Prince Ja’far, the 26-year-old brother of the Caliph who had just died, was chosen by the inner circle of the late Caliph’s advisors. They chose a regnal name for him: al-Mutawwakil ala-llah, the Reliant on God. History knows him as Caliph Mutawwakil.
As a prince, Ja’far had been considered insignificant, and some of his brother’s inner circle had gone out of their way to bully him. They made fun of his clothes and said his hair was too long, they refused to hand over his allowance. Very “middle school lunchroom.” It didn’t seem to occur to them that giving him supreme power now might be a bad idea for them personally. During the first year of his reign, Mutawwakil moved like a chess player to remove each of them. Some were killed (like the vizier, killed in his own Iron Maiden), some were fined and banished. Since they were mostly from far away, he could easily appoint Baghdad insiders, from the old Abbasid-supporting families, to fill their places.
Mutawwakil’s coins bore his likeness, crude though it was, which was quite unusual for Caliphs. We see a man with a mustache and a forked beard, and around his head appears to be a beaded band holding on a headdress. This headdress, similar perhaps to the modern Saudi one, was also unusual for an Abbasid who normally wore a very tall qalansiya hat.
Mutawwakil chose to reverse course on a major issue: the theological dispute over the Quran. The dogmatic position that the Quran was created, not eternal, had come at the same time as his family’s dependence on Turkish soldiers. I don’ think these two changes weren’t logically connected since Turks were rarely interested in theology, but it all formed a power framework that had become unified. Mutawwakil had to get rid of his father’s Turkish commanders, in order to break with the ideological past. With that done, he announced that official doctrine would return to the non-rational, literal belief in what the hadiths of the Prophet said. He also began to prosecute Mu’tazilites, who had formerly held power.
Shi’ites were not part of the Mu’tazilite power structure, but they shared the same belief, so they were included in the sweep. The Caliph ordered the Shi’ite Imam al-Hadi to move from Medina to Samarra on the basis of allegations of rebellion. There, he kept close watch and sometimes made his life difficult. His governor in Medina leaned hard on the Shi’ites there, and as they could, they arrested leaders in the Shi’ite network. This network was partly political, partly theological and represented a serious rival to Abbasid power, even if they were not planning any rebellion.
Mutawwakil ordered the destruction of the tomb of Husayn at Karbala. Houses and even palaces had grown up around it; they too were destroyed. The land was reverted to farming, and anyone who tried to remain living there was imprisoned. (Eventually, a century later, Shi’ites built a new tomb over the same place.) Visiting any other Shi’ite tombs was forbidden.
Back when the Caliph was an insignificant 14-year-old prince, he had sired his first son with a slave girl. This son, Muntasir, was the primary heir, with two half-brothers Mutazz and Mu’ayyad as co-heirs over territories. But then the Caliph changed his mind and moved to swap Mutazz into Muntasir’s place, since he loved Mutazz’s mother more. Muntasir quarreled with his father about this and other things, then conspired with some of the Turkish soldiers to kill both the Caliph and the vizier.
In the end, the Turks got back at the man who thought he could oust them from power. From this point on, Turks were always in control of the Abbasid Caliphs. The Caliphs’ independent power dwindled until, a century later, they were puppets.
- A Historical Research on the Lives of the Twelve Shi’a Imams. Mahdi Mahgrebi.
- Caliphate: the History of an Idea. Hugh Kennedy.
- When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World. Hugh Kennedy.