The Rise and Fall of the Early ʿabbāsid Political and Military Elite

Hugh Kennedy The Rise and Fall of the Early ʿAbbāsid Political and MilitaryElite Abstract: This paper explores the composition and role of the military and political elite of the early ʿ Abbāsid caliphate (750 –809) whose support enabled the caliphs to maintain sovereignty over theirfar-flungdomains. It considers the im- portance of different groups,includingmembers of the ʿAbb āsid family, military commanders from Khurāsānand members of powerful and wealthyfamilies like the Muhallabī sand the Shaybāni tribal chiefs.The paper concludes with adis- cussion of the reasons for the disappearance and effective extinction of this elite in the yearsafter the great civil warthat followed Hā rūnal-Rashīd’s death in 809. Keywords: Caliphs; armies; political power;Syria; Khurāsān The governance of the early ʿAbb āsid caliphate was aremarkable political and organizational achievement.For half acentury, between the establishment of the dynasty in 132H/750 CE and the death of Hārūna l-Rashīdin193 H/809 CE, the area from Tunisia in the west to Sind and Central Asia in the east was governedeffectively and largely peacefullyfrom Iraq. From 145H/762 CE, the city of Baghdad served as the administrativecapital, though the distances which separated it from the far-flungprovinces wereenormous: it is over 2,000 kilometres from Baghdad to Merv,the political centre of the great province of Khurāsān, and 1,500 kilometres from the capital to the HolyCity of Mecca. The barīd postal system inherited from the Umayyads and Sasanians was surprisingly effective at communicatingurgent messages over these huge distances.¹ When the caliph al-Rashīdd ied in the year 809 at Ṭūs( near Mashhad in north-east Iran) amessenger broughtthe news to Baghdadintwelvedays, trav- eling 1,900 kilometres at an averagespeed of 150 kilometres per day. Similar Iwillnot be dealing withthe bureaucratic eliteofthe kuttāb or the religious eliteofthe fuqahāʾ and qādīsthatwould require awhole other study.For the general history of early ʿAbbāsid caliphate, Kennedy 2016; El-Hibri 2010, 269–304;Bennison 2009. For earlier studies of the ʿAb- bāsid elitewithfull referencestosources, Crone 1980, esp.173–189, and Kennedy 1981/2016, 73–86. On the barīd and the distances covered, see Silverstein2007, 191–193. OpenAccess. ©2020 Hugh Kennedy, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the CreativeCommons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110669800-005 100 Hugh Kennedy speeds are recorded for the reportingofother crucial events. Not until the inven- tion of the electric telegraph in the late 19th centurywas such swiftness bettered. Information wasclearlyvery important. Enforcement was much slower.Evenwithout opposition or resistance, armies could travel no more than20kilometresaday, and usually managed less. That left plenty of time for aprovincial rebellion to gather support and mo- mentum before the forces of central government arrivedonthe scene. Exercising control and authority over such enormous distances was always going to be dif- ficult,and demands for provincial autonomywerecorrespondingly hard to re- sist. Despite these formidable obstaclesthe ʿAbbāsids maintainedtheirauthority and the cohesion of their caliphate for more than half acentury.Nolater Islamic dynasty established the same degree of authority over so wide and diverse an area. The achievement was not the result of absolutist authority,but of the devel- opment of astable political and military elite, or rather aseries of elites,which at the sametime represented the caliphal governmentinthe provinces and the provinces to the central government in Baghdad. While this must have been true for all large pre-modern empires in the Mid- dle East from the Achaemenids onwards, one factor that distinguishes the ʿAb- bāsid example is the wealth of information that survivesinthe sources about the governmentofthe caliphate. In al-Ṭabarī’sgreat Taʾrīkh al-rusulwa-l- mulūk (History of the Prophets and Kings),² there are enough details to build up adetailed prosopographyofthe ruling elite, of their origins,connections,suc- cesses and failures. This is supplemented by universal chronicles such as al- Yaʿqūbī’s Taʾrīkh (History),³ and provincial accounts such as al-Kindī’s Kitāb WulātMiṣr(Governors of Egypt)⁴ and al-Azdī’s Taʾrīkh al-Mawṣil (History of Mosul).