Abbasid Caliphate
الخلافة العباسية الاسلامية
الخلافة العباسية الاسلامية
750-1258
The Abbasid Caliphate (Arabic: الخلافة العباسية / ALA-LC: al-Khilāfah
al-‘Abbāsīyyah), was the third of the Islamic caliphates to succeed the Islamic
prophet Muhammad. The Abbasid dynasty descended from Muhammad's youngest uncle, Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib (566–653 CE). They ruled as caliphs, for most of their period from their capital in Baghdad in modern-day Iraq, after taking over authority of the Muslim
empire from the Umayyads in 750 CE (132 AH).
The
Abbasid caliphate first centered their government in Kufa, but in 762 the
caliph Al-Mansur founded the city of Baghdad, north of the Persian capital city of Ctesiphon. The choice of a capital so close to Persia proper reflects a growing reliance on Persian bureaucrats, most notably of
the Barmakid family, to govern the territories
conquered by Arab Muslims, as well as an increasing inclusion of non-Arab
Muslims in the ummah. Despite this
cooperation, the Abbasids of the 8th century were forced to cede authority over Al-Andalus and Maghreb to the Umayyads, Morocco to the Idrisid
dynasty, Ifriqiya to the Aghlabids,
and Egypt to theShi'ite Caliphate of the Fatimids.
The political power of the caliphs largely ended with the rise of the Buyids and the Seljuq Turks.
Although
Abbasid leadership over the vast Islamic empire was gradually reduced to a
ceremonial religious function, the dynasty retained control over its Mesopotamian demesne. The capital city of Baghdad became a center of science,
culture, philosophy and invention during the Golden Age of Islam. This
period of cultural fruition ended in 1258 with the sack of Baghdad by the Mongolsunder Hulagu Khan.
The Abbasid line of rulers, and Muslim culture in general, recentered
themselves in the Mamluk capital
ofCairo in 1261. Though lacking in political power, the dynasty continued to
claim authority in religious matters until after the Ottomanconquest of Egypt (1517).
Rise
The
Abbasid caliphs were Arabs descended from Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib, one of the youngest uncles of Muhammad and of the same Banu Hashim clan. The Abbasids claimed to be the
true successors of Muhammad in replacing the Umayyad descendants ofBanu Umayya by virtue of
their closer relationship to Muhammad.
Coin of the Abbasids,Baghdad, Iraq, 765
The
Abbasids also distinguished themselves from the Umayyads by attacking their
moral character and administration in general. According to Ira Lapidus, "The Abbasid revolt was supported largely by Arabs, mainly the
aggrieved settlers of Marw with the addition of the Yemeni faction and their Mawali". The Abbasids also appealed to non-Arab
Muslims, known as mawali,
who remained outside the kinship-based society of the Arabs and were perceived
as a lower class within the Umayyad empire. Muhammad ibn 'Ali, a
great-grandson of Abbas, began to campaign for the return of power to the
family of Muhammad, the Hashimites,
in Persia during the reign of Umar II.
During
the reign of Marwan II, this opposition culminated in the rebellion of Ibrahim the Imam, the fourth in descent from Abbas. Supported by the province of Khorasan,
Iran and the Shi'i Arabs, he achieved considerable success, but
was captured in the year 747 and died in prison; some hold that he was
assassinated. The quarrel was taken up by his brother Abdallah, known by the
name of Abu al-'Abbas as-Saffah, who defeated the Umayyads in 750 in the Battle of
the Zab near the Great Zab and was subsequently proclaimed caliph.
Immediately
after their victory, Abu al-'Abbas as-Saffah sent his forces to Central Asia, where his forces fought against Tangexpansion
during the Battle of
Talas (the Abbasids
were known to their opponents as the "Black robed Tazi" (黑衣大食: hēiyī
Dàshí), "Tazi" being a Tang
dynasty borrowing from
Persian to denote 'Arabs'. Barmakids,
who were instrumental in building Baghdad; introduced the world's first
recorded paper mill in Baghdad, thus beginning a new era of intellectual rebirth in the
Abbasid domain.
