Charlemagne’s Actual Trip to Spain, 777-8

Posted on December 2, 2021 by Ruth

In the “Song of Roland,” the first premise is that Charlemagne has spent seven years campaigning across Spanish Andalusia, taking back territory from the perfidious Saracens. The famous battle in which Roland loses his life takes place in the mountain pass between Spain and France, near the city of Pamplona. In the legend, the attack happens because Roland’s stepfather wants to get rid of him, so makes a deal with the Muslim ruler of Zaragoza to attack when only Roland and a rear guard are exposed at the end of a long, thin line over the pass.

First, the premise: completely false. We know that it took several more centuries for the Christian kingdoms of the north to take back Spain; it’s called the Reconquista and wasn’t finished until Ferdinand and Isabella took Granada in 1492. In 778, when Roland’s battle took place, Muslim Spain was still expanding under Abd al-Rahman I. Nothing was being reconquered yet.

Additionally, Charlemagne’s major war effort was against the pagan Saxons bordering his northern territory. Slaughtering the Saxons was his chief occupation. He had a campaign against the Lombards, like his father Pippin, and became King of the Lombards. While it’s true that at one point he attacked Muslim Spain, it was not a long, sustained war as depicted in the epic. It certainly didn’t take back acres of territory, nor did Roland’s death provoke a second victorious battle. This was all pure fiction. In a time that was only beginning to use written history, a minstrel could count on most of his audience being pretty credulous about the past. They were willing to believe anything that sounded good, so the bard only had to figure out what they wanted to hear.

Roland was a knight from Brittany, the region where refugee Celtic Britons had settled after the Anglo-Saxon invasion of the 600s. We don’t know anything about him, otherwise. Bretagne mother and Frankish father, even a minor figure from the new royal family? Could be.

Abd al-Rahman’s power grab is central to the story of the real Roland. In 778, he was still al-Dakhil, the Carpetbagger, to the “established” Muslim oligarchy of Sevilla, Barcelona, and so on. His power was centered in the south, where he had entered at Gibraltar. He was inviting surviving Umayyad cousins to join him in Spain and appointing them as city governors to help consolidate his power. In cities closer to the Christian kingdoms, some Muslim rulers wanted to block his takeover. They made a plan of rebellion which began with alliances with Christians.

Charlemagne, the growing power to the north, was invited to take part. In exchange, the Arab rulers of Barcelona and Zaragoza would become Frankish vassals.

Charlemagne led an army across the Pyrenees Mountains pass at Roncesvalles to join the rebels. However, once he was there, he found that the rebellion had scattered. Abd al-Rahman was moving quickly to snuff out such things; some of the plotters may already have lost their heads. There was nothing for the Franks to do. Charlemagne heard that the Saxons were taking advantage of his absence to rebel again. He turned toward home, but he needed provisions.

The Christian Basque city of Pamplona was asked to open its gates and provide for the Franks, and it refused. So Charlemagne besieged and took the city, plundering it. That’s the “baggage train” that Roland was guarding: plunder from Basque Pamplona. The main army was well to the north, going as quickly as possible through the pass toward home. Roland’s rear guard, with wagons full of Pamplona plunger, was an inviting revenge target.

The attackers were Basques, possibly allied with some local Muslims. Along the frontier, alliances were based on power advantage, not on religion, and intermarriage was common. So a force of Basques (and Muslims?) fell on Roland and took back the wagonloads of plunder. On hearing of it, Charlemagne cursed in Old French and kept going. The Saxons were much more important than this southern distraction.

Why was this obscure Bretagne Count made into a hero for the ages?

By 950, Muslim power in Spain was secure and the Umayyad dynasty still firmly in power. But it had been 80 years since the last descendant of Charlemagne had ruled a united country. Each time an Emperor had died, his kingdom had been divided among his sons, but in each generation, one of the sons had managed to reunite it all, until at last his great-grandson Charles the Fat had only an illegitimate son and no unified support. Aquitaine, West Francia, East Francia and Lombardia/Italy broke apart into smaller kingdoms.

In 911, Viking attacks on Paris had become so severe that Charles III offered land for peace, creating Normandy. Charles III’s son was forced to grow up in England because rebellious nobles deposed the Carolingians for a time. This son, Louis IV, was probably king in Paris around the time when the “Song of Roland” was composed by Turoldus (or somebody).

The new legend depicted a time when the Franks had been truly unified and so strong that they could have driven out Abd al-Rahman except that they just didn’t bother—but they only went home after he promised to convert. The only reason the Muslims were still in control of Spain, according to the legend, was that they were deceitful and treacherous. The House of Charlemagne, on the other hand, had once been invincible.

The Song was popular among Normans, the new Franks; obviously, they were joining the winning team. Newly Catholic, half Viking and half Frankish, they wanted to believe that “they” had once held all of Spain in their grasp. Of course, once the Crusades got rolling in the next centuries, Roland was more popular than ever. He turned out to have been the first Crusader martyr, the one who was cool before it went mainstream.

We can laugh at the bards of Louis IV for inventing all this fake history to help unify a desperately disunited people. But if you look at the history of film remaking, you’ll see that of course we still do this. We borrow some skeleton facts from the past and invent stories based on what we want to hear in our time. So in laughing at them, we must include ourselves.

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The Song of Roland, 950

Posted on December 2, 2021 by Ruth

We’re jumping ahead by two centuries just for a moment, to touch on literature.

