 80; Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, v, 144). In 289/901 al- Muktafī pulled down the palace prisons and built a Friday mosque (Ḏjāmi ʿal-Ḳaṣr) which became the third Friday mosque, until the time of al-Muḳtadīr (Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, vi, 3, Ḵhaṭīb, 62). Al-Muḳtadir (295-320/908-932) added new buildings to the Royal palaces and beautified them fabulously; he paid special attention to the zoo (ḥayr al-wuḥūsh ) (cf. Ḵhaṭīb, 48, 53). Ḵhaṭīb's detailed description for the year 305/917-18 is striking. The strong wall surrounding the palaces and the secret passage from the audience hall of al-Muḳtadir to one of the gates were

82 necessary defensive measures (see Ḵhaṭīb, 51) Among the wonders was dār al-sh ad j ara , a tree of silver, in a large pond with 18 branches and multiple twigs, with silver or gilt birds and sparrows which whistled at times. On both sides of the pond were 15 statues of mounted horsemen which moved in one direction as if chasing each other (54). There was a mercury pond 30 × 20 dh irā ʿ with four gilt boats and around it was a fabulous garden. The zoo had all sorts of animals. There was a lion-house with a hundred lions. There was the Firdaws palace with its remarkable arms. Twenty three palaces were counted within the Royal precincts (cf. Ḵhaṭīb, 53-55; Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, vi, 144). Bagh dād reached its height during this period. The eastern side extended five miles (1 mile = 1848 m.) from Sh ammāsiyya to Dāral-Ḵhilāfa in the 4th/10th century (Iṣṭakh rī, 83). Ṭayfūr (d. 893) reports that al-Muwaffaḳ ordered the measurement of Bagh dād before 279/892; its area was found to be 43,750 dj arīb of which 26,250 dj arīb were in east Bagh dād and 17,500 dj arīb in west Bagh dād (Ibn al-Faḳīh, f. 44b; cf. Ibn Ḥawḳal, i, 243). Another version of Ṭayfūr makes eastern Bagh dād at the time of al-Muwaffaḳ 16,750 dj arīb (1 dj arīb = 1366 sq.m.) and western Bagh dād 27,000 dj arīb ; this is more probable, as west Bagh dād was still more important then. Another version puts the area at 53,750 dj arīb , of which 26,750 dj arīb were east and 27,000 dj arīb west (Ḵhaṭīb, 74). It is more likely that the last figure represents the period of al-Muḳtadir when much expansion took place in east Bagh dād . In all these reports the length of Bagh dād on both sides was almost the same. For the first figure, considering the length of Bagh dād as stated by Iṣṭakh rī and by Ṭayfūr, Bagh dād was, in 279/892, about 7¼ km. in length and 6½ km. in width, while under al-Muḳtadir¶ (320/932) it was about 8½ km. in length and 7¼ km. in width. Bagh dād 's geographical position, its active people (cf. Ḏjāḥiz, Bukh alā ʾ, 39, Tanūkh ī, Faradj , ii, 11), the encouragement of the state to trade (cf. Yaʿḳūbī, 590) and the prestige of the caliphate, soon made Bagh dād the great centre of commerce (see Dūrī, Taʾrīkh al -ʿIrāḳ al- Iḳtiṣādī, 143-157). Markets became an essential feature of its life, in Ruṣāfa and esp. in Karkh . Each trade had its market, and among those were the fruit market, the cloth market, the cotton market, the market of booksellers which had more than a hundred shops, the money- changers' market and the ʿaṭṭārīn market in Karkh . Markets for foreign merchants were at SūḳBābal-Sh ām. On the eastern side, there was a variety of markets including Sūḳ al-Ṭīb for flowers, a food market, the goldsmiths' market, the sheep market, a booksellers' market, and a market for Chinese merchandise (Yaʿḳūbī, Buldān, 241, 246, 248, 254; Iṣṭakh rī, 48, Ḵhaṭīb, 22, 65 ff., 36, 69; Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Manāḳib, 26, 27-8; Ibn Ḥawḳal, 242). Since the time of Manṣūr a muḥtasib was appointed to watch over markets, to prevent cheating and to check on measures and weights (cf. Ḵhaṭīb, 20; Ṣābī, Rasāʾil, 114, 141-2; Māwardī, 141-2). The muḥtasib also supervised baths and possibly watched over mosques (Ḵhaṭīb, 78). He also prevented subversive activities. Each market or craft had a chief appointed by the government. In a craft there were the Ṣāniʿ and the Ustādh (cf. Ikh wānal -Ṣafā, i, 255; cf. Essays of Ḏjāḥiz (ed. Sandūbī), 126). Bagh dād exported cotton stuffs and silk textiles esp. kerchiefs, aprons, turbans, crystals turned on lathes, glazed-ware, and various oils, potions and electuaries (Ḥudūdal-ʿĀlam, 11a; Muḳaddasī, 128). Bagh dād manufactured shirts of different colours, turbans of thin texture and celebrated towels (Dimash ḳī, Tidj āra , 26). Its thin white cotton shirts were peerless (Ibn al-Faḳīh, 254). The saḳlaṭūn (silk stuff), the mulḥam and ʿattābī stuffs (of silk and cotton) of Bagh dād were famous (Ḥudūdal-ʿĀlam, 38; Nuwayrī, i, 369; Abu 'l-Ḳāsim, 35; Muḳaddasī, 323; Ibn Ḥawḳal, 261). Excellent swords were made at Bāb al-Ṭāḳ (ʿArīb, 50). It was famous for its leather manufacture and for the manufacture of paper (cf. Ibn al-Faḳīh, 251). A great incentive to commerce and industry was the development of the banking system in Bagh dād as shown in the activities of the ṣarrāfs and dj ahbad h s. The ṣarrāfs had their own markets esp. in Karkh (cf. Ḏjahs h iyārī, 228) and primarily served the people, while dj ahbad h s served mainly the government and its officials.

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Bagh dād grew international in population. Its inhabitants were a mixture of different nations, colours and creeds, who came for work, trade, as recruits for the army, slaves, and for other careers. It is noticeable that the populace began to play an important part in its life (see Ibn al-Ath īr, viii, 85-6; Miskawayh, i, 74-5; Iṣfahānī, Taʾrīkh (Berlin), 130). On their revolt against the rise in prices in 307/919, and their efforts to keep order in 201/816 during the confusion which followed the murder of Amīn (see Ṭabarī, iii, 1009-1010; Ibn al-Ath īr, vi, 228-9 and vii, 13-14). The activities of the ʿayyārīn and sh uṭṭār began at this period (see Ṭabarī, iii, 1008, 1586; Masʿūdi, vi, 457; 461 ff.). It is difficult to give an estimate of the population of Bagh dād . Estimates of mosques and baths are obviously exaggerated (300,000 mosques and 60,000 baths under al-Muwaffaḳ, 27,000 baths under al-Muḳtadir, 17,000 baths under Muʿizz al-Dawla, ¶ 5,000 under Aḍud al- Dawla, 3,000 baths under Bahāʾ al-Dawla; Ḵhaṭīb, 74-6; Ibn al-Faḳīh, f. 59b; Hilāl al- Ṣābī, Rusūm Dāral-Ḵhilāfa , MS. 27-30). Baths were counted in 383/993 and found to number 1500. Traditions stress that each bath serves about 200 houses (Ibn al-Faḳīh f. 59b, 60a; Hilāl al-Ṣābī, MS. 29). If the average number in a house was five, then the population of Bagh dād was about one million and a half. Al-Muḳtadir ordered Sinān b. Th ābit to examine doctors and to give licences only to those qualified, and the result was that 860 doctors were given licences (Ibn al-Ath īr viii, 85; Ibn Abī Uşaybiʿa i, 221 f., 224, 310; al-Ḳifṭī, 194 f.). If we add doctors serving in government hospitals and those who did not have licences, the number would probably reach a thousand. The number of people who prayed on the last Friday of the month at the mosque of Manṣūr and that of Ruṣāfa were judged by measuring the area for prayer to be 64,000 (Ibn al-Faḳīh, f. 62a; see also Ṭabarī, iii, 1730). The number of boats about the end of the 3rd/9th century was calculated to be 30,000 (Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Manāḳib, 24). From those figures and the area of Bagh dād we can estimate the population of Bagh dād in the 4th/10th century at a million and a half. Itlīdī, a contemporary, gives this estimate too. There were aristocratic quarters such as Ẓāhir, Sh ammāsiyya, al-Maʾmūniyya and Darb ʿAwn. There were poor quarters like Ḳaṭīʿat al-Kilāb, and Nahr al-Dadj ād j (Abu 'l-ḲāsimBagh dādī, 23, 106). Houses were of two stories, and those of the common people were of one storey. Those of the rich had baths and were usually divided into three quarters surrounded by a wall—the ladies' quarters, the reception rooms, and the servants' quarters. Special attention was paid to gardens (Agh ānī , ii, 73, iii, 31, ix, 144, v, 38, xvii, 129; Hilāl al-Ṣābī, Rusūm, 32). Carpets, divans, curtains and pillows were noted items of furniture (Abu 'l-Ḳāsim, 36). Fans and specially cooled houses and sardābs were used in summer (see Ḏj. Mudawwar, Haḍārat al-Islām, 117, 30). Inscriptions and drawings of animals and plants or human faces decorated entrances (ibid., 29; Abu 'l-Ḳāsim, 7, 36). A special feature of the life of Bagh dād is the vast number of mosques and baths as indicated. Bagh dād was the great centre of culture. It was the home of Ḥanafī and Ḥanbalī schools of law. It was the centre of translations, in Bayt al-Ḥikma and outside, and of some scientific experimentation. Its mosques, especially Ḏjāmi ʿManṣūr, were great centres of learning. The large number of bookshops which were sometimes literary salons, indicates the extent of cultural activities. Its poets, historians, and scholars are too numerous to mention. One can refer to the History of Bagh dād by Ḵhaṭīb to see the vast number of scholars, in one field, connected with Bagh dād . Not only caliphs, but ministers and dignitaries gave every encouragement to learning. The creative period of Islamic culture is associated with Bagh dād . Later in this period, public libraries as centres of study and learning were founded, the most famous being the Dār al-ʿIlm of Abū Naṣr Sābūr b. Ardash īr. When the madrasa appeared, Bagh dād took the lead with its Niẓāmiyya and Mustanṣiriyya and influenced the madrasa system both in programme and architecture. Much attention was paid to hospitals, especially in the 3rd/9th and 4th/10th centuries. Of these, the Bīmāristānal-Sayyid (306/918), al-Bīmāristān al-Muḳtadirī (306/918) and al-

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Bīmāristān al-ʿAḍudī (372/¶ 982) were famous. Ministers and others also founded hospitals. Doctors were at times subject to supervision (see above). Under al-Rash īd there were three bridges in Bagh dād (Yaʿḳūbī, ii, 510). The two famous ones were by BābḴhurāsān, and at Kārkh (cf. Yaʿḳūbī, ii, 542, Ḏjahs h iyārī, 254; Ṭabarī, iii, 1232). Al- Rash īd built two bridges at Sh ammāsiyya, but they were destroyed during the first siege (Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Manāḳib, 20; Ibn al-Faḳīh f. 42a). The three bridges continued to the end of 3rd/9th century (Ibn al-Faḳīh, f. 42a). It seems that the northern bridge was destroyed and Iṣṭakh rī talks of two bridges only (Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Manāḳib 20, Iṣṭakh rī, 84). In 387/997 Bahāʾ al-Dawla built a bridge at Sūḳ al-Th alāt h ā ʾ (Mish ra ʿat al-Ḳattānīn) to become the third bridge. This indicates a shift of emphasis from N. Baghdad to Sūḳ al-Th alāt h ā ʾ (Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, vii, 171; cf. Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Manāḳib, 20; Ḵhaṭīb, 71-2). Life in Bagh dād was stable until Amīn. The first siege brought out turbulent elements in the ʿāmma. Flood and fire also began to play their rôle from the last quarter of the 3rd/9th century. Flood in 270/883 ruined 7,000 houses in Karkh . In 292/904 and 328/929 Bagh dād suffered considerably from flood (Ṭabarī, iii, 2105; Ibn al-Ath īr, viii, 371, Abu 'l-Maḥāsin, iii, 157 and 266). In 373/983 flood swept beyond the Kūfagate and entered the city (Ṣūlī, Rāḍī, 278; Ḵhaṭīb, 16). The neglect of canals, especially during the ' Amīr al-Umarā' period (324 334/935-945, was responsible for floods and for the ruin of the Bādūrayā district (Miskawayh, ii, 1.9; Ṣūlī, Rāḍī, 106, 225, 137-8). Consequently, whereas scarcities and plague were rare before 320/932 they were recurrent after that (cf. Ibn al-Ath īr, vii, 177, 187, 338). The scarcity of 307/919 was a result of monopoly and was quickly overcome. Scarcities occurred in 323/934, 326/937, 329/940 (with plague), 330/941, 331/942 (with plague), 332/943, 337/948 and life became unbearable (Ṣūlī, Rāḍī, 61, 104, 236, 251; Ibn al-Ath īr, viii, 282, 311; Iṣfahānī,Taʾrīkh , 125; Abu 'l-Maḥāsin, iii, 270, 274). In 308/920 and 309/921 Karkh suffered considerably from fire (Ibn al-Ath īr, viii, 89, 95). In 323/934 the fire of Karkh swept over the quarters of the ʿaṭṭārīn(the drug sellers), the ointment sellers, jewellers and others and its traces could be seen years after (Ṣūlī, Rāḍī, 68). The Buwayhid period was rather hard for Bagh dād . Muʿizz al-Dawla (in 335/946) first repaired some canals at Bādūrayā and this improved living conditions (Miskawayh, ii, 165). A period of neglect followed and many canals which irrigated west Bagh dād were in ruins. ʿAḍud al-Dawla (367-372/977-982) had them cleared up, and rebuilt bridges and locks (Miskawayh, ii, 406; iii, 69; Ibn al-Ath īr, viii, 518). Then we hear no more of such activities. Building activities were limited. In 350/961 Muʿizz al-Dawla built a great palace at the Sh ammāsiyya gate with a large Maydān, a quay, and beautiful gardens. For this palace he took the seven iron doors of the Round City and spent about a million dīnārs (11 million dirhams). However, it was pulled down in 418/1027 (Tanūkh ī, Nish wār , i, 70-1; Ibn al-Ath īr, viii, 397-8; ix, 256). ʿAḍud al-Dawla rebuilt the house of Sabuktakīn, chamberlain of Muʿizz al-Dawla, at upper Mukh arrim, added spacious gardens to it, and brought water to it by canals from Nahr al-Ḵhāliṣ at great expense. It became the Dāral-Imāra or official residence of the Buwayhids (Ḵhaṭīb, 58-9; Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, vii, 77-8; cf. Miskawayh, iii, 124). ¶ ʿAḍud al-Dawla found Bagh dād in bad shape. He ordered that its houses and markets be renewed and spent much money in rebuilding its Friday mosques; he repaired quays by the Tigris, and ordered the wealthy to repair their houses on the Tigris and to cultivate gardens in ruined places which had no owners. He found the central bridge narrow and decayed and had it renewed and broadened (Ibn al-Ath īr, viii, 558; Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, vii, 114; Miskawayh, ii, 404-406). In 372/982 he built the ʿAḍudī Hospital, appointed doctors, supervisors, storekeepers to it, and provided it with plenty of medicines, potions, instruments and furniture. Waḳfs were allotted to it for its upkeep (Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, vii, 112-114). However, Bagh dād declined under the Buwayhids (Tanūkh ī, Nish wār , i, 66 makes it in 345/956 one tenth of its size under al-Muḳtadir). The city of Manṣūr, was neglected and had no life

85 then (Muḳaddasī, 120). Most of the quarters of W. Bagh dād were in bad shape and had shrunk. The most flourishing section of W. Bagh dād was Karkh , where the merchants had their places of business. Thus the western side is now called Karkh (Ibn Ḥawḳal, i, 241-2; Muḳaddasī, 120). The eastern side of the city was more flourishing, and dignitaries generally resided there (cf. Ibn Ḥawḳal, 240). Here, the bright spots were the Bāb al-Ṭāḳ where the great market was, the Dāral-Imāra at Mukh arrim and the caliph's palaces at the southern end (cf. Muḳaddasī, 120; Ibn Ḥawḳal, i, 240-1; Iṣṭakh rī, 84). Odd houses reached Kalwādh ā. Ibn Ḥawḳal saw four Friday mosques: the mosque of Manṣūr, the Ruṣāfamosque, the Barāth āmosque, and the mosque of Dār al-Ṣulṭān (241). Then in 379/989 and 383/993, the Ḳatīʿa mosque and the Ḥarbiyya mosque became Friday mosques (Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, vii, 671,Ḵhaṭīb , 53-4, Ibnal Ḏjawzī, Manāḳib, 21-2, Ibn al-Ath īr, ix, 48). Ibn Ḥawḳal saw two bridges, one out of order (i, 241). It seems there were three bridges at the time of Muʿizz al-Dawla (one at the Sh ammāsiyya gate (near his palace), the other at Bāb al- Ṭāḳ and the third at Sūḳ al-Th alāt h ā ʾ. The first was transferred to Bāb al-Ṭāḳ, making two there, then one went out of order (cf. Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Manāḳib, 20). Bagh dād suffered much from the turbulence of the ʿāmma, from sectarian differences encouraged by the Buwayhids, and from the ʿayyārūn. Our sources talk much of the ignorance of the ʿāmma, their readiness to follow any call, their good nature and their lawlessness (cf. Masʿūdī, v, 81, 82-3, 85-7; Gh azālī, Faḍāʾiḥ, 53, Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Manāḳib, 31-2; Bagh d ādī, Firaḳ, 141). In 279/892 al-Muʿtaḍid forbade ḳuṣṣāṣ and fortune-tellers to sit in the streets or mosques, and forbade people to congregate around them or to indulge in controversies (Ibn al- Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, v, 122, 171). Before the Buwayhids, the Ḥanbalīs were the source of trouble. They tried at times to improved morals by force (cf. Ibn al-Ath īr, viii, 229-30, 84-5, 157-8; Ṣūlī, Rāḍī, 198). At this period, sectarian troubles multiplied and caused much loss in property and people. The Buwayhids made the 10th of Muḥarram a day of public mourning, ordered the closing of markets, and encouraged the populace to make processions with women beating their faces (cf. Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, vii, 15). On the other hand, the Gh adīr on 18 Ḏhu 'l- Ḥidj d j a was made a day of celebrations. This led the Sunnīs to choose two different days, each eight days after the ones mentioned (cf. Ibn al-Ath īr, ix, 110). Conflicts between the Sh ī ʿīs and the Sunnīs became usual occurences at this period, starting from 338/949¶ when Karkh was pillaged (Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, vi, 363). In 348/959, fights between the two groups led to destruction and fire at Bāb al-Ṭāḳ (ibid, 390). In 361/971 troubles in Karkh led to its burning and 17,000 people perished, 300 shops, many houses and 33 mosques were burnt down (Ibn al- Ath īr, viii, 207; cf. Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, vii, 60). In 363/973 fire burnt much of Karkh (Miskawayh, ii, 327). In 381/991 troubles broke out and fire recurred in many quarters (Ibn al- Ath īr, ix, 31). In 1016 the Nahr Ṭābiḳ, Bābal-Ḳuṭn and much of the BābBaṣra quarters were burnt (Ibn al-Ath īr, ix, 102; see also viii, 184, ix, 25-6, 32, 58). In 422/1030 many markets were ruined during the troubles (Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, viii, 55). More damage and confusion was caused by the ʿayyārūn who were especially active throughout the last quarter of the 4th/10th cent. to the end of this period (on their activities during the two sieges of Bagh dād see Ṭabarī, iii, 877, 1008-1010, 1552, 1556-7; Masʿūdī, vi, 450 ff.). Historians misunderstand their activities and show them as robbers and thieves. But their movement is a product of their hard living conditions and of political chaos. Their rise was against the wealthy and the rulers, and this explains why their activities were directed primarily against the rich, the markets, the police and the dignitaries (cf. Tanūkh hī, Faradj , ii, 106, 107-8; Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, vii, 174, 220; Ibn al-Ath īr, ix, 115). They had moral principals such as honour, and help to the poor and to women, co-operation, patience and endurance. The Futuwwa later was somewhat related to their movement (cf. Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Talbīs Iblīs, 392; Ḳush ayrī, Risāla, 113-4; Ibn al- Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, viii, 77; Tanūkh ī, Faradj , ii, 180). In the 4th/10th century they were organised, and among the titles of their chiefs were al-Mutaḳaddim, al-Ḳāʾid, and al-Amīr, and they had special ceremonies for initation (see Muntaẓam, viii, 49, 151, 78, Miskawayh, ii, 306, Ḳush ayrī, op. cit., 113; Tanūkh ī Faradj , ii, 109). However they were divided into Sh ī ʿīs and Sunnīs (Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, viii, 78-9).