⁵ Despite occasional contradictions, we can trace individual families through several generations in the evidence and getaclear idea of their influence. There is perhaps no other period in earlyIslamic history when so much attention was paid to the appointment of provincial governors and officials far away from the court and capital. It did not last.Bythemid-9th century,the caliphate was domi- nated by the Turkish and eastern Iranian military of Samarra. Hardly anyinfor- mationsurvivesregardingprovincial appointments and we cannot reliablytrace the names of governors, even of reallyimportant cities such as Basra. The care Al-Ṭabarī 1879 – 1901. Al-Yaʿqūbī 1883. Al-Kindī 1912. Al-Azdī 1967. The Riseand Fall of the Early ʿAbbāsid Politicaland MilitaryElite 101 with which earlier annalists recorded this type of information clearlyshows how importantthese people and the offices they held werethen considered to be. The keytothese patterns of provincial power was the office of wālī,which is usually translated as governor.The richness of the sources means we can build up avirtuallycomplete fasti of the governors of all the major provinces of the caliphate from the ʿAbbāsid revolution to the reign of al-Maʾmūn, though (as is onlytobeexpected) thereare some confusions and ambiguities. The identities of the men who held these posts are an invaluable measure of the political com- plexities of the caliphate.The term ʿāmil was alsoemployed to designate this type of provincial official. The sources sometimes make adistinction between the office of wālī, in charge of leading prayers and the people in war,and the ʿāmil,incharge of taxation, but the terms wereoften used interchangeably and the distinction between the twoofficesblurred.⁶ If the annals superficiallymake the caliph appear as apowerful absolute ruler,further down the chain of power the governors displayeffective executive power over military and civil affairs in the province. These areas are often simply characterised as ḥarb and ṣalāt (war and prayer), but when sources like al-Kin- dī’shistory of Egypt allow us to peerbelow the surface, we find governors in a more complicated situation.⁷ The governors of Egypt werethe middle men between the caliph and his government in Baghdad, which was always seeking to extract more tax revenue from this rich province, and the local Muslim elites, who weredetermined to retain as much of the revenue as possible in the local dīwān to paytheir salaries and those of their followers.The governors’ position was made more precarious in thatthey wereusuallyoutsiders with few Egyptian connections;they had to cooperate with or at least not alienate the wujūh,the local Arab Muslim elite. The wujūh wereled by the ṣāḥib al-shurṭa,the chief of police. Unlikethe titular governor,the ṣāḥib al-shurṭa was always chosen from asmall circle of prominent local families and they oftenserved for longer than their ephemeral superiors. At one level this seems aweaksystem of government,ultimatelydependent on the consent of local notables.Inreality the system wasvery resilient: the local Egyptian Muslim elite, who never held office out- side their provinceand seldom left it,werestakeholders in the ʿAbbāsid rule that assured their high status. One of the main reasons for the collapse of the caliphate in the 9th century was the breakingofbonds between Baghdad and local elites by the influx of Turks and eastern Iranians to the topranksofcentral government. Foranoverview of the roleofprovincial governors,see EI2, “Amīr” (A.A.Duri). Kennedy1981,26–38;Kennedy1998, 62– 85; Mikhail 2014,esp. 136–159. 102 Hugh Kennedy The provincial elite was largely formed by the political genius of the second ʿAbbāsid caliph Abū Jaʿfaral-Manṣūr(136–158 H/754 – 775CE). This cadre gov- erned the vast ʿAbbāsid Empire; its broad-based naturewas vital in keeping the caliphate together politicallyand its disappearanceafter the great civil war that followed the death of al-Rashīdin193 H/809 CE was amajor factor in the caliphate’sbreakup. It is sometimeseasy to forgethow exceptional this pre-war period was and how impressive was the political successthatkept this multi-ethnic, multi-cul- tural state together. In what follows, Iwill investigate some importantconstitu- ents of the elite of this time to determine the sources of its power and the dynam- ics of its political operation. The ʿAbbāsid familyformed an important elementinthis elite.⁸ The caliph’s numerous uncles, the Banū ʿAlī b. ʿAbdallāhb.al-ʿAbbās, and his cousins were appointed to governorates in the western part of the caliphate, notablyinSyria, Egypt and the prosperous and peaceful provinceofsouthern Iraq (most impor- tantlyinthe city of Basra). They did not,however,serveinthe Iranian provinces; al-Saffāḥ’sbrief appointment of one of his uncles as governor of Fārs was abrupt- ly terminatedbyAbūMuslim.⁹ Nor did they serveinthe Caucasus or North Afri- ca, areas likelytosee serious military activity and whereKhurāsānī soldiers were stationed in large numbers. In some cases these ʿAbbāsids formed sub-dynasties passing the title of governor from father to son, for example Ṣāliḥ b. ʿAlī (d. 152 H/769CE) and his sons al-Faḍl(d.

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