Book Review Joshua Mabra, Princely Authority in the Early Marwānid State: The Life of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Marwān (d. 86/705). Islamic History and Thought, vol. 2 (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2017), bibliography, index. ISBN 9781463206321. Price: $76.00 (cloth). Matthew S. Gordon Miami University ([email protected]) hose subject to Arab-Islamic rule engagement with the new Umayyad rulers are likely to have wondered at the took on urgency. The policies of the newly life span of the new religio-polit- ascendant branch of the Umayyad clan Tical order at the close of the first/seventh (the Marwānids) sought a new sectarian- century. The conquerors were a quarrel- style unity. The effort sparked a response some lot, as quick to engage in interne- from Christian communities and their cine violence as they were to subdue local respective elites against whom such opposition: the ‘believers’ were at each policies were often aimed. Thus, in Egypt, other’s throats. From, in part, the accounts attitudes shifted on the part of the Coptic of a then burgeoning and variegated popu- Church and its adherents. Joshua Mabra, lation of clients and slaves (mawālī), it is in his concise and understated new book, clear that a new religious program was sees the shift as having taken place under taking shape. But sharp disagreements ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Marwān (d. 85/705), the over its central precepts were no less newly appointed governor, and, again, in obvious; divisions of belief ran as deep as good measure, because of his approach to those of kinship. How long could the new office. masters carry on this way? ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz governed Egypt for twenty The Christians of the Levant and Egypt years—65/685 to 85/705—during which had certainly a special interest in the time he stood as heir to ʿAbd al-Malik fortunes of the nascent order given their (d. 85/705), the caliph, his far better majority standing. If, at first, somewhat known half-brother. The two men had detached, as some modern scholars have assumed office, respectively, following the argued, following the clashes at Marj Rāhiṭ untimely death of their father, Marwān (c. 64-65/683-684) and a more aggressive ibn al-Ḥakam ibn al-ʿĀṣ (d. 65/685). assertion of Arab-Muslim authority, Princely Authority in the Early Marwānid Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 25 (2017): 184-189 185 • MATTHEW S. GORDON State brings together literary, numismatic, His theses are two in number. There is and archeological information in a close his argument that the new governor sought discussion of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s tenure in independence from central authority; I office. A political biography, it has much take this up below. The other thesis is that to say about ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz but also widens Marwān assigned ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz over Egypt a useful window onto the quarrels of the because of the legitimation conferred new empire and emergent patterns of by his mother’s “royal Kalbī lineage” Arab-Islamic legitimation. (p. 11). Through her, Marwān and, Mabra sees, as a failing of modern following the latter’s demise and his own scholarship, its passing treatment of ʿAbd ascent to office, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz himself, could al-ʿAzīz. (A quick survey of the indices of count on the backing of the Quḍāʿa. This modern studies of the Umayyad period is to see ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz as having continued confirms the point: mentions of ʿAbd where Muʿāwiya had left off, decades al-ʿAzīz are scattered and few). The lion’s earlier, in drawing support from the Syrian share of attention has been devoted to ʿAbd tribes, led by the Kalb. Modern scholarship al-Malik. This is as it should be given the has long recognized this feature of early latter’s achievements, and on many fronts: Umayyad politics. But Mabra seems he is typically held to be the architect of justified in seeing that modern (Western) the first Islamic state. ʿAbd al-Malik, more historiography often moves too quickly than any other Arab/Muslim leader, drew through the intricate Arab tribal politics on Islamic symbols and rhetoric in a bid of the Second Fitna. It often overlooks, in to join a fractious Muslim realm under particular, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s role in moving Marwānid rule. But Mabra would have ʿAbd the Quḍāʿa-Marwānid alliance forward al-ʿAzīz play a “paramount role” (p. 10) and, thus, consolidating the authority of in this regard as well. He makes a strong the Marwānids following Marj Rāhiṭ and pitch for the significance of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s the collapse of the Zubayrids. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz contribution and the lessons it offers on provided continuity: he was the best choice Umayyad politics. The book joins a now to succeed his father as amīr of Egypt upon fairly substantial and growing library of his (Marwān’s) rise to the caliphate. revisionist scholarship on the early Islamic Mabra stays with tribal politics in period. But it has problems, and I address his second chapter (“The Coalition of these below. Kalb and Umayya”). He points to the Princely Authority opens with a strained efforts by Julius Wellhausen, discussion of the introduction of Umayyad among others, to explain the rise of the family rule over Egypt, a situation that Marwānids. Why that Umayyad house? would prevail into the early second/eighth Again, Mabra locates Marwānid success, century. Mabra only gets to his main and does so convincingly, in the support arguments at the close of the first chapter from powerful Quḍāʿī circles following (“Egypt and the Early Umayyads”). This is Marwān’s marriage to Laylā bint Zabān a touch annoying: history writing ought ibn al-Aṣbagh from the ruling house not adhere to narrow formulas, but there of Dūmat al-Jandal, a key site linking is reason to provide direction early on. Syria to the Najd (north-central Arabia). Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 25 (2017) Joshua Mabra’s Princely Authority in the Early Marwānid State • 186 The marriage was only one in a series: be the case of future Egyptian claimants, the early Muslim elite long knew to forge local poets did much to serve political such ties to the Kalb powerhouse. Marwān ambitions along the Nile. (Michael Bonner did so in style, marrying twice, in fact, has demonstrated as much for Aḥmad ibn into the Kalb, then in his appointment Ṭūlūn of third/ninth century fame1). Two of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz as governor and second poets, in particular, lauded ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz: heir to the caliphate (after ʿAbd al-Malik). Ibn Qays al-Ruqayyāt (d. 85/705) and Mabra provides two handy charts of these al-Aḥwaṣ al-Anṣārī (d. 105/723). Six poems alliances, and in a rare addition to such survive, four from Ibn Qays, two from his charts, includes the women to whom the counterpart, and Mabra investigates them Marwānid chiefs were married (pp. 31-32). with care. He includes selections, both The marital ties were critical: “ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz in the original Arabic and in serviceable b. Marwān was well aware of the value of translation. I find the latter passages often his maternal lineage, and he leaned heavily too close to the Arabic: here, as in other on his mother’s name and nobility” (p. 29). ways, Mabra should have been better A virtue of Mabra’s book is his keen served by his editor and reviewers. But, sense of Umayyad politics: he is a close again, he has studied the poems carefully, reader of his sources, Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam, and draws out telling evidence that, in al-Kindī, and al-Ṭabarī among the Arabic particular, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz relied heavily on writers. Mabra knows, in other words, how his maternal lineage in gilding his claims, to build an argument. It is ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s both as amīr and as heir apparent. shaping of a “power network” (p. 34) that Mabra turns to the second of his overall concerns the third chapter, “Al-Ḥasham: theses in the final two chapters. The A Provincial Power Base.” Echoing Wilfred argument, I believe, is new: ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Madelung and Patricia Crone especially, insisted on ruling Egypt on his own terms, Mabra points to the predominance of the rather than those set out in Damascus Yamānī “super tribal bloc” in Egypt and by ʿAbd al-Malik. Mabra refers to it as the new governor’s efforts, following the independence on the governor’s part: “he Second Fitna, to further consolidate his ruled with almost no involvement from ties (through his Kalbī connections) to that his brother, the amīr al-muʾminīn ʿAbd same bloc. A key decision was to marry the al-Malik…[refusing] to participate in a granddaughter of ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ, Egypt’s number of his brother’s Islamicizing and original boss. No less a measure was the centralizing reforms.” (p. 11). Again, it acquisition by ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz of a series seems to me, this is a significant statement of properties in central Fusṭāṭ. This is a in the light of a near scholarly orthodoxy, useful insight on Mabra’s part. He argues which holds that, following ʿAbd al-Malik’s that the properties, surrounding the sweeping reforms, the interlocking original congregational mosque, gave the streams of Islamisation and Arabisation governor access to Egypt’s best families: swept forward across the Muslim realm. the properties provided proximity and prestige alike. 1. “Ibn Ṭūlūn’s Jihād: The Damascus Assembly of Poetry is the stuff of Chapter Four: “The 269/883,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, Poetic Battle for Succession.” As would 130:4 (2010), 573-605, see, on the poetry, 593-597.