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The ʿayyārūn kept people in constant terror for life and property. They levied tolls on markets and roads or robbed wayfarers and constantly broke into houses at night. They spread havoc by sword and fire and burnt many quarters and markets esp. Bāb al-Ṭāḳ and Sūḳ Yaḥyā (in east Bagh dād ) and Karkh , as those were the quarters of the wealthy. People had to lock the gates of their streets, and merchants kept vigil at night. Disorder and pillage made prices high (Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, vii, 151, 220, viii, 21-2, 44, 47-50, 54-5, 60, 72-5, 79, 87, 142, 161). A preacher prayed in 421/1030 ―O God! Save the state from the populace and the rabble‖ (Ibn al- Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, viii, 44). Burdj umī, a notorious ʿayyār leader, practically ruled Bagh dād for four years 422-425/1030-1033, and spread havoc (ibid, 75-6). The government was powerless (cf. 49) and they were left to levy taxes and tolls to avoid their terror (ibid., 78). Many people left their quarters and departed for safety (ibid., 142). Their terror continued till the advent of the Saldj ūḳs (ibid., 161). In 447/1055 Tugh ril Bey entered Bagh dād , and the Saldj ūḳs reversed Buwayhid policy and encouraged the Sunnīs (cf. Abu 'l-Maḥāsin, v, 59). In 450/1058 Basāsīrī, a rebel, seized Bagh dād in the name of the Fāṭimids (cf. Abu 'l-Fidāʾ, ii, 186; Ibn al-Ḳalānisī, 87). He was defeated and killed by the Saldj ūḳ forces in 451/1059 (Abu 'l-Fidāʾ, ii, 187-8). During this period Bagh dād assumed a shape which thereafter changed but little. In 448/1056 Tugh ril Bey enlarged the area of Dār¶ al-Imāra, pulled down many houses and shops, rebuilt it and surrounded it with a wall (Ibn al-Ḏjawz ī, viii, 169). In 450/1058 it was burnt down and rebuilt again (Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, vii, 778). It became known as Dāral- Mamlaka. It was rebuilt in 509/1115, but was accidentally burnt in 515/1121 and a new palace was built (Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Manāḳib, 16; Muntaẓam, ix, 223). Maliksh āh enlarged and rebuilt the mosque of Mukh arrim, which was near the palace, in 484/1091 and was hence called Ḏjāmi ʿal- Sulṭān. It was repaired in 502/1108 (Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, ix, 159), and was finally completed in 524/1129 (Abu 'l-Fidaʾ, ii, 211; Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Manāḳib; 23; Abu 'l-Maḥāsin, v, 135). Life centered in E. Bagh dād around the caliphal palaces. Al-Muḳtadī (467-487/1074-1094) encouraged building; and the quarters around the palaces—such as Baṣaliyya, Ḳaṭīʿa, Ḥalaba, Adj ama, etc. flourished. He also built the Riverain-palace (Dār Sh āṭi ʾiyya) by the old Tādj palace (Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, viii, 293; Ibn al-Ath īr, x, 156; cf. Le Strange, 253; cf. Ibnal- Fuwaṭī, 21). In 524/1129 the Tādj palace was pulled down and rebuilt (Ibn al- Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, x, 14). These quarters were not walled and they suffered much from the flood in 1070. In 488/1095 al-Mustaẓhir built a wall around the so called Ḥarīm quarters. Then in 517/1123 al-Mustarsh id rebuilt it with four gates and made it 22 dh irā ʿ in width. The flood of 554/1159 surrounded the wall, made a breach in it, and ruined many quarters. The breach in it was repaired and a dyke was begun, and completed later around the wall (cf. Ibn al- Ḏjawzī, Manāḳib, 34; idem,Muntaẓam, x, 189-190). Other attempts to rebuild the wall or repair it took place under al-Nāṣir and al-Mustanṣir (Ibn Fuwaṭī, 16, 111). This wall set the limits of East Bagh dād till the end of Ottoman period. Bagh dād was in decline during this period and lived on its past glory. From the 2nd half of the 5th/11th century, there were many changes in its topography. Many quarters in western Bagh dād were ruined, and waste land replaced previous gardens or houses (cf. Ḵhaṭīb, 67 and Tanūkh ī , Nish wār , i, 74-5). This probably explains the increase in the number of Friday mosques. The old quarters of Sh ammāsiyya, Ruṣāfa and Mukh arrim were neglected (cf. Ibn Ḥawḳal, 241). Benjamin of Tudela, who visited Bagh dād around 567/1171, talks of the greatness of the caliphal palace, with its wall, gardens, a zoo and a lake. He speaks highly of the ʿAḍudī Hospital with its sixty doctors, and a sanatorium for the mad. He found 40,000 Jews in Bagh dād with 10 schools for them (Itinerary, ed. and tr. A. Asher, New York, 1840-2, i, text 54-64, tr. 93-105; Arabic tr. by E. H. Haddad, Bagh dād 1945, 131-8). Ibn Ḏjubayr described Bagh dād in 581/1185. He noticed the general decline, and criticised the arrogance of its people (218). Much of the eastern side was ruined, yet it had seventeen separate

87 quarters, all with two, three or eight baths (225). The caliphal quarters, with magnificent palaces and gardens, occupied about a quarter or more of the area (226-7). This side was well populated and had excellent markets (228). Ḳurayya was the largest quarter, (very likely between the modern al-Aḥrās bridge and Raʾsal-Ḳarya) and near it the suburb (rabḍ) of Murabbaʿa (probably by SayyidSulṭān ʿAlī now). It had three Friday mosques, Ḏjāmi ʿal-Sulṭān, north of the wall, and the Ruṣāfamosque about a mile north of the latter (228-9) and Ḏjāmi ʿal- Ḵhalīfa. There were about thirty madrasas (colleges), all housed in excellent buildings with¶ plenty of wakf and endowments for their upkeep and for the students' expenses. The most famous madrasa was the Niẓāmiyya which was rebuilt in 1110 (229). He describes the wall, built by al-Mustarsh id, surrounding Sh arḳiyya as having four gates—1. Bābal-Sulṭān to the north (later called Bābal-Muʿaẓẓam). 2. Bāb al-Ẓafariyya (N.E.), later, Bāb al-Wasṭānī. 3. Bāb al-Ḥalaba (E.), later Bāb al-Ṭillisim. 4. Bāb al-Baṣaliyya (S.), later Bābal- Sh arḳī. The wall surrounded Sh arḳiyya in a semi-circle reaching the Tigris at both ends (229). He talks of the populous quarter of Abū Ḥanīfa, while the old quarters of Ruṣāfa, Sh ammāsiyya, and most of Mukh arrim were ruined (cf. 226; Ibn Ḥawḳal, 241). In western Bagh dād ruin spread everywhere. Of quarters here, he mentions Karkh as a walled city, and the BābBaṣra quarter which contained the great mosque of Manṣūr and what remained of the old city (225). By the Tigris was the Sh ārī ʿ quarter which constituted with Karkh , BābBaṣra and Ḳurayya the largest quarters of Bagh dad (225). Between al-Sh āri ʿ and the BābBaṣra was the quarter of Sūḳal-Māristān, like a small city, with the famous ʿAḍudī hospital which was well staffed and provisioned (225-6). Of other quarters he noticed the Ḥarbiyya quarter as the northernmost, and the ʿAttābiyya, famous for its silk-cotton ʿattābī cloth (226). Ibn Ḏjubayr (229) talks of 2000 baths and eleven Friday mosques in Bagh dād . At the time of al-Mustarsh id (512-29/1118-1134) there was one bridge near the ʿĪsā canal, later moved to Bāb al-Ḳurayya. During the period of al-Mustaḍī (566-575/1170-1179) a new bridge was made at Bāb al-Ḳurayya, and the old one was returned to its place by the ʿĪsā canal. Ibn Ḏjubayr saw the first bridge only, but confirms that there were usually two bridges and Ibn al- Ḏjawzī, who wrote just before the fall of Bagh dād , confirms this (Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Manaḳib, 20; Ibn Ḏjubayr, 225). Half a century later, Yāḳūt (623/1226) gave some useful data. He shows western Bagh dād as a series of isolated quarters each with a wall and separated by waste land of ruins. Ḥarbiyya, al- Ḥarīm al-Ṭāhirī in the north, Čahār Sūdj with Naṣīriyya, ʿAttābiyyīn and Dār al-Ḳazz south- west, Muhawwal to the west, ḲaṣrʿĪsā to the east, and Ḳurayya and Karkh in the south are the noted quarters. In East Bagh dād , life centered in the quarters around ḤarīmDāral-Ḵhilāfa which occupy about a third of the area enclosed in the walls. Of the large flourishing quarters were Bāb al-ʿAzadj with its markets, al-Maʾmūniyya next to it, Sūḳ al-Th alāt h ā ʾ, Nahr al-Muʿallā and Ḳurayya (Yāḳūt, i, 232, 441, 444, 534, 655, ii, 88, 167, 234, 459, 512, 783, 917, iii, 193-4, 197, 231, 279, 291, 489, iv, 117, 252, 255, 385, 432, 457, 713-4, 786, 841, 845). Friday mosques increased in Gh arbiyya (W. Bagh dād ) at this period, indicating the semi- independent status of quarters. Ibn al-Ḏjawzī mentions six between 530/1135 and 572/1176 in addition to Ḏjāmi ʿManṣūr (Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Manāḳib, 23, see also Ibnal-Fuwaṭī). The mosques of Karkh were repaired by Mustanṣir (Ibnal-Fuwaṭī, 15), and Ḏjāmi ʿal-Ḳaṣr was renewed in 475/1082, and again by al-Mustanṣir in 673/1235 (Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, ix, 3; Le Strange, 269). The Ḳamariyya mosque (still present) was built in 626/1228 (Ibnal-Fuwaṭī, 4). The strength of Ṣūfism is shown by the large number of Ribāṭs [q.v.] built during the last century of the caliphate. They were built by the caliphs or their relatives (cf. Ibnal-Fuwaṭī, 2, 74, 75, 79, 80, 87, 117, 261, Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, ix, 11, Ibn al-Ath īr, xi, 77, 33, xii, 27, 67- 8). ¶

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Much attention was given to the founding of madrasas (colleges). This movement could be explained initially by the religious revival among Sh āfi ʿīs, and by political and administrative needs; but it was continued as a cultural movement. Ibn Ḏjubayr saw thirty madrasas in east Bagh dād (Ibn Ḏjubayr, 229; see also M. Ḏjawad, in Review of the Higher Teachers' College, Bagh dād , vol. v, 110 ff., vol. vi, 86 ff.). Other madrasas were founded after Ibn Ḏjubayr's visit (cf. Ibnal-Fuwaṭī, 24-5, 53, 128, 308, Ibn al-Ath īr, xi, 211). The most famous were the Niẓāmiyya founded in 459/1066, the madrasa of Abū Ḥanīfa founded in the same year (Ibn al- Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, viii, 245-6, still existing as Kulliyat al-Sh arī ʿa) and al-Mustanṣiriyya, founded by al-Mustanṣir in 631/1233 and continued till the 17th century. All those madrasas specialised in one of the four schools of law, except the Mustanṣiriyya and the Bash īriyya (founded in 653/1255) which taught the fiḳh of the four schools (see Ibnal-Fuwaṭī, 308; Ibn al- Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, viii, 245-6, 246-7; Ibn al-Ath īr, x, 38; Ibnal-Fuwaṭī 53-4, 58-9; cf. ʿAwwād inSumer, i, 1945). There was a maktab (school) for orphans established by Sh amsal -Mulk (son of Niẓām al-Mulk) (Iṣfahānī, Seljuks, 124-5). In 606/1209 guest-houses (dārḍiyāfa) were built in all quarters of Bagh dād to serve the poor in Ramaḍān (Ibn al-Ath īr, xii, 286; other references, ibid. 184; Ibnal-Fuwaṭī, 94). Bagh dād suffered at this period from fire, flood and dissension. In 449/1057 Karkh and Bāb Muḥawwal quarters and most of the market of Karkh were burnt down. In 451/1059 much of Karkh and old Bagh dād was burnt (Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, viii, 81; Ibn al-Ath īr, x, 5). The quarters and markets near the Muʿallā canal and Dār al-Ḵhalāfa were burnt more than once (Ibn al-Ath īr, x, 35, 67, 318; Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, viii, 241, ix, 61, 148, 184, x, 35). In 551/1156 fire spread from neighbouring quarters to Dāral-Ḵhilāfa and neighbouring sūḳs (Ibn al-Ath īr, xi, 143; there were other fires in those quarters in 560/1164, 569/1173, 583/1187 Ibn al-Ath īr, xi, 270, 372; Muntaẓam, x, 212). The ʿayyārūn were fairly active in Saldj ūḳ days. They pillaged shops and houses and caused insecurity (see between 449/1057 and 537/1142 Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, Muntaẓam, viii, 139, 234; Ibn al- Ath īr, x, 204, 383, xi, 29, 26, 59, 63). The troubles of the ʿāmma and their sectarian fights (Ḥanbalīs against Sh āfi ʿīs and Sunnīs against Sh ī ʿīs) continued to give rise to much bloodshed and destruction. Ibn al-Ath īr reports a temporary conciliation in 502/1108 and adds ―Evil always came from them (i.e., the ʿāmma)‖ (x, 329; see also x, 80, 259, 104, 108-109, 112, 117-8). This was short-lived, and quarrels and fights continued and became terrible under al-Mustaʿṣim (Ibn al-Ath īr, x, 360, xi, 271, 344, xii, 133, 216). In 640/1242 fights took place between the Maʾmūniyya and Bāb al-Azadj quarters which involved the Niẓāmiyya market, and between Mukh tāra and Sūḳal-Sulṭān quarters, and between Ḳaṭuftā and Ḳurayya (in W. Bagh dād ) quarters; many were killed and shops pillaged (Ibnal-Fuwaṭī, 175-7; cf. Ibn Abi 'l-Ḥadīd, ii, 554). By 653/1255 things had deteriorated considerably. Fights tooks place between Ruṣāfa (Sunnī) and Ḵhuḍayriyyin (Sh ī ʿī), and soon people of BābBaṣra supported Ruṣāfa while Karkh supported the others (Ibnal-Fuwaṭī, 298-9). These quarrels also indicate the spirit of competition between quarters which increased by the lack of government control. When fights renewed between Karkh and BābBaṣra, the soldiers sent to stop it, pillaged Karkh and that¶ made the situation worse (ibid., 267-277). The climax came in 654/1256, when someone was killed by the people of Karkh , and the soldiers, sent to keep order, were joined by crowds of the ʿāmma and pillaged Karkh , burnt several places in it, killed many and took away women. Reprisal followed, but the tragedy was not forgotten (ibid., 314-315). The ʿayyārūn were very active at this time. They pillaged shops, robbed houses at night and even the Mustanṣiriyya was twice robbed (Ibnal-Fuwaṭī, 378, 254, 260, 262). The government was too weak to keep order. Floods recurred, indicating the weakness of government and the neglect of irrigation. In 641/1243 floods reached the Niẓāmiyya and its neighbourhood and ruined some quarters. In 646/1248 floods surrounded east Bagh dād , destroyed a part of the wall, and reached quarters of Ḥarīm. It also flooded Ruṣāfa and many of its houses fell. West Bagh dād was submerged, and most houses fell except part of BābBaṣra