Power
The
first change the Abbasids made was to move the empire's capital from Damascus, in Syria, to Baghdad in Iraq. This was to both appease as well to
be closer to the Persian mawali support base that existed in this
region more influenced by Persian history and culture, and part of the Persian
mawali demand for less Arab dominance in the empire. Baghdad was established on
the Tigris
River in 762. A new
position, that of the vizier, was also established to delegate central authority, and even
greater authority was delegated to local emirs. Eventually, this meant that
many Abbasid caliphs were relegated to a more ceremonial role than under the
Umayyads, as the viziers began to exert greater influence, and the role of the
old Arab aristocracy was slowly replaced by a Persian bureaucracy.
The
Abbasids had depended heavily on the support of Persians in their overthrow of the Umayyads.
Abu al-'Abbas' successor, Al-Mansur welcomed non-Arab Muslims to his court. While this helped integrate
Arab and Persian cultures, it alienated many of their Arab supporters,
particularly the Khorasanian Arabs who had supported them in their
battles against the Umayyads.
These
fissures in their support led to immediate problems. The Umayyads, while out of
power, were not destroyed. The only surviving member of the Umayyad royal
family, which had been all but annihilated, ultimately made his way to Spain
where he established himself as an independent Emir(Abd ar-Rahman I, 756). In 929, Abd ar-Rahman
III assumed the title
of Caliph, establishing Al Andalus from Córdoba as a rival to Baghdad as the legitimate capital of the Islamic
Empire.
In 756,
The Abbasid Caliph Al-Mansur sent over 4,000 Arab mercenaries to assist the Chinese Tang
dynasty in the An Shi
Rebellion against An Lushan. After the war, they remained in China. Arab Caliph Harun
al-Rashid established
an alliance with China. Several
embassies from the Abbaside Caliphs to the Chinese Court are recorded in the
T'ang Annals, the most important of these being those of (A-bo-lo-ba) Abul Abbas,
the founder of the new dynasty, that of (A-p'u-ch'a-fo) Abu Jafar, the builder of Bagdad, of whom more must be said immediately; and
that of (A-lun) Harun
al-Rashid, best known, perhaps, in modern days through the popular
work, Arabian Nights. The Abbasides or "Black Flags," as they were
commonly called, are known in Tang dynasty chronicles as thehēiyī Dàshí,
" The Black-robed Arabs. Al-Rashid
sent embassies to the Chinese Tang
dynasty and established
good relations with them.
Islamic Golden Age
In
virtually every field of endeavor —in astronomy, alchemy, mathematics,
medicine, optics and so forth— Arab scientists were in the forefront of
scientific advance.
The
Abbasid historical period lasting to the Mongol conquest of Baghdad in 1258 CE is considered the Islamic Golden Age.[24] The Islamic Golden Age was inaugurated by the middle of the 8th
century by the ascension of the Abbasid Caliphate and the transfer of the capital from Damascus to Baghdad. The
Abbassids were influenced by the Qur'anic injunctions and hadith such as "the ink of a scholar is more holy than the blood of a
martyr" stressing the value of knowledge. During this period the Muslim world
became an intellectual center for science, philosophy, medicine and education
as the Abbasids championed the cause of knowledge and established the House of
Wisdom in Baghdad;
where both Muslim and non-Muslim scholars sought to translate and gather all
the world's knowledge into Arabic. Many classic works of
antiquity that would otherwise have been lost were translated into Arabic and
Persian and later in turn translated into Turkish, Hebrew and Latin. During this period the Muslim world
was a cauldron of cultures which collected, synthesized and significantly
advanced the knowledge gained from the ancient Roman, Chinese, Indian, Persian,Egyptian, North African, Greek and Byzantine civilizations.
Science
Further information: Alchemy
(Islam), Islamic
astronomy, Islamic mathematics, Islamic
medicine and Timeline of
science and technology in the Islamic world
The reigns
of Harun
al-Rashid (786–809)
and his successors fostered an age of great intellectual achievement. In large
part, this was the result of the schismatic forces that had undermined the
Umayyad regime, which relied on the assertion of the superiority of Arab
culture as part of its claim to legitimacy, and the Abbasids' welcoming of
support from non-Arab Muslims. It is well established that the Abbasid caliphs
modeled their administration on that of the Sassanids. Harun al-Rashid's son, Al-Ma'mun (whose mother was Persian), is even quoted as saying:
The
Persians ruled for a thousand years and did not need us Arabs even for a day.
We have been ruling them for one or two centuries and cannot do without them
for an hour.
