Caliph al-Saffah’s brother became known as al-Mansur, the Victor. He ruled almost twenty years, so it was really his hand that established the dynasty.
During his early years, an old Persian fashion came back at court. It was a very tall, narrow hat called qalansuwa. There are no pictures of it from the time, so we have to guess. It was probably cone-shaped, and it was certainly black at the Abbasid court. Stories in which the Caliph and his court wore this impractical hat continue into the next century. As uncomfortable as the hat was, it made its wearer stand out as visibly more important than men with smaller hats. The Byzantine court, too, had used awkward, tall hats, and we see them continue into modern times as worn by the highest ranking Orthodox and Catholic clergy.
Al-Mansur was an austere, pious man who did not permit wine to be served nor music played at his court. He was also the only Abbasid Caliph who was a great preacher who could be heard every Friday. A systematic administrator, he kept a full professional staff of clerks who were separate from the Islamic clerks, the ulama. He also kept an intelligence network so nobody could surprise him as the Umayyad Caliph had been surprised.
Al-Mansur faced an early rebellion by his Abbasid uncle in Syria, and he asked Abu Muslim, the charismatic leader who had raised an army in Khorasan, to go deal with it. Abu Muslim won this battle. But this left Abu Muslim himself as a possible threat to the Caliph, at least in the Caliph’s mind. There’s no sign that Abu Muslim was anything but loyal, but Caliph al-Mansur had him executed in Kufa. Abu Muslim’s death touched off a wave of revolts in Iran, and in the next decades, that region broke off from Abbasid rule.
In 762, Caliph al-Mansur settled on a site for a permanent new capital city. Like other rulers in Iraq, he chose the place where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers come closest. The site was about a hundred miles north of Kufa and came close to the old site of Ctesiphon, the western capital of Persia. The Akkadian Empire had also built its capital, Babylon, nearby. Over time, the inhabitants had dug canals to connect the rivers and make it easier to ship grain from the fertile area between the rivers.
He named the city Medinat al-Salam, the City of Peace. That name didn’t stick, but instead, the Persian name Bagh-Dad stuck. It means God’s Gift. The building of Baghdad is worth its own entry, though.
- Caliphate: The History of an Idea, by Hugh Kennedy
- When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World, by Hugh Kennedy