89 and Karkh . Houses on the river collapsed. Floods entered Bagh dād in 651/1253, and again in 653/1255 when a great number of houses collapsed and cultivation was damaged. The worst flood was in 654/1256 when both sides were surrounded by water and the flood even entered the markets of eastBagh dād , Dāral-Ḵhilāfa and the Niẓāmiyya (Ibnal-Fuwaṭī, 186-7, 267, 229- 233, 277, 304, 317-19). Thus nature and man joined hands to eclipse Bagh dād . Two years later, Bagh dād was invaded by the Mongols. On 4 Ṣafar 656/10 Feb. 1258 the Caliph al-Mustaʿṣim made an unconditional surrender. Its people were put indiscriminately to the sword, for over a week. Large numbers of the country people who flocked to Bagh dād before the siege shared its tragic fate. Estimates of the number killed vary between 800,000 and two million, the estimate mounting with the lapse of time (Fakh rī , 130; Ibnal-Fuwaṭī, 281; Ḏhahabī, Duwal, ii, 121; Ibn Kath īr, Bidāya, xiii, 202). The Chinese traveller Ch'ang Te states (1259) that several tens of thousands were killed; his information is obviously from Mongol sources (Bretschneıder, Medieval Researches, i, 138-9). It is thus difficult to give any figure, but it probably exceeded a hundred thousand. Many quarters were ruined by siege, looting or fire, and the mosque of the caliphs, and the shrine of Kāẓimayn were burnt down (Ibnal-Fuwaṭī, 327-330; Ibn al-ʿIbrī, 27). Bagh dād was however spared from complete devastation, and the fatwā exacted from the ʿulamāʾ that a just kāfir is better than an unjust imām probably helped. Before leaving, Hülegü ordered the restoration of some public buildings. The supervisor of waḳf rebuilt the Ḏjāmi ʿ al-Ḵhulafā ʾ and saw to it that schools and the ribāṭs were reopened (Ibn al-ʿIbrī, 475; Ibnal-Fuwaṭī, 337). Culture suffered much, but it was not uprooted. Bagh dād became a provincial centre in all respects. Until 740/1339-40 Bagh dād remained under the Īlkh ānids and was administered by a governor with a Sh ihna and a military garrison (cf. Ibnal-Fuwaṭī, 331). The Mongols registered the population of Bagh dād in tens, hundreds, and thousands for the sake of taxation. A poll-tax was imposed on all except the aged and children; it continued to be levied for about two years (Ibnal-Fuwaṭī, 339, cf. Ḏjuwaynī, (trans. Boyle), i, 34). Bagh dād began to revive gradually, as its administration was chiefly entrusted to Persians; much of this is due to the policy of ʿAṭāʾMalik Ḏjuwaynī, governor for about 23 years (657/1258-681/1282). Under him, the minaret of Ḏjāmi ʿ al-Ḵhulafā ʾ and the Niẓāmiyya market¶ were rebuilt, and the Mustanṣiriyya was repaired and a new water system added (Ibn al-Fuwatī, 371). The mosques of Sh ayk h Maʿrūf and Ḳamariyya were repaired (ibid., 408; ʿAzzāwī, Taʾrikh al-ʿIrāḳ, i, 267, 296). Some of the old schools resumed work, especially the Niẓāmiyya and Mustanṣiriyya, the Bash īriyya, the Tatash iyya and Madrasat al-Aṣḥāb (cf. Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Cairo 1918, i, 140-1; Ibnal- Fuwaṭī, 182, 385, 396; ʿAzzāwī, Taʾrīkh , i, 318). Ḏjuwaynī's wife founded the ʿIṣmatiyya school for the four schools of law, and a ribāṭnear it (Ibnal-Fuwaṭī, 377). The Īlkh ān Takūdar (881/1281) sent a message to Bagh dād asking for the return of endowments to schools, and mosques, as under the ʿAbbāsids, probably a pious with (Karmalī, al-Fawz, 12). The Īlkh āns' policy led to outbreaks against non-Muslims. They patronised Christians, and exempted them from the dj izya . They rebuilt churches and opened schools. This led to an outbreak against them in 665/1263. The Jews rose to prominence under Argh ūn (683-690/1284-1291) through Saʿd Dawla the Jewish financeminister, who appointed his brother governor of Bagh dād . In 690/1291 Saʿd Dawla was killed and the populace in Bagh dād fell on the Jews. Under Gh āzān, non-Muslims suffered through dress distinctions, the reimposition of the poll- tax and the attitude of the mob, and many adopted Islam (cf. ʿAmr Ibn Mattī, Kitāb al-Madj dal , 120-122, 125; Ibnal-Fuwaṭī, 354; 465-6; 483; Waṣṣāf, ii, 238; Karmalī, op. cit., 14-15, 21; ʿAzzāwī, i, 349, 513). Uldj aytū stirred up trouble when he vascillated between Sh ī ʿism and Sunnis m. The Īlkh āns tried to impose thečao (paper money) [q.v.], but it was very unpopular in Bagh dād and was finally abolished by Gh āzān in 697/1297 (Ibnal-Fuwaṭī, 477, 492). During this period we have the accounts of three geographers: IbnʿAbd al-Haḳḳ (c. 700/1300), Ibn Baṭṭūṭa (727/1327 and Mustawfī (740/1339).

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The author of the Marāṣid states that nothing remained of western Bagh dād except isolated quarters, the most populated of which was Karkh (201). He mentions the Ḳurayya quarter, the populous Ramliyya quarter, the Daral-Raḳīḳ market, Dār al-Ḳazz standing alone where paper was manufactured, and the Bāb Muḥawwal quarter which stood as an isolated village (Marāṣid (Cairo ed.), 146, 201, 507, 773, 1088). He refers to the ʿAḍudī hospital, and indicates that nothing remained of al-Ḥarīm al-Ṭāhirī, Nahr Tābiḳ and Ḳaṭīʿa quarters, while Tūth ā quarter looked like an isolated village (Marāṣid, 280, 837, 397, 1403). Of East Bagh dād , the Marāṣid states ―when the Tartars came, most of it was ruined. They killed its people and few were left. Then people from outside came‖ (201). He states that the Ḥalaba, Ḳurayya and Ḳatīʿat al-ʿAdj am were populous quarters (Marāṣid, 417, 1088, 1110). Ibn Baṭṭūṭa follows very closely after Ibn Ḏjubayr. However he mentions two bridges in Bagh dād and gives new details about the excellent baths in the city (Cairo ed. 1908, i, 140- 1). He states that mosques and schools were very numerous, but they were in ruins (ibid. i, 140). Mustawfī's data is significant. His description of the wall of East Bagh dād agrees with that of Ibn Ḏjubayr. It had four gates, and encloses the city in a semi-circle with a circuit of 18,000 paces. Western Bagh dād , he calls Karkh ; it was surrounded by a wall with a circuit of 12,000 paces. He found life easy inBagh dād and people pleasant, but their Arabic was corrupt. He found Sh āfi ʿīs and Ḥanbalīs dominant in Bagh dād , though adherents of other¶ sects were numerous. Madrasas and ribāṭs were numerous, but he noted that Niẓāmiyya was ―the greatest of them all‖ while Mustanṣiriyya was the most beautiful building, (Nuzha, 40-42). It is possible that the Sitt Zubayda tomb belongs to this period, and the lady concerned could be Zubayda, the granddaughter of the eldest son of Mustaʿṣim (ʿAzzāwī, i, 406). In 740/1339 Ḥasan Buzurg established himself in Bagh dād and founded the Ḏjalāyirid dynasty which lasted till 813/1410. The Mardj ānmosque dates from this period. From its inscriptions, we know that Mardj an, a captain of Uways, started building the madrasa with its mosque under Ḥasan Buzurg and finished the building under Uways in 758/1357. This madrasa was for the Sh āfi ʿīs and Ḥanafīs (text of inscriptions in Ālūsī, Masādj id , 45 ff.; Massignon,Mission, ii, 1 ff.). Only the gate of the madrasa—or mosque later—remains now. Beyond this we hear of flood, siege or troubles which caused much damage and loss. Bagh dād was twice taken by Tīmūr, first in 795/1392-1393 when the town escaped with little damage, and second in 803/1401 when its population was indiscriminately put to the sword, and many of its public (ʿAbbāsid) buildings and quarters were ruined. This was the devastating blow to culture inBagh dād . In 807/1405 Aḥmad the Ḏjalāyir returned to Bagh dād , restored the walls destroyed by Tīmūr, and tried to repair some of the buildings and markets, but his time was short. In 813/1410 Bagh dād passed to the Ḳara Ḳoyunlu Turkomāns who held it till 872/1467-8, to be followed by Āḳ Ḳoyunlu Turkomāns. Bagh dād sank still deeper under the Turkomāns and suffered considerably from misrule. Many of its inhabitants left the city, and the ruin of the irrigation system accounts for the recurrence of flood with consequent devastation. Under the year 841/1437 Maḳrīzī says ―Bagh dād is ruined, there is no mosque or congregation, and no market. Its canals are mostly dry and it could hardly be called a city‖ (Maḳrīzī, Sulūk, iii, 100. see ʿAzzāwī, iii, 79 ff.; Karmalī, 61 ff.). In addition, tribalism spread and tribal confederations begin to play their turbulent rôle in the life of the country. In 914/1507-8 Bagh dād came under Sh āhIsmā ʿīl Ṣafawī, and a period of Perso-Ottoman conflict for the possession of Bagh dād opened, typified in the Bagh dādī song ―between the Persians and the Rūm, what woe befell us‖. On Sh āh Ismāʿīl's orders, many Sunnī shrines, esp. those of Abū Ḥanīfa and ʿAbdal-Ḳādir Gīlānī, were ruined, and many of the leading Sunnīs were killed. However, he started building a shrine for Mūsā al-Kāẓim. He appointed a governor with the title Ḵhalīfat al-Ḵhulafā ʾ (ʿAzzāwī, iii, 336-343). Many Persian merchants

91 came to Bagh dād and increased commercial activity. After a brief space in which the Kurdish chief Ḏhu 'l-Faḳār seized Bagh dād and announced his allegiance to SulṭānSulaymān Ḳānūnī, Sh āhṬahmāsp seized the town again in 936/1530. In 941/1534 SulṭānSulaymān entered Bagh dād . He built a dome on the tomb of Abū Ḥanīfa, with the mosque and madrasa, rebuilt the mosque,tekke and tomb of Gīlānī and had guest-houses for the poor at both mosques. He also had the shrine and mosque of Kāẓimayn, started by Sh āhIsmā ʿīl, completed (Sulaymān-nāma, 119, Ewliya Čelebi, iv, 426; Ālūsī, Masādj id , 117; ʿAzzāwī, iv, 28 ff.). He ordered landed property to be surveyed and registered, and organised the administration of the province (Ewliya Čelebi, iv, 41). The administration was entrusted to a governor (pash a), defterdār (for¶ finances), and a Kāḍī. A garrison was stationed in Bagh dād with the janissaries as its backbone. Few buildings were erected during the following period. In 978/1570 MurādPash a built the Murādiyya mosque in the Maydān quarter. The Gīlānī mosque was rebuilt. Čigalazāde built a famous inn, a coffeehouse and a market. He also built Ḏjāmi ʿ al-Ṣagh ā or Ḏjāmi ʿ al-Ḵhaffāfīn, and rebuilt the Mawlawī tekke, known now as the Āṣafiyya mosque (ʿAzzāwī, iv, 116, 128-132; cf. Ālūsī, Masādj id , 30-1, 62-4). Ḥasan Pash a built the mosque known after him, also called Ḏjāmi ʿ al-Wazïr (Gulsh an -i Ḵhulafā 66; Ewliya Čelebi, iv, 419). He also made a rampart and a ditch around Karkh to protect it from Bedouins. Europeans travellers begin to visit Bagh dād at this period. They speak of it as a meeting place of caravans, and a great centre of commerce for Arabia, Persia and Turkey. Caesar Frederigo (1563) saw many foreign merchants in the city. Sir Anthony Sherley (1590) saw ―excellent goods of all sorts and very cheap‖ (Purchas, viii, 384). It had a bridge of boats tied by a great chain of iron and when boats passed up or down the river, some of the boats of the bridge were removed until the traffic had passed (Ralph Fitch in 1583, Hakluyt, iii, 282-3). Rauwolf (1574) saw streets narrow and houses miserably built. Many buildings were in ruins. Some public buildings like the Pash a's residence and the great bazaar or exchange were good. Its baths were of low quality. The eastern side was well fortified with a wall, and a ditch, while the western side was open and looks like a great village (Rauwolf, Travels, in Ray's collection, London 1605, i, 179 ff.). The city walls were built of bricks and had subsidiary works including four bastions on which heavy bronze guns in good conditions were mounted (Texeira, Travels, Hakluyt ed., 31). The circuit of the walls is given as two to three miles. John Eldred (1583) noticed that three languages were spoken in Bagh dād , Arabic, Turkish, and Persian (Hakluyt, iii, 325). Ralph Fitch (1583) found Bagh dād not very great but very populous. The Portuguese traveller Pedro Texeira (1604) estimated houses in east Bagh dād at twenty to thirty thousand. There was a mint in Bagh dād in which gold, silver and copper coins were struck. There was a school of archery and another of musketry maintained by the government (Travels, Hakluyt ed., 31). Following the insurrection of Bakr the Subash ĭ, Sh āh ʿAbbās I conquered Bagh dād in 1032/1623. School buildings and Sunnī shrines, including the mosques of Gīlānī and Abū Ḥanīfa, suffered destruction. Thousands were killed or sold as slaves and others were tortured (Kātib Čelebi, Fadh laka , ii, 50; Ḵhulāṣat al-Āth ār , i, 383; ʿAzzāwī, iv, 178-182). In this period the Sarāy (governmenthouse) was built by Ṣafī Ḳulī Ḵhān, the Persian governor. Bagh dād was regained by the Ottomans in 1048/1638 under the personal command of SulṭānMurād IV. He had the shrines, especially the tombs of Abū Ḥanīfa and Gilānī, rebuilt. On his departure, the Bāb al-Tillisim was walled up and continued thus until it was blown up by the retreating Turks in 1917. His Grand Vizier put the Ḳalʿa (castle) in good repair. Further information comes from travellers of this period, like Tavernier (1652), Ewliya Čelebi (1655) and Thevenot (1663). The wall around east Bagh dād was almost circular in shape. It was 60 dh irā ʿ high and 10-15 dh irā ʿ broad, with holes for guns. It had large towers at the principal angles, of which four were famous at this period—and smaller towers at short distances from each other. On the¶ large towers brass cannons were planted. The wall was completed on the river side for proper defence (the map of Naṣūḥ al-Ṣilāḥī drawn for SulṭānSulaymān in 1537

92 already shows this wall. A. Sousa, Atlas of Bagh dād , 12). There were 118 towers in the wall on the land side and 45 on the river side (Ḥādj d j ī Ḵhalīfa (1657), Ḏjihān -nümā, 457 ff.; Ker Porter (1819) reports 117 towers of which 17 were large (Travels, 265); cf. Buckingham, Travels, 372). The wall had three gates on the land side, (as the Tillisim gate was walled up): BābImām al- Aʿẓam in the north at 700 dh irā ʿ from the Tigris, Ḳaranl k Ḳapu (BābKalwādh ā) or the dark gate in the south at 50 dh irā ʾ from the Tigris, and Aḳ Ḳapu (Bāb al-Wasṭānī) or the white gate in the east. The fourth gate was at the bridge. Ewliya Čelebi measured the length of the wall and found it 28,800 paces in slow walking or seven miles (1 mile = 4,000 paces), while Ḥādj d j ī Ḵhalīfa makes its length 12,200 dh irā ʿ or two miles (Niebuhr and Olivier consider the length of East Bagh dād two miles). Wellsted thought the circuit of the walls 7 miles. Felix Jones, who surveyed Bagh dād in 1853, gives the circuit of the walls of EastBagh dād including the river face as 10,600 yards or about 6 miles (Olivier, Voyage, ii, 379-80; Wellsted, Travels, i, 255; Felix Jones, 318; cf. Rousseau, 5 and Tavernier, 84). The wall was surrounded by a ditch, sixty dh irā ʿ in width, with water drawn from the Tigris. At the north-western corner of the wall stood the Ḳalʿa (inner castle), from the Bābal-Muʿaẓẓam to the Tigris; it was encompassed by a single wall with little towers upon which cannon were planted. Barracks, stores of ammunition and provisions as well as the treasury and the mint were there. The Sarāy, where the Pash a resided, stood below the castle; it had spacious gardens and fair kiosks. On the other end of the bridge at Karkh stood a castle called Ḳush lar Ḳalʿas or Birds' castle, with a gate on the bridge (Ewliya Čelebi, iv, 416; Ḥādj d j ī Ḵhalīfa, Ḏji hān- Nümā, 457-50; Tavernier, 64; Thevenot, Voyage, ii, 211). Ewliya Čelebi refers to the numerous mosques of Bagh dād and mentions nine important mosques. Of the schools, two were the largest, the Mardj āniyya and Madrasat al-Ḵhulafā ʾ (Mustanṣiriyya). Of the many inns two were good. He mentions eight churches and three synagogues, and gives exaggerated figures for tekkes (700) and ḥammāms (500). The bridge of boats had 37-40 boats according to the height of the river, and some boats in the middle could be removed either for safety at night, or for river traffic, or as a military precaution. The main languages of the city were Arabic, Turkish and Persian. Bagh dād had the best carrier-pigeons. However Bagh dād was still in decline; its population was at the low figure of 15,000 (Tavernier, Travels, London 1678, 85-6; Ewliya Čelebi, Siyāḥat, iv, 420 ff.; Thevenot, Voyage, ii, 211). Bagh dād was governed by 24 pash as between 1048/1638-1116/1704 and there was no room for real improvement. The pash as were semi-autonomous, and the power of the janissaries was great. The power of the tribes rose and gradually became a threat to the life of the city. Little was done beyond repairs to the city walls or mosques. KüčükḤasan Pash a (1642) built three towers near Burdj al -ʿAdj am. Ḵhāṣṣakī MuḥammadPash a rebuilt Ṭabiyat al-Fātiḥ and repaired the walls after the flood of 1657. Aḥmad Bush nāḳ repaired the towers especially Burdj al-Ḏjāwīs h (Čaʾush )and built Burdj al-Ṣābūnī (1687). Mosques received some attention. DeliḤusaynPash a (1644) rebuilt the¶ Ḳamariyya mosque. Ḵhaṣṣakī Muḥammad (1657) built the Ḵhāṣṣakī mosque at Raʾsal-Ḳarya. Ṣiliḥdār ḤusaynPash a (1671) rebuilt at-Faḍl mosque which became known as Ḏjāmi ʿḤusaynPash a and surrounded the shrine of ʿUmar Suhrawardī by a wall and brought water to it by a canal. ʿAbd al-RaḥmānPash a (1674) repaired the Ḏjāmi ʿSh ayk h Maʿrūf and completed the dam started by his predecessor to protect Aʿẓamiyya from flood. Kaplan Muṣṭafā (1676) rebuilt Ḏjāmi ʿal-Sh ayk h al -Ḳudūrī which became known as Ḏjāmi ʿ al-Ḳaplāniyya. ʿUmar Pash a (1678) repaired the mosque of Abū Ḥanīfa and allotted new waḳfs to it. Ibrāhīm Pash a (1681) renewed Ḏjāmi ʿSayyidSulṭān ʿAlī, and Ḏjāmi ʿal-Sarāy. Ismāʿīl Pash a (1698) rebuilt Ḏjāmi ʿ al-Ḵhaffāfīn (ʿAzzāwī, iv, 27, 64, 109, 116, 143, Gulsh an -i Ḵhulafā , 102, 103, 105, 106, Ālūsī, Masādj id , 37, 57-8).Aḥmad Bush nāḳ (1678) built the famous ḴhānBanī Saʿd, while Ṣiliḥdār ḤusaynPash a built a new bazaar near the Mustanṣiriyya. The beginning of the 18th century saw the eyalet of Bagh dād terribly disorganised, the janissaries masters of the city, the Arab tribes holding the surrounding country, and peace or