A number
of medieval thinkers and scientists living under Islamic rule played a role in
transmitting Islamic
science to the
Christian West. These people greatly contributed to making Aristotle known in Christian Europe . In addition, the period saw the recovery
of much of theAlexandrian mathematical, geometric and astronomical knowledge, such as that of Euclid and Claudius Ptolemy. These recovered mathematical methods were later enhanced and
developed by other Islamic scholars, notably by Persian scientists Al-Biruni and Abu Nasr
Mansur.
Christians (particularly Nestorian Christians) contributed to the Arab Islamic Civilization during the Ummayads and the Abbasids by translating works of Greek philosophers to Syriac and afterwards to Arabic. Nestorians played a
prominent role in the formation of Arab culture, with theJundishapur school being prominent in the late Sassanid, Umayyad and early Abbasid periods. Notably, eight generations of the NestorianBukhtishu family served as private doctors to caliphs and sultans between the
eighth and eleventh centuries.
Algebra was significantly developed by Persian scientist Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī during this time in his landmark text, Kitab al-Jabr
wa-l-Muqabala, from which the term algebra is derived. He is thus considered to
be the father of algebra by some, although
the Greek mathematicianDiophantus has also been given this title. The terms algorism and algorithm are derived from the name of al-Khwarizmi, who was also responsible
for introducing the Arabic
numerals and Hindu-Arabic numeral system beyond the Indian subcontinent.
Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen)
developed an early scientific
method in his Book of
Optics (1021). The
most important development of the scientific method was the use of experiments
to distinguish between competing scientific theories set within a generally empirical orientation, which began among Muslim scientists. Ibn al-Haytham's empirical proof of the intromission theory of light (that is, that light rays
entered the eyes rather than being emitted by them) was particularly important. Bradley
Steffens described Ibn
al-Haytham as the "first scientist for
his development of scientific method.
Medicine in medieval Islam was an area of science that advanced particularly during the
Abbasids' reign. During the 9th century, Baghdad contained over 800 doctors,
and great discoveries in the understanding of anatomy and diseases were made.
The clinical distinction between measles and smallpox was described during this
time. Famous Persian scientist Ibn Sina (known to the West as Avicenna) produced treatises and works that summarized the vast amount of
knowledge that scientists had accumulated, and was very influential through his
encyclopedias, The Canon of Medicine and The Book of Healing. The work of him and many others directly influenced the research of
European scientists during the Renaissance.
Astronomy in medieval Islam was advanced by Al-Battani, who improved the precision of the measurement of the precession of the Earth's axis. The corrections made to the geocentric
model by al-Battani. Averroes, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, Mo'ayyeduddin Urdi and Ibn al-Shatir were later incorporated into the Copernican heliocentric model. The astrolabe, though originally developed by the Greeks, was developed further by
Islamic astronomers and engineers, and subsequently brought to medieval Europe.
Muslim alchemists influenced medieval European alchemists, particularly the writings
attributed to Jābir ibn Hayyān (Geber). A number of chemical
processes such as distillation techniques were developed in the Muslim world and then spread to
Europe.
The best
known fiction from the Islamic world was The Book of One Thousand and One
Nights. The original concept
is derived from pre-Islamic Iranian (Persian) prototype with reliance on Indian
elements. It also includes stories from the rest of the Middle-Eastern and
North African nations. The epic took form in the 10th century and reached its
final form by the 14th century; the number and type of tales have varied from
one manuscript to another. All Arabian fantasy tales were often called "Arabian Nights" when translated
into English, regardless of whether they appeared in The Book of One Thousand and One
Nights.[44] This epic has been influential in the West since it was translated in
the 18th century, first by Antoine
Galland. Many imitations were written,
especially in France. Various
characters from this epic have themselves become cultural icons in Western
culture, such as Aladdin, Sinbad and Ali Baba.
A famous
example of Islamic poetry on romance was Layla and
Majnun, which further developed mainly by Iranian, Azerbaijani and other poets
in Persian, Azerbaijani, Turkish, and other Turk languages[47] dating back to the Umayyad era in the 7th century. It is a tragic story of undying love much like the later Romeo and
Juliet.