93 security for trade non-existent. The appointment of Ḥasan Pash a in 1704, followed by his son Aḥmad, inaugurated a new period for Bagh dād . They introduced the Mamlūks (Kölemen) to check the janissaries and laid the foundation for Mamlūk supremacy which lasted till 1831. The janissaries and Arab tribes were controlled, order was restored and the Persian threat averted. Ḥasan Pash a rebuilt the SarāyMosque (ḎjadīdḤasan Pash a). He abolished taxes on firewood and on foodstuffs, and relieved quarters from exactions following murders (Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, vol. i, pt. I, 1193-4; Sulaymān Fāʾiḳ, Ḥurūb al-Irāniyyīn, MS. f. 18-19; idem, Tāʾrīkh al-Mamālik, MS. f. 4; Ḥadīḳat al-Zawrāʾ (abridged), MS. 9; Gulsh an -i Ḵhulafā , 225). Aḥmad Pash a continued on the lines of his father and enhanced greatly the prestige of Bagh dād . Nādir Sh āh besieged Bagh dād twice, in 1737 and 1743, and though the city suffered much in the first siege, Aḥmad Pash a held out and saved the city. When Aḥmad Pash a died in 1747, Constantinople tried to reimpose its authority on Bagh dād but failed, because of Mamlūk opposition. In 1749 SulaymānPash a was the first Mamlūk to be made governor of Bagh dād . He was the real founder of Mamlūk rule in ʿIrāḳ. Henceforth the sultan had to recognise their position and generally to confirm their nominee to the governorship. Ḥasan Pash a, who was brought up at the Ottoman court (slave household), wanted to follow its example; he established houses and initiated the training of Circassian and Georgian Mamlūks and sons of local magnates in them. Sulaymān now expanded this and there were always about 200 receiving training in the school to prepare officers and officials. They are given a literary education and training in the use of arms, the art of chivalry and sports, and finally some palace education, to create in élite for government (Sulayman Fāʾiḳ, Taʾrīkh al-Mamālik; Dawḥat al-Wuzarāʾ, 8). A governing class was formed, trained, energetic, and compact. But their weakness came from jealousies and intrigues. SulaymānPash a subdued the tribes and assured order and security, and encouraged trade. ʿAlī Pash a followed in 1175/1762 and ʿUmar Pash a in 1177/1764 (Taʾrīkh - i Ḏjewdet 2, i, 339-40). In 1766 the establishment of a British residency in Bagh dād was sanctioned by Bombay (Gazetteer, i, 1225). In 1186/1772 a terrible plague befell Bagh dād and¶ lasted six months; thousands perished, others migrated, and commercial activities came to a standstill (Gazetteer, i, 324). Security made Bagh dād a great commercial centre. An eye-witness wrote in 1774, ―this is the grand mart for the produce of India and Persia, Constantinople, Aleppo and Damascus; in short it is the grand oriental depository‖ (Gazetteer, i, 1243). Dissension and weak leadership among the Mamlūks led to a period of troubles, of tribal chaos, and the Persian conquest of Baṣra. It ended whenSulaymānPash a the Great became governor (1193/1779) and combined Bagh dād , Sh āhrizūr and Baṣra. The tribes were checked, peace was restored and Mamlūk power revived (Taʾrīkh - i Ḏjew det, ii, 146, 157, 158; Ṣūfī, Taʾrikh al-Mamālīk, 19 ff., 54 ff., S. Fāʾiḳ, Taʾrīkh al-Mamālīk, f. 16-7). SulaymānPash a repaired the walls of east Bagh dād , and built a wall around Karkh and surrounded it with a ditch. He rebuilt the Sarāy. He also built the Sulaymāniyya school and renewed the Ḳaplaniyya, Faḍl and Ḵhulafā ʾ mosques. In addition, he built the Sūḳ al-Sarrādj īn. His kahya started building theAḥmadiyyamosque (Ḏjāmi ʿal-Maydān) to be completed by the kahya's brother (ʿUth mān b. Sanad, (abridg. ed.), 70-73, 76-7). His last year (1802) saw a plague in Bagh dād (Gazetteer, i, 1285; Yāsīn Efendial-ʿUmarī, Gh arā ʾib al-Ath ar , 64). KüčükSulaymān (1808) abolished execution except when religious courts decided it, and forbade confiscations and cancelled dues to courts, and allotted salaries to judges (S. Fāʾiḳ, Taʾrīkh al-Mamālīk, f. 16; Dawḥat al-Wuzarāʾ, 250). Dāwūd Pash a came (1816) after a troubled period. He controlled the tribes and restored order and security. He cleared up some irrigation canals, established cloth and arms factories, and encouraged local industry. He built three large mosques, the most important being the Ḥaydar-Ḵhāna mosque. He founded three madrasas. He also built a sūḳ by the bridge. He organised an army of about 20,000 and had a French officer to train it. His energetic and intelligent administration brought prosperity to the city. However, he had to impose heavy taxes in Bagh dād . Dāwūd's fall and the end of the Mamlūks came about as a result of Maḥmūd

94

II's centralising and reforming policy, aided by a terrible plague, scarcity, and flood, which affected most of the city population (1247/1831) (Ḥadīḳat al-Zawrāʾ (abridg. ed.), MS. f. 43-44, 53, 55-56; A. R. Suwaydī, Nuzhat al-Udabāʾ, MS. f. 41-42; Mirʾāt al-Zawrāʾ, 59; S. Fāʾiḳ, Taʾrīkh al- Mamālik, MS. f. 39-52; Gazetteer, i, 1316; Frazer, Travels, i, 224-5; Handbook of Mesopotamia, i, 80- 1). The administrative system of Bagh dād was copied on a small scale from that of Constantinople. The Pash a held supreme military and administrative power. As the head of the administration was the katkh udā (or kahya) who was like a minister. He was assisted by the defterdār, who was director of finances, and by the dīwān efendisi or chief of the chancellery. There was the commander of the palace guards and the agh ā of the janissaries. There was the ḳāḍī as the head of the judiciary. The Pash a called the dīwān which included the kahya, the defterdār, the ḳāḍī, the commander and other important personages, to discuss important issues. In the palace there were houses, with teachers and instructors (lālāt) to educate the Mamlūks (Ḏjewdet, ii, 287, iii, 204, ʿUth mān b. Sanad, 31-2, 56, 39; Rousseau, 25 ff.). The Mamlūkarmy was of 12,500 and in case of need it could be raised to¶ 30,000 by local levies and contingents from other parts of the wilāyat (S. Fāʾiḳ, Mamālīk, f. 51-2). European travellers of this period give some data on Bagh dād . Some notice that the walls were constructed and repaired at many different times, the old portions being the best (Buckingham, Travels (1827), 332; see Felix Jones, Memoir, 309). The enclosed area within the walls (east) according to Felix Jones' measurement was 591 acres (cf. Dr. Ives, Journey, London 1778, 20; Rousseau, Description, 5). The wall on the river seems to have been neglected and houses were built on the bank (Olivier, Voyage (1804), ii, 379). A large part of the city within the walls, particularly in the eastern side, was not occupied. The section near the river was well populated but even there gardens abounded so that it appeared like a city arising from amid a grove of palms (Niebuhr, ii, 239; Buckingham, 373, Wellsted, Travels (1840), i, 255). The Sarāy was spacious, enclosing beautiful gardens, and was richly furnished (Rousseau, 6; Ker Porter, 263). The western side Karkh , was like a suburb with numerous gardens. It was defenceless at first, (Rousseau, 5; Ives, 28), until SulaymānPash a the Great built its wall. It had four gates—Bāb al- Kāẓim (N.), Bābal-Sh ay kh Maʿrūf (W.), Bābal-Ḥilla (S.W.), and Bab al-Kraimāt (S.). The walls were 5,800 yards long, enclosing an area of 246 acres (F. Jones, 309). (Ker Porter (1818) found it well furnished with shops along numerous and extensive streets (Ker Porter, ii, 255; al- Munsh ī ʾ Bagh dādī, Riḥla, 31). Moreover it was not so populated as the eastern side, and generally inhabited by the common people (Niebuhr, ii, 244; Rousseau, 4). The bridge of boats was 6 ft. wide and people use it or use ―guffas‖ to cross the river (Ker Porter, ii, 255; Niebuhr, ii, 243; al-Munsh ī ʾ Bagh dādī, 243). The population gradually increased in this period. Rousseau (c. 1800) estimates it at 45,000, Olivier at 80,000, while the inhabitants put the figure at 100,000 (Rousseau, 8; Olivier, ii, 385); Buckingham (1816) made the estimate 80,000 (Travels, ii, 380)). Ker Porter (1818) puts the figure at 100,000 (Travels, 265). Al-Munsh ī ʾ Bagh dādī echoes local views in saying that there were 100,000 houses in Bagh dād of which 1,500 were Jewish and 800 were Christian (Riḥla, 24). By 1830 the estimate is brought to 120,000-150,000 (Frazer, i, 224-5 and Wellsted). There was a mixture of races and creeds. The official class was Turkish (or Mamlūk), the merchants primarily Arab, and there were Persians, Kurds and some Indians (Buckingham, 387; Niebuhr, ii, 250; Ker Porter, ii, 265; Wellsted, i, 251). There were numerous bazaars in Bagh dād especially near the bridge, and the grand ones were vaulted with bricks, while the others were covered with palm trees. There were many kh āns , 24 ḥammāms, five great madrasas, and twenty large mosques and many small ones (Buckingham, 378-9; Ives, 273; al-Munsh ī ʾ Bagh dādī, 31; Niebuhr, ii, 230; Wellsted, i, 257; Olivier, ii, 382). The streets were narrow, and some had gates closed at night for protection. Houses were high, with few windows on the streets. The interior consists of ranges of rooms opening into a square interior court usually with a garden. Sardābs were used to avoid heat in summer, while

95 open terraces were convenient for the late afternoon. In summer people slept on the roof (cf. Buckingham, 380). Bagh dād had some industries especially tannery and the fabrication of cotton, silk and woolen textiles (Rousseau, 9-10). From 1831 to the end of the Ottoman period,¶ Bagh dād was directly under Constantinople. Some governors tried to introduce reforms. Meḥmed Rash īdPas h a (1847) was the first to try to improve economic conditions. He formed a company to buy two ships for transport between Bagh d ād and Baṣra, the success of which led to the corresponding British project. Nāmiḳ Pash a (1853) founded the damīr-kh āna which could repair ships (Chiha, 54, 58- 9;Gazetteer, i, 1360, 1365-6, 1372). Midḥat Pash a (1869-1872) introduced the modern wilāyet system. The wālī had a muʿāwin, or assistant, a mudīr for foreign affairs, and a maʾmūn or secretary. The wilāyet was divided into seven sandj aḳ s, headed by mutaṣarrifs, Bagh dād being one of them (Gazetteer, i, 1442, 1447-8). He abolished some obnoxious taxes—the iḥtisāb (octroi duty) on all produce brought to the city walls for sale, the ṭālibiyya, a tax on river crafts, kh ums ḥaṭab, or 20% on fuel, and rūs ʾbkār, a tax on irrigation wheels for cultivation, and replaced it by a ʿush r on agricultural produce (Gazetteer, i, 1442). In 1870 Midḥat founded a tramway linking Bagh dād with Kāẓimayn, and it continued for 70 years (ʿAlī ḤaydarMidḥat, Life, 51). He established (1869) the first publishing house, the wilāyet printing press in Bagh dād , and founded al-Zawrāʾ, the first newspaper to appear in ʿIrāḳ as the official organ of the provincial government; it continued until March 1917 as a weekly paper (ʿAzzāwī, vii, 241; Ali Haydar Midhat, The Life of Midḥat Pasha, London 1903, 47 ff.; Ṭarrāzī,Arabic Press, i, 78; Handbook of Mesopotamia, i, 81). With the exception of a few French Missionary schools, there were no modern schools in Bagh dād . Between 1869-1871, Midḥat established modern schools, a technical school, a junior (Rush di ) and a secondary (Iʿdādī) military schools, and a junior and secondary civil (Mulkī) schools (Za rāʾ No. 182; ʿAzzāwī, viii, 21; Sālnāme-i Bagh dād (1900), 454; Chiha, 100-102). Midḥat pulled down the city walls as a step towards its modernisation. He completed the Saray building started by Nāmiḳ Pash a (Chiha, 66). The educationmovement started by Midḥat continued after him. The junior girls' school was opened in 1899 (Sālnāme, 1318). Four primary schools were opened in 1890, and a primary teachers' school in 1900 (Sālnāme-i Maʿārif, Istanbul 1900; S. Fayḍī, Niḍāl, 58-9). By 1913 there were 103 schools in ʿIrāḳ, 67 primary, 29 junior (Rush dī ), 5 secondary and one college, the law college (Lugh at al-ʿArab, 1913, 335). Five printing presses were founded between 1884-1907. Newspapers appeared in Bagh dād after 1908 and by 1915, 45 papers were issued by different people. Wālīs followed Midḥat in quick succession and little was achieved. In 1886 conscription was established (for Muslims only). In 1879 the hospital built by Midḥat was finally opened (Zawrāʾ, No. 810). In 1902, a new bridge of boats, wide enough for vehicles to pass, and with a cafe on the south side, was constructed (Ālūsī, 25; Handbook, ii, 374). In 1908 Bagh dād sent three representatives to the Ottoman Parliament (ʿAzzāwī, viii, 165). In 1910 NāẓimPash a constructed a bund surrounding east Bagh dād to protect it from floods (ʿAzzāwī, viii, 200-1). He was the last energetic wālī. Administration was headed by the wālī assisted by a council, about half of which consisted of elected members, and the rest were appointed (ex-officio). About two of the elected members were non-Muslims. The wālī was assisted by a ḳāʾimmaḳām (Zawrāʾ, No. 1369; Sālnāme 1292 A.H.). Among important offices were the Maʿārif directorate, the Tapu directorate, the registration office, and the civil¶ courts (Sālnāme (1300), 82-96). Until 1868, Bagh dād was the centre of the three eyālets of Mawṣil, Baṣra and Bagh dād . In 1861, Mawṣil became separate and in 1884 Baṣra was separated and Bagh dād became the centre of three Mutaṣarrifliks (Chiha, Province, 85). The plague and flood of 1831 left terrible marks on Bagh dād . Most of the houses of East Bagh dād were ruined and two thirds of the space within the walls was vacant, while most

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Karkh was ruined. The walls on both sides had great gaps opened by the flood. The city was in a miserable state compared to the days of Dāwūd Pash a (Frazer, Travels, i, 269, 233-4, 252). Southgate (1837) noticed that the city was slowly recovering from the calamity, and put the population at 40,000. But he saw the madrasas neglected and their allowances not properly used (Southgate, Narrative, 2 vols. 1851, II, 180, 165-6; Handbook of Mesopotamia, i, 80-1). When Felix Jones surveyed Bagh dād (1853-4) things had improved. He mentions 63 quarters in East Bagh dād , 25 quarters in Karkh , most of which still retain their names (Memoir, 339; cf. Frazer, 233-4). The population of the city increased steadily after the middle of the 19th century. In 1853 they were about 60,000 (Felix Jones, 315, 329). In 1867, the male population of Bagh dād is given as 67,273 (Lugh at al-ʿArab, 1913). In 1877 they were all estimated at 70 to 80 thousand (Persian Gulf Gazetteer, 8; Geary, Through Asiatic Turkey, 1878, i, 126). In the 1890s the estimate was 80 to a 100 thousand (Harris, From Batum to Baghdad, 299; Cowper, Through Asiatic Turkey, 270). In 1900 they were put at 100,000 (Chiha, Province, 165; see Sālnāme (1320 A.H.), 136-7, 181). Another estimate for 1904 is given at 140,000 (Handbook of Mesopotamia, i, 89). By 1918, the population is given as 200,000 (Handbook, ii, 334; Alūsī,Akh bār Bagh dād , 280-1; cf. R. Coke for the figure 185,000 in 1918, Bagh dād , 298). Travellers were impressed with the great admixture of races, the diversity of speech and the rare freedom enjoyed by non-Muslims and the great toleration among the masses (Jones, 339; Olivier, ii, 388-9). This mixture left its imprint on the dialect of Bagh dād (ʿAbd Laṭīf, Ḳāmūs Lahdj at Bagh dād MSS.). However, Arabic was the common language. The Arab population was increased by the advent of tribal elements (Geary, op. cit. i, 136, 214). Usually people of one creed or race congregated in a particular quarter (cf. F. Jones, Memoir, 339). The Turks generally occupied the northern quarters of the city, while Jews and Christians lived in their ancient quarters north and west of Sūḳ al-Gh azl respectively. Most of the Persians lived on the west side but Karkh was mainly Arab (F. Jones, 339; Persian Gulf, 9, 79-80; Handbook, ii, 381; Southgate, ii, 182). Though people of the three religions spoke Arabic their dialects differed (Lugh at al-ʿArab, 1911, 69-71). At the turn of the century there were still some industries. Among the textiles of Bagh dād were silk stuffs, cotton fabrics, stuffs of wool-silk mixture, striped cotton pieces, and coarse cotton cloth for head-scarves and cloaks, sheets and women outer garments. The silk fabrics of Bagh dād were famous for their colour and workmanship. An excellent dyeingindustry existed. Tanning was one of the principal industries, and there were about 40 tanneries at Muʿaẓẓam. Carpentry and the manufacture of swords were advanced. There was a military factory for textiles (Handbook, i, 231; Sālnāme (1300), 79, 136). ¶ The Bagh dād bazaars were covered, or uncovered like Sūḳal Gh azl. At the eastern bridgehead was the chief place for trade in the bazaars of the Sarāy, Maydān, Sh ord j a and the cloth bazaar rebuilt by Dāwūd Pash a. Some bazaars had crafts with their own guilds and usually the bazaar was named after it, such as Sūḳ al-Ṣafāfīr (coppersmiths) Sūḳ al-Sarrādj īn (saddlery), Sūḳ al-Ṣāgh ā, (silversmiths), Sūḳ al-Ḵhaffāfīn (shoemakers) etc. (Ewliya Čelebi, iv, 22;M.G.T.B., i, 22-3). There were two important streets, one from the North Gate to near the bridge, and the other from the SouthGate to the end of the main bazaar. In 1915 the North Gate was connected with the SouthGate by a road, now known as Rash īd street (Handbook, i, 377; Sālnāme (1318 A.H.), 599-600). In 1922 Nāmiḳ Pash a tried to repair some of the streets (Sālnāme (1318 A.H.), 60). In 1307/1889 Sirrī Pash a transfered the Maydān to an open square with a garden (see Sālnāme (1321), 76). In 1285/1869 Midḥat formed a municipal council by election and orders were issued to clear the streets. In 1879 municipalities were formed and orders were issued for achieving

97 cleanliness and drainage (Zawrāʾ, No. 231, No. 878, No. 817, No. 1774, Lugh at al-ʿArab, i, 17; Sālnāme (1300), 136). Lighting with kerosene lamps was adopted and given to a contractor, but in fact only streets with notable residents were lit (Zawrāʾ, No. 490, no. 837) (see furtherBALADIYYA.) At the beginning of the 20th century the city of Bagh dād covered an area of about four sq. m. The remains of the city wall on the East side demolished by Midḥat formed with the river a rough parallelogram about 2 miles long with an average width of over a mile. About a third of this area was empty or occupied by graveyards or ruins, and towards the south much space was covered by date groves. Karkh began further upstream than East Bagh dād but it was much smaller in length and depth (Handbook, ii, 276). In 1882 there were 16,303 houses, 600 inns, 21 baths, 46 large mosques (dj āmi ʿ) and 36 small mosques (masdj id ), 34 children's maktab and 21 religious schools, 184 coffee-shops and 3,244 shops (Sālnāme (1300), 136). In 1884 the figures were: 16,426 houses, 205 inns, 39 baths, 93 dj āmī ʿ and 42 masdj id s and 36 children's maktabs (Sālnāme (1302), 335). In 1903 Bagh dād had 4,000 shops, 285 coffeeshops, 135 orchards, 145 dj āmi ʿ, 6 primary schools, 8 schools for non-Muslims and 20 convents (tekke), 12 bookshops, one public library, 20 maktabs for boys, 8 churches, 9 tanneries, one soap factory, 129 workshops for weaving, 22 textile factories (Sālnāme(1321), 179). By 1909 houses reached 90,000 in number. There were 3 private printing presses, 6 churches and 6 synagogues (Sālnāme (1324), 223). Sh ukrī al-Alūsī described 44 mosques in East Bagh dād and 18 in Karkh (Alūsī, Masādj id ; Massignon, Mission, ii, 63-5). The temperature in Bagh dād ranged from 114° to 121° F. in summer, and from about 26° to 31° F. in winter, but it sometimes rose to 123° F. in summer and fell to 20° F. in winter. Bagh dād produced some distinguished poets during the Ottoman period, like Fuḍūlī [q.v.], Ḏhihnī [q.v.], Akh ras and ʿAbdal-Bāḳī al-ʿUmarī; historians like Murtaḍā, Gh urābī and M. Sh ukrī Ālūsī; jurists like ʿAbdAllāh Suwaydī and Abu 'l-Th anā al-Alūsī (see Alūsī, al-Misk al- Adh far , Bagh dād 1930). Modern Bagh dād has changed considerably, especially since the thirties. It has expanded to link¶ up with Aʿẓamiyya and Kāẓimayn to the north, with the eastern bund to the east, with the great bend of the Tigris to the south, and with the al-Maṭār al-Madanī and with nearby suburbs like Manṣūr and Maʾmūn cities. There are 76 quarters in Karkh and Rusāfa, 8 in Aʿẓamiyya, 4 in Karradh Sh arḳiyya and 6 in Kāẓimayn (Sousa, AtlasBagh dād , 21-5). The population of the Bagh dād municipality in 1947 was 466,733; it had mounted to 735,000 by 1957. Traditional styles of building gave way to houses, built on western lines, in areas beyond the old city, while the old sections are being gradually transformed. The bridge of boats is gone, and four permanent bridges have been constructed. The process of modernisation, both material and social, is too rapid to be recorded here. (A.A. Duri)

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(BAGHDAD (HISTORICAL & MODERN))

^ Bibliography The sources have been mentioned in the article. In addition to the major works of historians like Ṭabarī, Masʿūdī, Yaʿḳūbī, Ibn al-Ath īr, geographers like Ibn Rusta, Ibn al-Faḳīh (Mash had MSS.), Ibn Ḥawḳal, Yaʿḳūbī, Muḳaddasī, Yāḳūt, Marāṣid al-Iṭṭilāʿ, ḤudūdʿAlam and Mustawfī, and travellers like Ibn Ḏjubayr, Ibn Baṭṭūta and Benjamin of Tudela, the following should also be mentioned: Ibn al-Sāʿī, Al-Ḏjāmi ʿ al-Mukh taṣar , ed. Muṣṭafā Ḏjawād, Bagh dād 1934 Ibn al-Ḏjawzī, ManāḳibBagh dād , Bagh dād 1921 idem, al-Muntaẓam, Ḥaydarābād, Deccan, 1357-9 A.H. Miskawayh, Tadj ārib al-Umam, vols i-vii (ed. and transl. by Amedroz and Margoliouth, 1920-1 Suhrāb, ʿAdj ā ʾib al-Aḳālīm al-Sabʿa, ed. Hans von Mzik, Leipzig 1930 al-Sh ābus h tī, Kitāb al-Diyārāt, ed. Gurgis ʿAwwād, Bagh dād 1951 Hilāl al-Ṣābī, Rusūm Dāral-Ḵhilāfa , Dept. of Ant. Library MS. no. 2900 Ibnal-Fuwaṭī, al-Ḥawādīth al-Ḏjāmi ʿa, ed. by Muṣṭafā Ḏjawād, Bagh dād 1351 A.H. Sūlī, Akh bāral -Rāḍī wa 'l-Muttaḳī Bi'llāh, Cairo 1935 Tanūkh ī, Nish wār al-Muḥāḍara, vol. i, Cairo 1921, vol. viii, Damascus 1930 M.Sh. al-Alūsī, al-Misk al-Adh far , i, Bagh dād 1930 Ewliya Čelebī, Siyāḥat-nāme, vol. iv, Constantinople 1314 A.H. al-Munsh īBag h dādī, Riḥla, trans. ʿAbbās ʿAzzāwī, Bagh dād 1948 Sālnāmes of Bagh dād for the years 1299 A.H., 1300 A.H., 1301 A.H., 1312 A.H., 1317 A.H., 1318 A.H., 1321 A.H., 1324 A.H. W. B. Harris, From Batum to Baghdad, Edinburgh 1896 Ḥusaynī, Akh bāral -Dawla al-Saldj ūḳiyya , ed. by Muh. Iḳbāl, Lahore 1933 Chiha, La Province de Baghdad, Cairo c. 1900 Ḥādj d j ī Ḵhalīfa, Ḏjihānnümā , Constantinople 1145 A.H. Yasin al-ʿUmarī, Gh arā ʾib al-Ath ar , ed. by M.S. Ḏjalīlī, Mawṣil 1940 ʿAbbās al-ʿAzzāwī, Taʾrīkh al -ʿIrāḳ bayn Iḥtilālayn, 8 vols., Bagh dād 1936-58 ʿUth mān b. Sanad al-Baṣrī, Maṭāliʿ al-Ṣuʿūd fi Akh bāral -WālīDāwūd, D. of Ant. Library NS. no. 233 (abridged by A.H. Madanī), Cairo 1317 A.H. Salmān Fāʾiḳ, Taʾrīkh al-Mamālik fī Bagh dād , (MS. Lib. Dept. of Ant. Bagh dād no. 1227) Salmān Fāʾik, Ḥurūb al-Irāniyyīn fi 'l-ʿIrāḳ (Lib. of D. of Ant. Bagh dād no. 1952) Ḥadiḳat al-Zawrā, abridged by Abdul-Rahmān al-Suhrawardī (MS.) ʿAbd al-Rahmān al-Suhrawardī, Nuzhat al-Udabāʾ fī Tarādj im ʿUlamāʾ wa Wuzarāʾ Bagh dād (MS.) M. Karmalī, al-Fawz bi 'l-Murād fī Taʾrīkh Bagh dād , 1329 A.H. FerīdūnBey, Munsh a ʾāt al-Salāṭīn, Istanbul 1274 A.H. Kātib Čelebi, Fadh laka , ii, Istanbul 1297 Murtaḍā, Gulsh an -i Ḵhulafā

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Muh. Amīn, Bagh dād we son ḥādith e -i Diyāʿǐ, Istanbul 1338-41 A.H.

Ḏjewdet Pash a, Taʾrīkh 2, Istanbul 1301-9 Al-Azdī, Ḥikāyat Abi 'l-Ḳāsim Bagh dādī , ed. A. Mez, Heidelberg¶ 1902 al-Zawrā (Gov. Gazette, Dept. of Ant. Library) Q. Sh ahrabanī, Tadh kirat al-Sh u ʿarāʾ, ed. A. M. Karmali, Bagh dād 1936 Ālūsī, Masādj id Bagh dād , Bagh dād 1346 A.H. Ibn Ṭayfūr, Taʾrīkh Bagh dād , vi, Leipzig 1908 Cl. Huart, Histoire de Baghdad dans les temps modernes, Paris 1904 J. R. Wellsted, Travels in the city of the caliphs, 2 vols. London 1840 Rousseau, Description du pachalik de Baghdad, Paris 1809 Sarre and Herzfeld, Archäologische Reise im Euphrat und Tigris-Gebiet, Berlin 1900 Rev. H. Southgate, Tour through Armenia, Kurdistan, Persia and Mesopotamia, 2 vols., London 1850 de Thevenot, Relation d'un voyage fait au Levant, 2 vols., J. S. Buckingham, Travels in Mesopotamia, London 1827, Felix Jones, Memoir on Baghdad, Bombay 1857 Niebuhr, Voyage en Arabie, vol. ii, 1780 Ker Porter, Travels in Syria, Persia, Armenia, Ancient Babylonia, 2 vols., London 1817-20 J. G. Lorimer, Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, vol. i, pts. I and II, Calcutta 1925 Handbook of Mesopotamia, 4 vols., London 1917 Olivier, Voyages, 2 vols., Paris 1804 S. H. Longrigg, Four centuries of Modern Iraq, Oxford 1925 Reallexikon der Assyriologie, Berlin 1928 L. Massignon, Mission en Mesopotamie, vol. ii, Cairo 1912 Ives, Journey from Persia to Baghdad, London 1778 Map of the Iraq Academy by A. Sousa and M. Ḏjawād, with its Dalīl Mufaṣṣal, Bagh dād 1958 Le Strange, Baghdad during the Abbasid Caliphate, Oxford 1924 R. Levy, A Baghdad Chronicle, Cambridge 1929 Abel, Les Marchés de Baghdad, in Bulletin de la Société belge d'Études géographiques, 1949, 148-164 S. Sassoon, History of the Jews in Baghdad, Letchworth 1949 I.A., art. Bagdad, (by M. Cavid Baysun) R. Coke, Baghdad the City of Peace, London 1927 M. Streck, Die Alte Landschaft Babylonien, i, Leiden 1900 Sousa, Atlas Baghdad, Bagh dād 1952. M. Canard, Hamdânides, i, 155-74 Makdisi, The topography of eleventh century Baġdād = Materials and notes, in Arabica vi, 1959, 18-97 and 281-309 [Print Version: Volume I, page 894, column 2] CITATION:

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Duri, A.A. "Bagh dād." Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Edited by: P. Bearman; , Th. Bianquis; , C.E. Bosworth; , E. van Donzel; and W.P. Heinrichs. Brill, 2011. Brill Online. K.U. Leuven - University Library. 17 February 2011

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Bayt al-Ḥikma Bayt al-Ḥikma (―the House of Wisdom‖) was the palace library of the early ʿAbbāsid caliphs, mentioned in the sources only in connection with al-Rashīd (r. 170–193/786–809) and al- Maʾmūn (r. 196–218/812–833). The idea, developed in twentieth-century scholarship, that the Bayt al-Ḥikma was a bureau for the large-scale translation of Greek books into Arabic, operating along the lines of a modern research institute or even a university, is entirely incorrect. While we have little information about the real nature of this library, it is clear that it had more to do with collecting and preserving books of pre-Islamic Iranian and early Arabic lore than with transmitting Greek science. The expression bayt al-ḥikma (as well as the alternate expression, khizānat al-ḥikma) is apparently the Arabic translation of a Middle Persian term for libraries of the Sāsānian kings. A Middle Persian account from the sixth century C.E. states that the Sāsānids and their predecessors kept copies of books of religion and science in a ganj (treasury, storehouse), a word equivalent to Arabic khizāna (Shaki, 114–25). Ḥamza al-Iṣfahānī (d. after 350/961) reports that in pre-Islamic Iran books containing recastings in verse of Persian historical lore, warfare, and romances were stored in ―houses of wisdom‖ (buyūt al-ḥikma) for the Sāsānian kings (al-Amthāl al-ṣādira ʿan buyūt al-shiʿr, cited by Gregor Schoeler, 2:308). Ādāb al-mulūk, a book on royal deportment deriving from Sāsānian sources and ascribed to al-Sarakhsī (d. 286/899), provides information on the role of the palace library (bayt al-ḥikma) in connection with the king's study of royal history (Rosenthal, 109). The Arabic term was probably coined in early ʿAbbāsid times, in the second half of the second/eighth century. Our source of information on this matter is almost exclusively the late fourth/tenth-century book catalog of al-Nadīm (written 376/987), al-Fihrist (ed. Gustav Flügel, 2 vols., Leipzig 1871–2, repr. Beirut 1964), on which some of the later sources are largely dependent. The term bayt al-ḥikma alternates with khizānat al-ḥikma—Sahl b. Hārūn (d. 215/830), for example, is cited as both ṣāhib bayt al-ḥikma, 10, and ṣāḥib khizānat al-ḥikma, 120— and sometimes the institution is referred to merely askhizāna (5 [bis], 19). In the Fihrist these terms are most frequently associated with the caliphs Hārūn al-Rashīd and, especially, al- Maʾmūn. The construction in which this is expressed is either an iḍāfa (khizānat al-Maʾmūn, ―al- Maʾmūn's storehouse [of books],‖ 5) or a prepositional phrase with li- (khizānat al-ḥikma lil- Maʾmūn, ―the storehouse of wisdom of al-Maʾmūn,‖ 274). Courtiers of al-Mutawakkil (r. 232– 47/847–61) in the next generation—al-Fatḥ b. Khāqān (d. 247/861; 116, 143) and ʿAlī b. Yaḥyā b. al-Munajjim (d. 275/888–9; Yāqūt, Irshād al-arīb, ed. D. S. Margoliouth, Oxford 19222, 5:467)— are also designated as having their own bayt or khizānat al-ḥikma of an unsurpassed number of books, showing that the terms refer to a library in the conventional sense. In view of its association with the caliphs al-Rashīd and al-Maʾmūn and of the Sāsānian origin of both the terms and the institution, it seems beyond reasonable doubt that the references are to a palace library. The Fihrist provides the following information about this library when it is mentioned in association with the names of these two caliphs. Among their holdings that are mentioned explicitly are books described as having ―old-fashioned copy-hand‖ (qadīm al-naskh, 21), one, presumably in Arabic, allegedly written in the hand of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib b. Hāshim, the grandfather of the prophet Muḥammad (5), another written in the Ḥimyarite script (5), and still another in the Sūdānī script (19). The activities that were carried out in the library included book copying (ʿAllān al-Shuʿūbī, 105)—clearly as a means to enrich the collections— and book binding (Ibn Abī l-Ḥarīsh, 10). Mentioned as affiliated with the library are Sahl b. Hārūn (10, 120, 125) and Salm (120, 243, 268, 305) as directors or librarians (ṣāḥib), and, as associated employees, Abū Sahl al-Faḍl b. Nawbakht (fl. c. 158–193/775–809; 274), Saʿīd b. Hārūn (120, 125), and Muḥammad b. Mūsā al-Khwārazmī (d. c.232/847; 274), as well as Yaḥyā b. Abī Manṣūr al-Munajjim and the Banū Mūsā (Ibn al-Qifṭī, Taʾrīkh al-ḥukamāʾ, ed. Julius Lippert (Leipzig 1903), 441–2), it being stated explicitly with regard to the Banū Mūsā that they were ―registered‖ there (athbatahum) by al-Maʾmūn.

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The men mentioned as affiliated with this library were for the most part Iranians, and in a few instances it is expressly recorded in the Fihrist that they were involved in translating books from Persian into Arabic, as was the case with Abū Sahl al-Faḍl b. Nawbakht (274) and Salm (120); the latter is also mentioned as having prepared, like Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ and Sahl b. Hārūn— both well known shuʿūbīs and Middle Persian experts—summaries and extracts of Kalīla wa- Dimna (305). It is thus clear that the function of this library under the early ʿAbbāsids was similar to that under the Sāsānians, that is, the preservation of the Persian heritage, although now in Arabic translations, to which there was apparently added the corresponding function of collecting and preserving Arab traditions: in addition to ―old‖ books from the pre-Islamic and early Arabian tradition mentioned above were books on Arab history and warfare said to have been commissioned by al-Manṣūr (Gutas, Greek Thought, 57 n. 49), and Hārūn al-Rashīd is imagined in a much later source to have ordered a book on the biographies of Persian kings (siyar al-mulūk) to be brought to him from the Bayt al-Ḥikma (preface of the Nihāyat al- arab fī akhbār al-Furs wa-l-ʿArab of pseudo-Aṣmaʿī, cited by ʿAlī 1951, 143). It is only under al- Maʾmūn that we hear of men with a different profile affiliated with the caliph's library, namely the mathematician and astronomer Muḥammad b. Mūsā al-Khwārazmī, the astrologer Yaḥyā b. Abī Manṣūr al-Munajjim, and the mathematicians known as the Banū Mūsā. We do not know what became of the library thereafter, but al-Nadīm was able to identify copies of books from this khizānat al-ḥikma when he wrote his Fihrist in 376/987. The library-director Salm, though of Persian background, is recorded in the Fihrist as having been involved, as a member of a committee, in the translation of Ptolemy's Almagest (267f.) under commission by the Barmakid Yaḥyā b. Khālid (Hārūn's vizier from 169/786 to 187/803). In a colophon of a manuscript containing the translation of the earliest extant Arabic paraphrase of Aristotle's logic, Salm is said also to have been involved, again together with others, in its translation for Yaḥyā b. Khālid (Kraus, 1–20). The capacity in which Salm was involved in these projects is not clear. It is improbable that he knew Greek or Syriac, in which case either the translations of both these works were done from Middle Persian versions, or Salm perhaps merely edited or polished the versions prepared by the translators from Greek or Syriac. In any case, the available evidence does not indicate that these projects took place in the Bayt al-Ḥikma as part of its regular activities; the mention of the Bayt al-Ḥikma in these instances is merely in the title identifying Salm. A similar reference to Salm as part of a committee sent by al-Maʾmūn to Byzantium to collect Greek manuscripts (243) is to be discounted as legendary. Salm was in charge of theʿAbbāsid palace library under Yaḥyā b. Khālid al-Barmakī, as is attested not only in the Fihrist but also, independently, in Ibn ʿAbd Rabbihi's (d. 328/940) al-ʿIqd al-farīd (ed. Aḥmad Amīn, Aḥmad al-Zayn, and Ibrāhīm al-Ibyārī, Cairo 1940–53, 2:127, where the printed name Sulaymān is clearly an error for Salm); and the Barma-kids had already been removed from power ten years before al-Maʾmūn's accession. Furthermore, this report in the Fihrist is part of the fictitious account that credits the translation movement to al-Maʾmūn's dream of Aristotle (Gutas, 95–104). It appears that it was from reports such as these concerning Salm that these arose in twentieth-century scholarship the myth that the Bayt al-Ḥikma of the early ʿAbbāsid caliphs was an academy and a school for the study of the ancient sciences, and a centre for the translation of Greek works into Arabic in which Ḥunayn b. Isḥāq (d. 260/873) was active and which was founded by al-Maʾmūn in 217/832. Although there was some earlier speculation about it, it was DeLacy O'Leary's Arabic thought and its place in history (London 1922) that first linked the Bayt al-Ḥikma with the Nestorian physicians of Baghdad (including Ḥunayn), asserted that it was founded by al-Maʾmūn, and gave 832 as the official date of its establishment—all without citing any sources. Following O'Leary's unfounded assertions, and inspired by G. Bergsträsser's publication (Leipzig 1925) of Ḥunayn's bibliographic Risāla of Galenic translations, Max Meyerhof published an article that was responsible for the propagation of this myth (Meyerhof, 685–724). In this and subsequent publications in German, English, and French—articles that were widely read as authoritative in part because of the author's expertise in the history of Arabic medicine—Meyerhof repeated and elaborated this