Arabic
poetry reached its greatest heights in the Abbasid era, especially before the
loss of central authority and the rise of the Persianate dynasties. Writers
like Abu Tammam and Abu Nuwas were closely connected to the caliphal court in Baghdad during the
early 9th century, while others such as al-Mutanabbi received their patronage from regional courts.
Philosophy
Further information: Logic in Islamic philosophy, Kalam, Avicennism, Averroism, Illuminationist philosophy and Transcendent Theosophy
One of
the common definitions for "Islamic philosophy" is "the style of
philosophy produced within the framework of Islamic culture. Islamic philosophy, in this definition
is neither necessarily concerned with religious issues, nor is exclusively
produced by Muslims. Their works
on Aristotle was a key step in the transmission of learning from ancient Greeks to
the Islamic world and the West. They often corrected the philosopher,
encouraging a lively debate in the spirit of ijtihad.
They also wrote influential original philosophical works, and their thinking
was incorporated into Christian philosophy during the
Middle Ages, notably by Thomas
Aquinas.
Three
speculative thinkers, al-Kindi, al-Farabi, and Avicenna, combined Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism with other ideas introduced through
Islam, and Avicennism was later established as a result.
Other influential Muslim philosophers in the Caliphates include al-Jahiz, and Ibn al-Haytham (Alhacen).
Technology
Main articles: Inventions in medieval Islam, Muslim Agricultural Revolution and Timeline of Islamic
science and technology
In
technology, the Muslim world adopted papermaking from China. The use of
paper spread from China into the Muslim world in the 8th century CE, arriving
in Spain (and then the rest of Europe) in the 10th century. It was easier to
manufacture than parchment, less likely to crack than papyrus, and could absorb ink, making it ideal for making records and making
copies of the Koran. "Islamic paper makers devised assembly-line methods
of hand-copying manuscripts to turn out editions far larger than any available
in Europe for centuries. It was
from Islam that the rest of the world learned to make paper from linen. The knowledge of gunpowder was also transmitted from China via Islamic countries, where the
formulas for pure potassium
nitrate and an explosive gunpowder effect were first developed.
Advances
were made in irrigation and farming, using new technology such as the windmill. Crops such as almonds and citrus fruit were brought to Europe through al-Andalus, and sugar cultivation was gradually adopted by the Europeans. Apart
from the Nile, Tigris andEuphrates, navigable rivers were uncommon, so transport by sea was very
important. Navigational sciences were highly developed, making use of a
rudimentary sextant (known as a kamal). When combined with detailed maps of the period,
sailors were able to sail across oceans rather than skirt along the coast.
Muslim sailors were also responsible for reintroducing large three masted
merchant vessels to the Mediterranean. The name caravel may derive from an earlier Arab boat known as the qārib. Arab merchants dominated trade in the
Indian Ocean until the arrival of the Portuguese in the 16th century. Hormuz was an important center for this trade. There was also a dense
network of trade routes in the Mediterranean, along which Muslim countries traded with each other and with
European powers such as Venice, Genoa and Catalonia. The Silk Road crossing Central Asia passed through Muslim states between China and
Europe.
Muslim
engineers in the Islamic world made a number of innovative industrial uses of hydropower, and early industrial uses of tidal power, wind power, and petroleum (notably by distillation into kerosene). The industrial uses of watermills in the Islamic world date back to the 7th century, while horizontal-wheeledand
vertical-wheeled water mills were both in widespread use since at least the 9th
century. By the time of the Crusades, every province throughout the Islamic
world had mills in operation, from al-Andalus and North Africa to the Middle East and Central Asia. These mills
performed a variety of agricultural and industrial tasks. Muslim engineers also developed
machines (such as pumps) incorporating crankshafts, employed gears in mills and water-raising machines, and used dams to provide
additional power to watermills and water-raising machines. Such advances made it possible for
many industrial tasks that were previously driven by manual
labour in ancient
times to be mechanized and driven by machinery instead in the medieval Islamic world. It has
been argued that the industrial use of waterpower had spread from Islamic to
Christian Spain, where fulling mills, paper mills, and forge mills were
recorded for the first time in Catalonia.
A number
of industries were generated during the Arab Agricultural Revolution, including early industries for textiles, sugar, rope-making,
matting, silk, and paper. Latin translations of the 12th
century passed on
knowledge of chemistry and instrument making in particular. The agricultural and handicraft industries also experienced high levels of growth during this period.