103 imaginative interpretation of the Bayt al-Ḥikma as a full-fledged academy and institute of translation, founded by al-Maʾmūn in 830 or 832, where all the Greek manuscripts of the caliph were kept and in which a team of translators worked under the direction of Ḥunayn b. Isḥāq. Very nearly the same picture of the Bayt al-Ḥikma appears in Dominique Sourdel's article in EI 2. Later publications describe the Bayt al-Ḥikma as a full-fledged college of the sciences or humanities. There is, however, no evidence for these assertions, and the brief facts mentioned above constitute almost the entirety of the information that we possess on the subject. Dimitri Gutas Kevin van Bladel Bibliography Jawād ʿAlī, Mawārid Taʾrīkh al-Ṭabarī II, Majallat al-Majmaʿ al-ʿIlmī al-ʿIrāqī 2 (1951), 135–90 Paul Kraus, Zu Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, RSO 14 (1934) 1–20 repr. in his Alchemie, Ketzerei, Apokryphen im frühen Islam, ed. Rémi Brague (Hildesheim 1994), 89–108 Max Meyerhof, New light on Hunain ibn Ishaq and his period, Isis 8 (1926), 685–724, repr. in Fuat Sezgin (ed.), Galen in the Arabic tradition. Texts and studies(Frankfurt 1996), 3:1–40 Franz Rosenthal, From Arabic books and manuscripts, XVI. As-Sarakhsī (?) on the Appropriate Behavior for Kings, JAOS 115/1 (1995), 109a Gregor Schoeler, Arabische Handschriften (Wiesbaden 1990), 2:308 Mansour Shaki, The Dēnkard account of the history of Zoroastrian scriptures, ArO 49/2 (1981), 114–25. For critical discussions of the evidence see Marie-Geneviève Balty-Guesdon, Le Bayt al- Ḥikma de Baghdad, Arabica 39 (1992) 131–50 Françoise Micheau, The scientific institutions in the medieval Near East, in Encyclopedia of the history of Arabic science, vol. 3, Technology, alchemy, and life sciences, ed. Roshdi Rashed (London and New York 1996), 986–8 S. van Koningsveld, Greek manuscripts in the early Abbasid empire. Fiction and facts about their origin, translation, and destruction, BO 55/3–4 (1998) 345–71 Dimitri Gutas, Greek thought, Arabic culture. The Graeco-Arabic translation movement in Baghdad and early ʿAbbāsid society (2nd–4th/8th–10th centuries) (London and New York 1998), 53–60.

CITATION: Gutas, Dimitri. "Bayt al-Ḥikma." Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE. Edited by: Gudrun Krämer, ; Denis Matringe, ; John Nawas and ; Everett Rowson. Brill, 2011. Brill Online. K.U. Leuven - University Library. 17 February 2011

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People of the House Literally, ―(the) people of the house‖ ( ahl al- bayt), a family, a noble family, a leading family and, most probably, also those who dwelt near the house of God (see HOUSE, DOMESTIC AND DIVINE ), the Kaʿba (q.v.). Without the definite article “al-,” it means ―household‖ (see FAMILY; KINSHIP; COMMUNITY AND SOCIETY IN THE QURʾĀN ). In Shīʿī (see SHĪʿISM AND THE QURʾĀN ) as well as Sunnī literature the term ahl al-bayt is usually understood to refer to the family of the Prophet (q.v.). In the Qurʾān the term appears twice with the definite article ( Q 11:73; 33:33) and once without it ( ahl bayt, Q 28:12). According to the lexicographers, when ahl appears in a construction with a person it refers to his blood relatives (see BLOOD AND BLOOD CLOT ), but with other nouns it acquires wider meanings: thus the basic meaning of ahl al-bayt is the inhabitants of a house (or a tent). They used to call the inhabitants of Mecca(q.v.; ahl makka ) ―the people of God‖ as a sign of honor (for them), in the same way that it is said ―the house of God‖ ( bayt Allāh). Ahl madhhab are those who profess a certain doctrine; ahl al-islām are the Muslims, and so on (see for additional examples, Lisān al- ʿArab, s.v. ahl). The Qurʾān frequently uses ahl to denote ¶ a certain group of people. Sometimes the word is connected with the name of a place, and in these cases the term refers to the inhabitants of that place, such as: ahl yathrib, ―the people of Yathrib‖ ( Q 33:13) or ahl al-madīna, ―the people of Medina‖ (q.v.; Q 9:101); ahl madyan, ―the people of Midian‖ (q.v.; Q 20:40; 28:45). Sometimes the term is used to denote the people of unidentified locations such as ahl qarya, ―the inhabitants of a town or village‖ ( Q 18:77; cf. 29:31, 34), ahl al-qurā, ―towns-people, dwellers of the villages‖ ( Q 7:96-8; 12:109; 59:7; see CITY ). At other times the word ahl refers to certain groups of people typified or identified by some ethical or religious characteristics, as in ahl al-dhikr, ―people of the reminder‖ ( Q 21:7; see MEMORY ) or ahl al-nār, ―people of the (hell-) fire‖ ( Q 38:64; see HELL AND HELLFIRE ). Or it has the meaning of ―fit for,‖ in which case the word describes an individual, not a group, such as ahl al-taqwā, ―(a person) fit for piety‖ (q.v.; Q 74:56), or ahl al-maghfira, ―(a person) fit for forgiveness‖ (q.v.; Q74:56). The term ahl al-bayt falls into one or more of these categories, namely people who belong to a certain house in the literal or socio-political meanings of the word. At least in one case ( Q 33:33), however, its identification with the Prophet turned the term into a major issue in qurʾānic exegesis and tradition literature (see EXEGESIS OF THE QURʾĀN: CLASSICAL AND MEDIEVAL; ḥADĪTH AND THE QURʾĀN ). The qurʾānic usage of ahl al-bayt is as follows: In Q 11:73 — the story of Abraham (Ibrāhīm) and the divine messengers. When the patriarch's wife is informed that she is going to give birth to Isaac (Isḥāq) and Jacob (Yaʿqūb), she reacts by saying: ―Alas! Shall I bring forth when I am old and my husband here an old man? Verily ¶ this is a thing strange‖ ( Q 11:72). The angels respond: ―Do you think the affair of God strange? The mercy and blessing of God be upon you, O people of the house…‖ (raḥmatu llāhi wa-barakātuhu ʿalaykum ahla l- bayti). In Q 28:12 — situated in the story of the rescue of the infant Moses (Mūsā) by Pharaoh's (Firʿawn) wife. The phrase appears without the definite article: Moses' sister asks, ―Shall I direct you to a household who will take charge of him (the infant Moses) for you?…‖ (hal adullukum ʿalā ahli baytin yakfulūnahu lakum). In Q 33:33 — ―God simply wishes to take the pollution from you, O people of the house and to purify you thoroughly‖ (innamā yurīdu llāhu li-yudhhiba ʿankumu l-rijsa ahla l-bayti wa-yuṭahhirakum taṭhīran). The first two verses, Q 11:73 and Q 28:12, were understood by almost all Muslim commentators to mean family, in the first case Abraham's family and in the second the prophet Moses' family. In the case of Q 33:33, however, the word bayt most probably means not a family but the Kaʿba, the house of God; thus the term ahl al-bayt would seem to mean the tribe of Quraysh (q.v.) or the

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Islamic community in general, as suggested by R. Paret (Der Plan, 130; cf. Bell, Qurʾān,ii, 414 n. 3; Lisān al-ʿArab). The tribe of Quraysh was explicitly called ahl al-bayt in an early Islamic tradition recorded by Ibn Saʿd: ―Quṣayy said to his fellow tribesmen, ‗You are the neighbors of God and people of his house‘‖ (innakum jīrān Allāh wa-ahl baytihi; Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, i/1, 41, l. 16). In this sense the term assumes an even wider meaning: it includes all those who venerated the Kaʿba. This original meaning was neglected in favor of the more limited scope of the Prophet's family, and Q33:33 became, consequently, the cornerstone for both Shīʿī and ʿAbbāsid claims to the leadership ¶ of the Muslim community (see POLITICS AND THE QURʾĀN ). The Shīʿa (q.v.) claimed that the verse speaks about the divine choice of the ʿAlid family and their preference to all the other relatives of the Prophet. To be sure, the idea of divine selection was accepted also by the so-called non- Shīʿī, or Sunnī, tradition. Thus the Prophet is made to say: ―God created human beings, divided them into two parties, and placed me in the better one of the two. Then he divided this party into tribes (see TRIBES AND CLANS ) and placed me in the best of them all, and then he divided them into families (buyūt, lit. ―houses‖) and placed me in the best of them all, the one with the most noble pedigree‖ (khayruhum nasaban; Fīrūzābādī, Faḍāʾil, i, 6). Within this concept of selection, there is a wide area of variation. The tendency of the Shīʿa has always been to carry the list of the divine selection further down, so as to achieve maximum exclusivity. One of the most widespread traditions quoted by Shīʿī as well as Sunnī sources in relation to the interpretation of Q 33:33 is the so-called ḥadīth al- kisāʾ . Through the many variations on this ḥadith, the idea of the ―holy five‖ was established. The Prophet is reported to have said: ―This āya was revealed for me and for ʿAlī (see ʿALĪ B. ABĪ ṭĀLIB ), Fāṭima (q.v.), Ḥasan and Ḥusayn.‖ When the verse was revealed, the tradition goes on to say, the Prophet took a ―cloak‖ or ―cape‖ (kisāʾ, meaning his robe or garment; see CLOTHING ), wrapped it around his son-in-law, his daughter and his two grandchildren and said: ―O God, these are my family ( ahl baytī) whom I have chosen; take the pollution from them and purify them thoroughly.‖ The clear political message in this tradition was stressed by additions such as the one in which the Prophet says: ―I am the enemy of their enemies (q.v.),‖ or invokes God, saying: ―O God, be the ¶ enemy of their enemies‖ (authorities quoted in Sharon, Ahl al-bayt, 172 n. 6). To the same political category belong the various traditions which consider assistance and love for the ahl al-bayt a religious duty and enmity towards them a sin. ―He who oppresses my ahl bayt,‖ the Prophet says, ―or fights against them or attacks them or curses them, God forbids him from entering paradise(q.v.).‖ In another utterance attributed to the Prophet he says: ―My ahl bayt can be compared to Noah's (q.v.) ark (q.v.), whoever rides in it is saved and whoever hangs on to it succeeds, and whoever fails to reach it is thrust into hell‖ (Fīrūzābādī, Faḍāʾil, ii, 56-9; 75-87). Once the idea of the ―chosen five‖ or the selected family was established as the main Shīʿī interpretation of the term ahl al-bayt, there was no reason why the idea of purification (see CLEANLINESS AND ABLUTION; RITUAL PURITY ), which appears in the qurʾānic verse, should not be connected in a more direct way to the divinely selected family. In addition to ahl al- bayt, one therefore finds terms such as al-ʿitra al- ṭāhira and al-dhuriyya al- ṭāhira, ―the pure family,‖ or also ―the pure descendents,‖ an expression that is more than reminiscent of the holy family (i.e. Jesus [q.v.], Mary [q.v.] and Joseph) in Christianity. And as if to accentuate this point, Fāṭima and Mary are explicitly mentioned together as the matrons of paradise and Fāṭima is even called al- batūl, ―the virgin‖ (see SEX AND SEXUALITY; ABSTINENCE; CHASTITY ), a most appropriate description for the female figure in the Islamic version of the holy family (see McAuliffe, Chosen). When the ʿAbbāsids came to power, they, too, based the claim for the legitimacy of their rule on the fact that they were part of the Prophet's family. Concurrently, therefore, the meaning of the term ahl al-bayt underwent modifications in opposite directions. While the Shīʿa moved towards the ¶formulation of the idea of the ―holy five,‖ or the ―pure family‖ described above, the ʿAbbāsids strove to widen the scope of this family to include ʿAbbās, the Prophet's uncle, stressing that women, noble and holy as they may be, could not be regarded as a source

106 of nasab and that the paternal uncle in the absence of the father was equal to the father (see GENDER; INHERITANCE ). The extension of the boundaries of ahl al-bayt under the ʿAbbāsids followed an already existing model. The ḥadīths speaking about the process of God's selection stop at the clan of Hāshim to include all the families in this clan, the Ṭālibids as well as the ʿAbbāsids. Such traditions can be even more explicit, specifying that the families included in the Prophet's ahl al-bayt are “āl ʿAlī wa-āl Jaʿfar wa-āl ʿAqīl wa-āl al-ʿAbbās” (Muḥibb al-Dīn al- Ṭabarī, Dhakhāʾir al-ʿuqbā, 16). Not all the commentators accepted the idea that the term ahl al-bayt in Q 33:33 is associated with the Prophet's family in the sense that the contending parties wished. Alongside the above- mentioned interpretations, one finds the neutral interpretation that ahl al-bayt means simply the Prophet's wives (nisāʾ al-nabī; see WIVES OF THE PROPHET ). And as if to stress the dissatisfaction with the political and partisan undertones of the current exegesis, one of the commentators stresses that ahl al-bayt are the Prophet's wives, ―and not as they claim‖ (Wāḥidī, Asbāb, 139-40; Sharon, Ahl al-bayt, 175 n. 15). As may be expected, a harmonizing version also exists which interprets the term ahl al-bayt in such a way that both the Prophet's family and his wives are included. To achieve this end, the term ahl al-bayt was divided into two categories: the one, ahl bayt al-suknā, namely those who physically lived in the Prophet's home, and ahl bayt al-nasab, the Prophet's kin. The qurʾānic verse, according to this interpreta-¶ tion, primarily means the Prophet's household, namely, his wives. But it also contains a concealed meaning (see POLYSEMY ), which the Prophet himself revealed by his action, thus disclosing that ahl al- baythere included those who lived in his home, such as his wives, and those who shared his pedigree. They were the whole (clan) of Banū Hāshim and ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib. Another version of this interpretation states that the Prophet's ahl al-bayt included his wives and ʿAlī (Lisān al-ʿArab). In Arabic literature the term ahl bayt is used generically to specify the noble and influential family in the tribe or any other socio-political unit, Arab and non-Arab alike (see ARABS ). The nobility attached to the term is sometimes stressed by connecting it to the word sharaf . The word bayt on its own could mean nobility ( wa-bayt al-ʿarab ashrafuhā) says Ibn Manẓūr (Lisān al-ʿArab, s.v. bayt). The usage of ahl al-bayt for denoting leading families in the Age ofIgnorance (q.v.; jāhiliyya) as well as under Islam was very extensive. Two examples will suffice to make the point. Ibn al-Kalbī (d. ca. 205/820) says thatNubāta b. Ḥanẓala, the famous Umayyad general, belonged to a noble family of the Qays ʿAyalān ―and they are ahl bayt commanding strength and nobility‖(wa-hum ahlu baytin lahum baʾs wa-sharaf). The same is said about non-Arabs. Speaking about the Byzantine dynasties (see BYZANTINES ), Ibn ʿAsākir (d. 571/1176) mentions ten ahl buyūtāt. The Barmakids are referred to as ―from the noble families of Balkh‖ (min ahl buyūtāt Balkh; references in Sharon, Ahl al-bayt, 180-1). It is noteworthy that the usage of the phrase ―people of a/the house‖ (Ar. ahl bayt) to denote the status of nobility and leadership is not unique to theArabic language (q.v.) or Arab culture. It is rather universal: the ancient Romans spoke about the patres maiorum gentum, namely, the elders ¶ of the major clans or houses. The tradition concerning this Roman expression goes back to the early days of the Roman monarchy, when the Roman senate was composed of 100 family elders: Tarquinius Priscus, the fifth king of Rome (r. 616-578 B.C.E.), enlarged the number of senate members by another 100 elders who were called ―the elders of the minor houses‖ (patres minorum gentium; Elkoshi, Thesaurus, 279). In the Bible, the usage of the word ―house‖ (bāyit) to denote a family is very common. Moreover, in many cases, the ―house‖ is named after an outstanding personality, and has a similar meaning as the Arabicahl al-bayt (e.g. Gen 17:23, 27; Num 25:15; cf. Brown et al., Lexicon, 109b-110a). The most famous of such ―houses‖ is the ―house of David‖ (bēth David). When used in this way, the word has the same meaning as the English ―house‖ in reference to a royal family or a dynasty in general. It is only natural that under Islam the members of the caliphs' families were called ahl al- bayt. ʿAbdallāh, the son of Caliph ʿUmar, referring to his sister's son (the future caliph) ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, says: ―He resembles us, ahl al-bayt,‖ which means to say that the Umayyads referred

107 to themselves as ahl al-bayt. In a letter written by Marwān II to Saʿīd b. ʿAbd al-Malik b. Marwān during the rebellion against Caliph Walīd II (125-6/ 743-4), the future caliph referred twice to the Umayyad family as ahl bayt and ahl al-bayt (for the reference see Sharon, Ahl al-bayt). It may be concluded that once the caliphate had been established, the pre-Islamic Arabic ( jāhilī) practice of calling the leading and noble families of the tribes ahl al-bayt was extended to each of the four families of the first caliphs. But since ʿAlī's caliphate was controversial, the definition of his family as ahl al-bayt was not shared by the whole Muslim community. The Umayyads and their Syrian supporters (see ¶ SYRIA ) questioned the legitimacy of ʿAlī's rule, with the result that his Iraqi partisans (see IRAQ ) and the Shīʿa not only emphasized the ahl al- bayt status of ʿAlī's descendents but also gave the term a specific and exclusive meaning. In this way, ahl al-bayt acquired a religious overtone, and in time lost its generic meaning. Once the term was attached to the Prophet's person, the road was open for qurʾānic exegesis, originating in Shīʿī circles, to establish its origin in the Qurʾān itself. All the politically charged interpretations of the qurʾānic phrase ahl al-bayt emerge because its original meaning was either deliberately or unintentionally forgotten. Yet one should also take into account that such interpretations of the term in connection with the Prophet's family would have been impossible had the term not been used generally as meaning family or kinsfolk. On the other hand, it is doubtful whether in the Qurʾān the term ahl al-bayt (with the definite article) means family. R. Paret, who differentiates between the general term ahl al-bayt and the specific one, suggests that it literally meant ―the people of the house,‖ namely those who worshipped at the Kaʿba. In all cases in which the term al-bayt appears in the Qurʾān, it refers only to the Kaʿba sanctuary ( Q 2:125, 127, 158; 3:97; 5:2, 97; 8:35; 22:26, 29, 33; 52:4; 106:3). Al-bayt may appear on its own or with an adjective, such as al-bayt al-ʿatīq ( Q 22:29, 33), al-bayt al- maʿmūr ( Q 52:4) or al- bayt al-ḥarām (i.e. Q 5:97). Paret goes on to suggest that the fact that the ahl al-bayt under discussion ( Q 33:33) is mentioned in the context of cleaning from pollution falls well within the idea of thepurification of the Kaʿba by Abraham and Ishmael (q.v.; Ismāʿīl), which can be found elsewhere in the Qurʾān. One may therefore quite safely conclude, Paret continues, that in the two cases where ahl al-bayt appears in this form in the Qurʾān, the original meaning must ¶ have been the ―worshippers of the house,‖ the Kaʿba, as prescribed by Islam (Paret, Der Plan, 128: “Anhänger des islamischen Kaʿba-Kultes”). Along this line of thought, it would not be far- fetched to suggest that the original meaning of the term before Islam was the tribe of Quraysh in general and that this is what is meant in Q 33:33. As to Q 11:73 the connection with the Kaʿba is less certain. To sum up, the meaning of ahl al-bayt in the Qurʾān follows the accepted usage of the term in pre- and post-Islamic Arab society. It denotes family and blood relations as well as a noble and leading ―house‖ of the tribe. Only in the case of Q 33:33 does the term seem to have another, more specific meaning. M. Sharon Bibliography i. PRIMARY: Abū ʿUbayda, Maʿmar b. al-Muthannā al-Taymī, Tasmiyat azwāj al-nabī wa-awlādihi, ed. K.Y. al-Ḥūt, Beirut 1985 M.Ḥ. Fīrūzābādī, Faḍāʾil al-khamsa, 2 vols., Beirut 1393/1973 Ḥākim al-Ḥaskānī, ʿUbayd Allāh b. ʿAbdallāh, Shawāhid al-tanzīl li-qawāʿid al-tafḍīl fī l-āyāt al-nāzila fī ahl al-bayt, ed. M.B. al-Maḥmūdī, 2 vols. in 1, Beirut 1974 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, ʿAbdallāh b. Muḥammad, al-Ishrāf fī manzil al-ashrāf, ed. N.ʿA. Khalaf, Riyadh 1990 Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, ed. Sachau Lisān al-ʿArab

108 al-Maqrīzī, Aḥmad b. ʿAlī, Maʿrifat mā yajibu li-āl al-bayt al-nabawī min al-ḥaqq ʿalā man ʿadāhum, ed. M.A. ʿĀshūr, Cairo 1973 Suyūṭī, Iḥyāʾ al-mayyit bi-faḍāʾil ahl al-bayt, ed. K. al-Fatlī, Beirut 1995 al-Ṭabarī, Muḥibb al-Dīn Abū l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad b. ʿAbdallāh, Dhakhāʾir al-ʿuqbā fī manāqib dhawi l- qurbā, Beirut 1973, 16 Wāḥidī, Asbāb ii. SECONDARY: ʿA.A. ʿAbd al-Ghanī, al-Jawhar al-shaffāf fī ansāb al-sāda al-ashrāf. Nasl al-Ḥusayn, 2 vols., Damascus 1997 M.M. Bar-Asher, Scripture and exegesis in early Imami Shiism, Leiden 1999 (see 94-7 for discussion of Q 55:31, a classical locus for Shīʿī exegesis of the ḥadīth al-thaqalayn, i.e. the two things of ―weight‖ that Muḥammad left with his community: the Qurʾān and either the sunna [q.v.] of Muḥammad or the People of the House) Bell, Qurʾān F. Brown, S.R. Driver, C.A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford 1959, ¶ 109b-110a G. Elkoshi, Thesaurus proverbiorum et idiomatum latinorum, Jerusalem 1981, 279

I. Goldziher, C. van Arendonk and A.S. Tritton, Ahl al-bayt, in EI 2, i, 257-8 M.A. Isbir, Ahl bayt rasūl Allāh. Fī dirāsa ḥadītha, Beirut 1990, 1993 W. Madelung, The succession to Muḥammad. A study of the early caliphate, Cambridge 1997, esp. 13-5 J.D. McAuliffe, Chosen of all women. Mary and Fatima in qurʾānic exegesis, in Islamochristiana 7 (1981), 19-28 M.T. Mudarrisī, al-Nabī wa-ahl baytihi. Qudwa wa-uswa, 2 vols., Beirut 1993 R. Paret, Der Plan einer neuen, leicht kommentierten wissenschaftlichen Koran, bersetzung, in E. Littmann, Orientalische Studien Enno Littman, ed. R. Paret, Leiden 1935, 121-30 M. Sharon, Ahl al-bayt — People of the House, in JSAI 8 (1986), 169-84 (contains further references) id., Black banners from the east, Jerusalem/Leiden 1983, 75-82 id., The development of the debate around the legitimacy of authority, in JSAI 5 (1986), 121-41 (contains additional Bibliography on the topic) id., The Umayyads as ahl al-bayt, in JSAI 14 (1991), 116-152 (also contains additional Bibliography) [Print Version: Volume 4, page 48, column 2] CITATION: Sharon, M. " People of the House." Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān. General Editor: Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Georgetown University, Washington DC. Brill, 2011. Brill Online. K.U. Leuven - University Library. 17 February 2011

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ʿAlids The ʿAlids are descendants of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, the first Shīʿī imām and the fourth caliph. ʿAlī is reported by most sources on ʿAlid (ʿAlawī) genealogy to have had eight-een sons (fourteen, according to al-Ṭabarī, and eleven according to al-Masʿūdī), and some seventeen daughters (Table 1). Only five of ʿAlī's sons left issue: al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn (by Fāṭima, the daughter of the prophet Muḥammad); Muḥammad, known as Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya (by Khawla, from the Banū Ḥanīfa); al-ʿAbbās (by Umm al-Banīn, from the Banū Kilāb); and ʿUmar (from al-Ṣahbāʾ, known as Umm Ḥabīb, from the Banū Taghlib). ʿAlī's eldest sons, al-Ḥasan, al-Ḥusayn, and Muḥammad b. al- Ḥanafiyya, and their descendants, viz., the Ḥasanids, the Ḥusaynids, and the Ḥanafids, were variously acknowledged as imāms by different Shīʿī groups, as enumerated in the heresiographical literature, especially the earliest Imāmī heresiographies written by al-Nawbakhtī (d. after 300/912) and al-Qummī (d. 301/913–4). The early Shīʿa, who elaborated a distinctive conception of religious authority vested in the prophet Muḥammad's family, or the ahl al-bayt, survived ʿAlī's murder in 40/661 and numerous subsequent tragic events. After ʿAlī, the Shīʿa recognised successively his eldest sons, al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn, as theirimāms. The martyrdom of al-Ḥusayn, together with many other ʿAlids, on 10 Muḥarram 61/10 October 680 at Karbalāʾ infused a new religious fervour in the Shīʿa and contributed to the consolidation of Shīʿī identity. The most important event in the history of the ʿAlid family, closely connected with the history of early Shīʿism, was the movement led by al-Mukhtār (d. 67/687), who launched his Shīʿī campaign on behalf of Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya (d. 81/700–1). Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya was proclaimed the Mahdī, the messianic saviour imām and restorer of true Islam, a concept that appealed greatly to the mawālī. Subsequently, numerous ʿAlid imāms were acknowledged as the eschatological Mahdī by their Shīʿī followers. During the sixty-odd years intervening between al-Mukhtār's movement and the ʿAbbāsid revolution, numerous ʿAlids were acknowledged as imāms by different Shīʿī groups. The Shīʿī imāms now hailed also from other branches of the Banū Hāshim, including the non-ʿAlid Ṭālibids, the descendants of the Prophet's uncle Abū Ṭālib, and the ʿAbbāsids, the descendants of another uncle, al-ʿAbbās. These lineages were acceptable because the ahl al-bayt, whose sanctity was supreme for the Shīʿa, was still defined broadly in its old Arabian sense. It was after the ʿAbbāsid revolution that the Shīʿa defined the ahl al-bayt to include only the Fāṭimid ʿAlids, covering both the Ḥasanids and the Ḥusaynids. In this fluid setting, Shīʿism developed in two main branches, the Kaysāniyya and the Imāmiyya. Later, another Shīʿī movement led to the formation of the Zaydiyya. The radical Kaysāniyya, comprised of a number of interrelated groups, recognised as their imāms various Ḥanafid ʿAlids, starting with Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya's son Abū Ḥāshim (d. 98/716) as well as other Hāshimids. Many Kaysānī groups organised abortive revolts against the Umayyads, with little direct participation of their ʿAlid imāms. By the end of the Umayyad period, the main body of the Kaysānī Shīʿīs, known as the Hāshimiyya, had transferred their allegiance to the ʿAbbāsid family. The ʿAlid imāms of the Imāmiyya, who traced the imāmate in the Ḥusaynid line through al- Ḥusayn's sole surviving son, ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn, adopted a quiescent policy towards the established caliphate. This was articulated doctrinally by ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn's son Muḥammad al-Bāqir (d. c. 114/732) and more particularly by the latter's son and successor, Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (d. 148/765). These Ḥusaynid imāms remained in the Ḥijāz and did not engage in any insurrectionist activity. As an early exception, however, al-Bāqir's half-brother Zayd b. ʿAlī rose in revolt in Kufa, the first revolt led by an ʿAlid since the event of Karbalāʾ. Zayd, too, was defeated and killed, in 122/740. A number of ghulāt leaders, who deified the imāms and were attached to different Shīʿī groups, engaged in futile uprisings.

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The ʿAbbāsid victory proved a source of disillusionment for the ʿAlids and their Shīʿī followers, who had all along expected an ʿAlid, rather than an ʿAbbāsidcousin, to succeed to the caliphate. Subsequently, a number of ʿAlids rose in revolt against the ʿAbbāsids, starting with the Ḥasanid brothers Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh al-Nafs al-Zakiyya and Ibrāhīm, whose revolt in Medina and Basra was suppressed brutally in 145/762–3. The early ʿAbbāsid caliphs severely persecuted the ʿAlids and placed the imāms from amongst them under strict surveillance; several were reportedly poisoned. Before long, a number of ʿAlids sought refuge in remote areas, notably the Maghrib and Persia, where they founded regional ʿAlid dynasties. Meanwhile, on the death of Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq in 148/765, his succession in the Ḥusaynid Imāmī line was simultaneously claimed by several of his sons, resulting in historic splits in Imāmī Shīʿism. Several groups, such as the Afṭaḥiyya, followers of Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq's eldest son, ʿAbdallāh al-Afṭaḥ, did not survive long. One group, eventually designated as the Ithnāʿashariyya, now recognised ʿAbdallāh al-Afṭaḥ's half-brother Mūsā al-Kāẓim (d. 183/799) as their new imām and then traced the imāmate in his progeny, ending with their twelfth imām, Muḥammad al-Mahdī, whose reappearance before the Day of Judgement is still awaited. The ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Maʾmūn (r. 198– 218/813–33) attempted to achieve reconciliation between the ʿAbbāsids and ʿAlids by appointing Mūsā al-Kāẓim's son and successor, ʿAlī al-Riḍā, as his heir-apparent in 201/816; but this proved futile, as ʿAlī died two years later. There were also those Imāmī Shīʿīs who, after Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, recognised the imāmate of his second son, Ismāʿīl, the eponym of the Ismāʿīliyya, or the latter's son Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl. These early Ismāʿīlīs were organised into a rapidly expanding revolutionary movement against the ʿAbbāsids under the leadership of a series of hidden ʿAlid imāms. The success of the early Ismāʿīlī daʿwa culminated in the establishment of the Fāṭimid caliphate in 297/909 in Ifrīqiya under the leadership of the Ismāʿīlī imām ʿAbdallāh al-Mahdī (r. 297–322/909–34). The Zaydī branch of Shīʿism, with an activist policy in the political field, developed out of Zayd b. ʿAlī's abortive revolt. The Zaydī movement was initially led by Zayd's sons Yaḥyā (d. 125/743) and then ʿĪsā (d. 166/783), and other ʿAlids accepted as Zaydī imāms. The list of the Zaydī ʿAlid imāms has never been completely fixed, though many of them are unanimously recognised. Due to rigorous requirements in terms of religious learning, the Zaydīs often supported ʿAlid pretenders and rulers as dāʿīs, or imāms with restricted status (muḥtasibūn or muqtaṣida), distinct from full imāms. In 250/864, the Ḥasanid al-Ḥasan b. Zayd, Dāʿī ilā l-Ḥaqq, established the first Zaydī ʿAlid state in Ṭabaristān. Subsequently, ʿAlids upholding Zaydī Shīʿism ruled over different parts of the Caspian provinces in northern Persia, in Ṭabaristān, Daylamān, and Gīlān, until the early Ṣafavid times (tenth/sixteenth century). In Yemen, ʿAlid rule based on the Zaydī imāmate was founded in 284/897 by Yaḥyā b. al-Ḥusayn, al-Hādī ilā l-Ḥaqq, a Ḥasanid grandson of al-Qāsim b. Ibrāhīm al-Rassī (d. 246/860), founder of a major Zaydī legal school. The Rassid and Qāsimid lines of Zaydī imāms ruled over Yemen.

Table 1. Genealogical table of the ʿAlids. From EI2.

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The ʿAlids founded a number of other dynasties, mostly of the Ḥasanid lines, including the Idrīsids and the Sharīfs (Saʿdids and ʿAlawids or Filālīs) of the Maghrib; the Sulaymānids and the Banū Ukhayḍir of Mecca and Yemen; the Banū Fulayta and the Banū Qatāda of Mecca; the Banū Muhannā of Medina; and the Ḥammūdids of Andalusia. The nisba of ʿAlid—ʿAlawī—has frequently been combined with a title of nobility such as Sayyid or Sharīf, designating a descendant of the Prophet. The ʿAlids of different localities were evidently often under the authority of a chief known as naqīb, more fully naqīb al-ashrāf (also naqīb al-sādāt), who was knowledgeable in ʿAlid genealogy and kept a registry of the ʿAlids. Farhad Daftary Bibliography Abu-l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī, Maqātil al-Ṭalibiyyīn, ed. Aḥmad Ṣaqr, Cairo 1368/1949 al-Balādhurī, Ansāb al-ashrāf, vol. 2, ed. Wilferd Madelung, Beirut 2003 Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil fī l-taʾrīkh, ed. C. J. Tornberg (Leiden 1851–76), 3:333–4 Ibn al-Dawādārī, Kanz al-durar, ed. Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Munajjid (Cairo 1961), 6:9–16 Ibn Ḥazm, Jamharat ansāb al-ʿArab (Beirut 1983), 37–67 Aḥmad b. ʿAlī b. ʿInaba, ʿUmdat al-ṭālib fī ansāb āl Abī Ṭālib, ed. Muḥammad Ḥasan Āl al-Ṭāliqānī, Najaf 1961 Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad b. ʿAlī al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ al-ḥunafāʾ bi-akhbar al-aʾimma al-Fāṭimiyyīn al-khulafāʾ, ed. Jamāl al-Dīn al-Shayyāl (Cairo 1967), 1:5–21 al-Masʿūdī, Murūj al-dhahab, ed. C. Barbier de Meynard and A. Paret de Courteille (Paris 1861–77), 5:148–9 al-Masʿūdī, Tanbīh, ed. M. J. de Goeje (Leiden 1984), 297–9 al-Ḥasan b. Mūsā al-Nawbakhtī, Firaq al-Shīʿa, ed. Hellmut Ritter, Istanbul 1931 Saʿd b. ʿAbdallāh al-Qummī, Kitāb al-maqālāt wa-l-firaq, ed. Muḥammad Jawād Mashkūr, Tehran 1963 al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh al-rusul wa-l-mulūk, ed. M. J. de Goeje (Leiden 1879–1901), 1:3470–3 al-Ṭabarī, The history of al-Ṭabarī, vol. 17, The first civil war, trans. Gerald R. Hawting (Albany 1996), 227–9 Clifford Edmund Bosworth, The new Islamic dynasties (Edinburgh 1996), 25–6, 50–2, 53–4, 63–5, 96–8 Farhad Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs. Their history and doctrines (Cambridge 1990), 37–90 Bernard Lewis, ʿAlids, EI2 Eduard Karl Max von Zambaur, Manuel de généalogie et de chronologie pour l'histoire de l'Islam (Hanover 1927), vol. 2, tables A–E (containing genealogies of the Ḥasanid and Ḥusaynid ʿAlids). CITATION: Daftary, Farhad. "ʿAlids." Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE. Edited by: Gudrun Krämer, ; Denis Matringe, ; John Nawas and ; Everett Rowson. Brill, 2011.Brill Online. K.U. Leuven - University Library. 17 February 2011

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Law: The Four Sunnī Schools of Law

^ Overview This entry initially examines the factors that precipitated the rise of the four legal schools in Sunnī Islam, the various methodologies the schools utilized in the derivation of juridical rulings, and the cultural factors that influenced the rulings they issued. These were important considerations in the issuance of rulings on women in Sunnī jurisprudence. Based on the rulings stated in various juridical tracts, the entry also compares and contrasts the treatment of women in these schools. i. The establishment of the schools of law ( madhāhib ) With the establishment of the Umayyad dynasty in the eighth century, Muslims were living under rulers who were not regarded by many as the proper authority to create the Qurʾānic ideal of a just social order. It was at this time that the office of a definitive group of scholars interested in recording traditions took shape. Many Followers ( tābiʿūn ) of the Prophet are also mentioned as having acumen in juridical matters. These experts in the legal field tried to define and expound Islamic legal doctrine especially on issues that pertained to rituals, inheritance, marriage, divorce, and so forth. The early scholars in the legal field formed the provenance of the fuqahāʾ – a group of scholarly elite who specialized in the study of Islamic legal science, the Sharīʿa. Initially, the jurists were private individuals who were keen to discern God's intent on a particular ruling. The goal of the jurists' endeavor was to reach an understanding ( fiqh ) of the Sharīʿa, that is, to comprehend in precise terms the law of God. Guided by a corpus of precepts and laws and their own independent reasoning, the jurists, especially in the ʿAbbāsid period, attempted to construct a legal edifice by developing and elaborating a system of Sharīʿa law binding on all Muslims. They began to interpret and develop Islamic law, invoking various hermeneutical principles such as maṣlaḥa (derivation and application of a juridical ruling that is in the public interest), qiyās (analogy), ijtihād (independent reasoning), istiḥsān (preference of a ruling that a jurist deems most appropriate under the circumstances), and other innovative interpretive principles. They aimed to respond to the needs of the times and to go beyond the rulings stated in the revealed texts while at the same time paying respect to the very texts that had empowered them. Increased legal activities by the fuqahāʾ led to the development of ancient schools of law in different parts of the Islamic world. Initially, the schools of law did not imply a definite organization or strict uniformity of teachings within a school. Gradually, the jurists constructed a program for private and public living centered on the Sharīʿa. The Sharīʿa, as articulated by these jurists, became a structured normative praxis and a comprehensive system that governed personal and public demeanor. The schools were named after their founders or prominent jurists in the area. ii. The jurists of the schools of law Derivation of legal rulings ( aḥkām ) was contingent on local circumstances and the employment of different sources of law. In Medina the sunna (practices of Muḥammad) was informed not only by transmitted reports from the Prophet but also by the transmitted practices of the community. The local character of the traditional practices was partially incorporated in the Medinese concept of Prophetic sunna. Preponderance was frequently given to local practice over reports of Prophetic practice since it was argued by the Medinese that contemporary practice could interpret or supplement earlier practice. In his al-Muwaṭṭaʾ , Mālik b. Anas (d. 179/795) often transmits earlier or contemporary Medinese practice on a legal point. He also cites different reports on the practices of the Prophet to vindicate his own legal opinion. He then accepts or rejects these in the light of his own reasoning and based on the practices of Medina. This selective process can be corroborated from his frequent usage of the statement, ―This is the opinion that we [the people of Medina] hold.‖ In

113 essence, Mālikī jurisprudence attempted to forge a closer link to practical considerations by attaching greater weight to social customs than did jurists in other areas. In contrast to the Mālikīs, the jurists of Kufa saw their interpretations based on reasoning ( raʾy ) as an equally authoritative factor in the decision of a point of law. The raʾy of a scholar was partially incorporated by Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 150/767) as an important element in jurisprudence. The jurists of Kufa also usedqiyās (analogy) in the extension of Prophetic practice and often formulated the law on rational grounds as opposed to ruling on the basis of transmitted practice that purportedly reflected Prophetic practice. Kufan society was very cosmopolitan as it was exposed to different cultures and classes. Its class distinctions were not felt in the closely-knit Arab society of Medina. The school of Medina was conservative and bound to the laws established in Medina, whereas, animated by a spirit of independent thinking and analogy, the school of Kufa was eclectic and receptive to foreign legal systems. The Kufans also incorporated the customs of the divergent cultures that were prevalent there including some Sassanian customs appropriated from Persia. The views of another prominent jurist of the time, Muḥammad b. Idris al-Shāfiʿī (d. 205/820), differed considerably from those of Medina and Kufa. Shāfiʿī contended that the personal opinion of the jurist must arise within rather than outside of the perimeters of Prophetic sunna. If this cannot be demonstrated, he said, then the sunna cannot be accepted as it might have arisen from the opinions of local authorities or arbitrary reasoning. Focusing on the famous Qurʾānic verse ―Obey God and His messenger,‖ Shāfiʿī further circumscribed the definition of the sunna, restricting it to a textual and transmitted record of Prophetic practice. The Medinese and Kufans would have to base their rulings on a universal standard, the sunna as reported in accredited traditions. Although he depended on traditions from the Prophet, Shāfiʿī also allowed limited usage of analogy and a more restricted form of reasoning excluding arbitrary opinions and discretionary decisions. Recognizing the presence of spurious traditions he stipulated strict conditions for the acceptance of traditions. By insisting on the sunna of the Prophet, Shāfiʿī nullified the concept of local practices and arbitrary reasoning. Through his efforts, the four schools came to subscribe to a common theory of the sources of law (Qurʾān, tradition, consensus, and analogy). In contrast to the other schools of law, the main thesis of the ahl al-ḥadīth (people of tradition) was that traditions transmitted from the Prophet and his companions superseded local traditions and legal injunctions that were derived independently of revealed sources. They produced traditions to vindicate their views and based their legal system on the Qurʾān and traditions purportedly transmitted from the Prophet. Even though many of these traditions were spurious, the ahl al-ḥadīth spurned all forms of reasoning and some jurists, such as Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal (d. 241/855), even claimed that weak traditions were better than human reasoning. The use of various hermeneutical devices, exposure to diverse cultural influences, and a variegated understanding of the sources, derivation, and contents of the sunna were thus important factors that precipitated differences between the schools and influenced the rulings that were issued by them. It is also important to note that the juridical manuals were composed in the male-dominated centers that excluded female voices in Islamic legal discourse. Women had little say in relation to the laws on marriage, divorce, inheritance, female testimony, and so forth. Consequently women's issues have depended on ―representational discourse‖ conducted by male jurists who interpreted and articulated the rulings related to women. Moreover, patriarchal structures of Arab culture that prevailed in the eighth and ninth centuries were often incorporated in the emerging juridical literature. These were significant factors that influenced how women were treated in the juridical discourse. iii. The Qurʾān and ḥadīth literature on women

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Against the background of a tribal society in seventh-century Arabia, the Qurʾān ameliorated the situation of women considerably. It put a stop to female infanticide and prohibited men from inheriting the wives of their fathers (4:19). It also granted women rights of inheritance and permitted them to possess property. Reflecting the patriarchal society of seventh-century Arabia, the Qurʾān also required that men be responsible for the maintenance of women. Muḥammad was asked to accept the pledge of allegiance from women and they were not prevented from participating in public activities. Many female figures are praised in the Qurʾān. Mary is lauded for her piety and is seen as an example for all righteous people (66:12). Angels visited her and God cast His spirit into her. Similarly the Qurʾān has words of praise for the wife of the Pharaoh for protecting and rearing Moses and commends the Queen of Sheba for her wisdom in accepting Solomon's invitation to submit to God (27:43). The pro-female tone of the Qurʾān is not replicated in the ḥadīth literature. Many traditions incorporated in the ḥadīth literature that was compiled in the ninth and tenth centuries denigrated the position of women. The negative cultural evalua tion and status of a woman was thus transmitted in some of theḥadīth reports. Some traditions maintain that women were created from a crooked rib; others claim that a woman passing in front of a man who is praying invalidates his prayer. This derogatory tone is also evident in traditions that indicate that most of the inhabitants of hell are women, that women are deficient in intellect, and that a wife's salvation is contingent on keeping her husband happy. A community that is led by women, some traditions assert, cannot prosper. Women are also portrayed as the source of fitna or seduction and therefore must be excluded from public participation. Women were therefore encouraged to pray at home rather than in the mosque. The pejorative stance on women in ḥadīth is often reflected in the juridical rulings stated in the four schools of law. For the sake of brevity, the entry focuses on the following women's issues that are discussed in the legal manuals: marriage, divorce, and the rights of inheritance. iv. Marriage Emerging in the cosmopolitan and pluralistic milieu of Kufa, Ḥanafī law puts men and women on the same footing with regard to their ability to conclude important transactions, including marriage. In Kufa, a girl who had reached the age of puberty and could manage her own affairs was allowed to marry without the consent of her guardian. Reflecting the patrilineal and more traditional outlook of Medinan society where the male members of a tribe decided on and concluded the marriages of women, Mālik insisted on the need for a guardian to conduct a marriage. The other Sunnī schools of law also require the permission of the guardian to conclude a marriage of a girl unless she is not a virgin. This is a good example of how local circumstances engendered variations in the legal positions adopted by the different schools of law. Under the pressures of reformation in recent times, Tunisia, which follows Mālikī law, adopted the Ḥanafī doctrine in 1957 and allowed an adult woman to choose her spouse independently of the wishes of her guardian. All four schools allow the drawing of a prenuptial agreement. Due to its extensive employment of the concept of public interest ( maṣlaḥa ), Ḥanbalī fiqh is more tolerant and liberal in this ruling. It permits a man to willingly stipulate in a prenuptial contract that he will not marry another wife or, for example, that he will not force his wife to leave her home town. He is bound to honor such conditions and if he violates them then the wife can unilaterally dissolve the marriage. The other three schools regard such conditions as void although the contract is seen as valid. Using the concept of talfīq (literally, piecing together), Mālikī wives in Tunisia and Ḥanafī wives in Syria benefit from this liberal Ḥanbalī doctrine relating to provisions in marriage contracts for they are permitted to stipulate such conditions in their marriage contracts. The marriage contract has to include the mention of bridal gift, called ṣadāq or mahr . In pre- Islamic Arabia, this was paid to the wife's father. However, the Qurʾān revised this and required that the mahr be paid directly to the girl. All the four schools of law maintain that the wife has the

115 right to demand themahr immediately after the marriage has been solemnized and before it is consummated. However, if she willingly accepts the consummation then she loses the right to demand the mahr immediately. The impact of cultural factors is also evident in finding a marital partner who is ―equal‖ ( kafāʾa ). Reflecting the different classes of people inhabiting Kufa, the Ḥanafīs had an elaborate system regarding compatibility, maintaining that the occupation of the husband is essential in determining whether he is equal to his spouse. Hence they recognize a detailed hierarchy of professions. Like the Ḥanafīs, the Shāfiʿīs and Ḥanbalīs also require compatibility in religion, social status, profession, and lineage. Reflecting the lack of class differences and social stratification in Medina the occupation of the husband was not deemed to be an important consideration for the Mālikīs. Although the concept of kafāʾa was later adopted by the Mālikīs, they insist on compatibility of the couple in religious matters only. v. Divorce laws All the legal schools granted a husband the unilateral right to divorce his wife at his discretion, whereas a woman who wished to be separated from her husband had to go through a judicial process where she had to demonstrate good grounds for divorce. Sunnī law accepted two forms of divorce, the regular form ( ṭalāq al-sunna ) and the reprehensible version of triple divorce called ( ṭalāq al-bidʿa ). The former consists of a single pronouncement of divorce when the wife is not in her menstrual period and without intercourse having taken place since her last period. The husband has the right to take the wife back during the waiting period ( ʿidda ) which lasts for three monthly cycles. Most sources agree that the triple ṭalāq was introduced by the second caliph, ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb (d. 22/644), to punish some men who had divorced women in jest and had taken it lightly. In this form of divorce the laws of purity are disregarded and the repudiation is made irrevocable by a three-fold pronouncement by the husband in a single meeting. When he says to his wife, ―I divorce you‖ three times she becomes prohibited from him until she remarries and consummates the second marriage. After this second marriage is terminated, she can remarry her first husband once the waiting period has elapsed. The triple ṭalāq is irrevocable and thus does not afford the opportunity for reconciliation. Although the ṭalāq al-bidʿa is condemned as reprehensible, this form of divorce is accepted by all the four Sunnī schools and is still practiced in many countries. The perilous position of women in divorce matters can be further discerned from the fact that the Ḥanafīs, Mālikīs, and Shāfiʿīs consider a divorce recited by mistake or in jest or under intoxication to be valid. The Ḥanbalīs, however, do not consider such a divorce valid. In recent times, reforms have been enacted in various countries to control the husband's unilateral right of repudiation. The Syrian Law of Personal Status of 1953, for example, stipulates that the triple ṭalāq is to count as a single repudiation so as to allow the couple an opportunity to reconcile. The law also requires the husband to pay compensation to the wife if the court deems that he divorced her without reasonable cause. Tunisia refuses to recognize any divorce effected outside the judicial process. The Tunisian Law of 1957 also prohibits polygyny, a practice that is endorsed by the Qurʾān provided the wives are treated equally. To prevent abuse of the system, the Iraqi law of 1959 requires a polygamous marriage to be validated by the court. The impingement of cultural factors engendered significant differences in other juridical opinions that emerged in the different schools. All the schools agree that maintenance is obligatory during the waiting period of a revocable divorce. The schools differed, however, on maintenance during the ʿidda(waiting period) of an irrevocable divorce. The Ḥanafīs were more favorable to the women, stating that the rules of maintenance during the ʿidda of a revocable divorce were also applicable for an irrevocable divorce. The other schools differentiated based on whether she was pregnant or not. Unless she was pregnant, the wife in Medina was entitled to receive only lodging in her husband's home during the ʿidda .

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Under Islamic law, the wife has limited options to initiate divorce proceedings. Her right is encapsulated in the khulʿ (by the instigation of the wife) form of divorce. Since the Qurʾān recognizes khulʿ (2:229), it is accepted by all the legal schools. However, it can be finalized only with the husband's consent. Forkhulʿ to be valid the wife has to petition for divorce and is also required to offer some form of compensation to the husband (such as the return of the mahr). Khulʿ operates as a single, irrevocable divorce with an ʿidda incumbent on the wife. Contrary to Ḥanafī law, the Mālikīs recognized the validity of a khulʿdivorce even without the consent of the husband. Other differences between the schools occur in the laws pertaining to the judicial rights of a woman to seek divorce. Abū Ḥanīfa refused a judicial divorce unless the husband was impotent or had other personal defects. Thus factors such as the failure to provide maintenance, intermittent absence, continuous physical abuse, or life imprisonment do not provide grounds for a judge to dissolve the marriage because divorce is seen as the husband's prerogative. In this instance, Mālikī law accords more rights to the woman. She can ask for a divorce due to the husband's desertion, failure to maintain her, cruelty, sexual impotence, or chronic disease. Mālikī law also recognized judicial divorce on the grounds of a husband's injurious treatment of his wife. It went further, stating that if the differences were irreconcilable, the court may finalize the divorce even without the husband's consent. The other schools of law allow a woman to demand ṭalāq on certain grounds, for example, not providing maintenance, physical abuse, or prolonged imprisonment leading to hardship for the wife. Syria, which normally follows Ḥanafī law, in 1953 adopted the more liberal Mālikī law, which states that the wife may petition for divorce on such grounds as the husband's cruelty, desertion, or failure to maintain her. Differences between the schools also arose over the question of a missing husband. Mālikī law was more favorable to women in this instance. Mālik held that the wife of a missing husband may seek judicial separation after a four-year waiting period. If he does not reappear within this time, she will observe the ʿidda of a widow and is then free to remarry. The Ḥanafīs, Shāfiʿīs, and Ḥanbalīs, in contrast, state that the wife of a missing husband may not remarry as long as he may be considered alive based on the average life span of a person. The Ḥanafīs fix this at 120 years, the Shāfiʿīs and Ḥanbalīs at 90 years. Such laws reflect the patrilineal character and male dominance of eighth- and ninth-century Arabian society when many of the juridical rulings were formulated. vi. Inheritance laws In pre-Islamic Arabia, women were not accorded rights of inheritance. This was changed by the Qurʾān, which prescribed that certain inheritance shares be allotted to women since they were now to be counted as heirs of the deceased. The Qurʾān stipulated that men were to provide for and assure the economic stability of the family. Due to this requirement, they were allotted double the share of inheritance of women. Economic independence of the woman was further assured by the fact that no male relative, including the husband, could touch her property. The husband was required to maintain her from his own resources. Moreover, women could and often did initiate their own businesses. In contrast to the Arabian patrilineal system where agnatic heirs ( ʿasaba ) were the principal heirs before Islam, the Qurʾān did not recognize their rights to inherit. In this the Qurʾān sought to reform the position of female relatives. All legal schools accept the distribution of fixed shares to the Qurʾānic heirs. However, pre-Islamic customary tribal laws prevailed in the Sunnī law of inheritance. All four schools grant distant agnates ( ʿasaba ) the remains of shares after the distribution to heirs that are stipulated by the Qurʾān. These distant agnates thus excluded the rights of the daughters of the deceased. Female heirs would only receive their share if there were no agnate heirs. By recognizing the claims of agnate collaterals, Sunnī law emphasized the tribal concept of an extended family. Even in the laws of inheritance differences that affected women emerged between the Sunnī schools. When no Qurʾānic heir or agnate relative survived the deceased, the jurists of Kufa allowed non-agnate relatives (daughters and sister's children) to inherit. Such cognate relatives

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(called dhawū al-arḥām ) were not allowed to inherit in Medina. In the absence of agnate relatives, the Mālikīs maintained that the public treasury is a ―rescue heir,‖ whereas the other three schools allow the cognate relatives such as the children of the deceased's daughter or sister to succeed in the absence of Qurʾānic heirs or agnate relatives. It was the patrilineal society of Medina that denied women such rights of inheritance. In many instances, therefore, the cosmopolitan society and extraneous cultural influences in Kufa led to women enjoying greater rights. Other miscellaneous differences emerged between the schools with respect to their treatment of women. The view that the Ḥanafīs empower women more than the other schools is supported in their ruling that the voluntary fast of a woman without her husband's consent is reprehensible but not prohibited. In contrast, the other three schools state that it is not permissible for a woman to observe a supererogatory fast without her husband's consent if the fast will interfere with any of his rights over her. Most jurists have held that women cannot lead men in prayers, hold judicial positions, or be political leaders. However, Abū Ḥanīfa asserted that a woman can act as a judge in all commercial and civil cases but not in criminal and personal injury cases. Some Mālikī jurists maintained that a woman can serve as a judge in any case. The jurists concur on the issue of women's testimony in the courts. Based on the Qurʾānic verse 2:282, which stipulates that when one man is not available to witness a business contract two women should replace him, the jurists of the four schools extended this requirement in all cases of testimony. The verse has also been used to support the alleged inferiority of a woman's evidence as compared to that of a man. In recent times, courts have departed from the doctrines expounded in the classical legal tracts. Many Muslim countries have enforced the eclectic principle of borrowing from different law schools and have required the involvement of the judicial process so as to ensure a more equitable system and to reform the law to accord with modern contingencies. Liyakat Takim

^ Bibliography K. Abou El Fadl, Speaking in God's name. Islamic law, authority and women, Oxford 2001. N. Abu Zahra, The pure and powerful. Studies in contemporary Muslim society, Reading, Berkshire, U.K. 1997.

N. Coulson, A history of Islamic law, Edinburgh, 1964, 19782. ——, Conflicts and tensions in Islamic jurisprudence, Chicago 1969. A. Fyzee, Outlines of Muhammadan law, Delhi 1972. Y. Y. Haddad and J. L. Esposito (eds.), Islam, gender and social change, New York 1998. W. Hallaq, A history of Islamic legal theories, Cambridge 1999. ——, Authority, continuity and change in Islamic law, Cambridge 2001. W. Madelung, Shiʿi attitudes toward women as reflected in fiqh, in W. Madelung, Religious schools and sects in medieval Islam, London 1985, 69–79. M. Maghniyya, The five schools of law, Qum 1995. F. Mernissi Beyond the veil. Male-female dynamics in a modern Muslim society, Cambridge 1975. ——, Women and Islam. An historical and theological enquiry, trans. M. J. Lakeland, Oxford 1991. A. Sachedina, Woman, half-the-man? The crisis of male epistemology in Islamic jurisprudence, in F. Daftary (ed.), Intellectual traditions in Islam, London 2000, 160–178. Joseph Schact, The origins of Muhammadan jurisprudence, Oxford 1950.

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——, An introduction to Islamic law, Oxford 1979. B. Stowasser, Women in the Qurʾan, traditions, and interpretation, New York 1994. A. Wadud, Qurʾan and woman. Rereading the sacred text from a woman's perspective, New York 1999. B. Wheeler, Applying the canon in Islam. The authorization and maintenance of interpretive reasoning in Hanafi scholarship, Albany, N.Y. 1996. CITATION: Takim, Liyakat. "Law: The Four Sunnī Schools of Law." Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures. General Editor Suad Joseph . Brill, 2011. Brill Online. K.U. Leuven - University Library. 17 February 2011

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