The “Song of Roland” was the most popular epic of its time. Composed by a Frankish minstrel named Turoldus, the poem first appeared in written form around 950. Its subject matter was Charlemagne’s invasion into Muslim Spain in 778. The oral version may have been in circulation for years before it was written, but it was probably not composed close to the time of the events.

In the song, Charlemagne and his Franks have been campaigning across Spain for seven years, reconquering cities for the Christian cause. They are now departing in triumph. The narrow pass over the Pyrenees mountains, going from Spain into France, forces the huge army to travel slowly in a long thin line, and the baggage train at the back is miles behind. Roland, Charlemagne’s nephew and Count of Brittany, is there to guard the rear of the lines.

But not so fast…Roland’s wicked stepfather Ganelon has conspired with the Saracen ruler Marsile to attack Roland when he is isolated. This they do. Roland compounds this disaster by ignoring his friend Oliver’s pleas to blow an ivory horn called the “Oliphant,” which would summon help. When he finally does blow the horn, help cannot arrive in time, and they are all slaughtered.

While this is the most famous incident in the long epic, the story goes on to tell of Charlemagne’s vengeance against Marsile, the burial of Roland and his companions, and an enormous battle between Muslims and Christians. The Frankish Christians win, and their Muslim enemies either die or convert. From 950 on, this song was among the most popular that traveling singers could offer at castles and towns. Everyone loved it, and many probably thought it was true.

There was a Roland (Spanish, Orlando) who died in a pass in the Pyrenees, protecting the Frankish baggage train. So what really happened…? Why was Charlemagne even there in 778, not campaigning against pagan Saxons or rebel Aquitainians as usual?

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The King in the North, 751-71

Posted on December 2, 2021 by Ruth

While Abd al-Rahman was a fugitive in North Africa, power shifted decisively in Europe. The last major Germanic barbarian invasion came from the east and had settled in the Italian Alps with a capital at Pavia. The Langobards, or Lombards, did not quickly blend in with natives as some Germanic invasions had done. They were not Catholics, either; they were Arians who rejected and challenged the Pope. They were also recklessly fey fighters and deeply feared. Charles Martel had worked at allying with them to keep things quiet on his east.

But in the time of Charles’ son and grandson, the Popes began positioning the Franks as their shield wall against the Lombard threat. The first step came in 751: Pope Stephen deposed the last Merovingian king, Childeric III, and proclaimed King Pippin I and Queen Bertrada. (He also, apparently, proclaimed them properly married, a step they had missed.) Pippin was not the oldest son of Charles Martel, but his brother had chosen monastic contemplation, while Pippin was secular, crafty, and aggressive. In exchange for being allowed to set aside pretense that he was merely a Steward, King Pippin agreed to set aside Frankish alliances with Lombards. He led an army to defeat them, stopping their advances on the Pope’s heartland.

So in the same few years, three new dynasties came to power: the Abbasids in Baghdad, the line of Abd al-Rahman (Umayyad-Berbers) in Cordoba, and the Pippinid line of Charles’s in Aachen. Dynasties are usually most powerful in their first three generations, since they depend on the physical and mental prowess of the founder, and the genetic blessing often lasts into his grandsons. All three dynasties were on the same timing: between 750 and 850, three huge regions of the Mediterranean world were ruled by the first four generations of these dynasties. At least some of what we remember as the Golden Age of the Dark Ages came about because power was so perfectly balanced.

At the same time, Popes in Rome broke away from the Patriarchs of Constantinople decisively. The Pope didn’t need an overlord as long as he could call on the Franks. And here began a long process of turning the Franks into good Catholics. Until this time, they were nominal Catholics, but their kings saw no problem with incest and polygamy. The Pope needed a virtuous shield wall, not a semi-barbarian one.

Frankish tradition at that time left lands divided among heirs, which often led to fraternal wars to re-unite estates and kingdoms. The system may have been good for the dynasty, since it allowed the strongest son to prevail. For several generations, the kingdom had been divided into inheritances roughly along the modern French/German border.

When Pippin I died in 768, Carolus inherited Austrasia (Germany) and Carloman inherited Neustria (France). Neustria was the richer territory, but Carloman began a contest of power with his older brother that ultimately led to his downfall. Very bad choice.

Unlike father Pippin, Carolus was tall: 6′ 3″. He was not nearly as well-educated as the dynastic founders in Baghdad and Cordoba, but he was interested in books and could speak and read Latin. For a Frank, he was doing great. He had a good understanding of the political changes around him, too. Like Abd al-Rahman, he had the gift of political and military genius. Carloman was probably a good guy, but contesting against that particular older brother, he was doomed.

Both brothers named their oldest sons “Pippin,” implying a greater right to the dynastic founder’s name. But Carloman refused to help defend against a rebellious Duke of Aquitaine although Aquitaine was directly part of Neustria. He let Mr. Big Brother King of Austrasia cross into his territory to do it—what was he thinking? Instead, he began to form secret alliances with the Lombards. Not cool, Carloman….

Carolus put down the Aquitainian rebellion alone and came out of it stronger. Then he allowed his mother to set up a marriage alliance for him with the Lombards. In the pragmatic manner of the early Franks, he set aside his Frankish wife and married a Lombard princess who was half his age.

When his brother Carloman died in 771, civil war preparations stopped. The King of Austrasia moved swiftly: he declared himself King of Neustria, leaving his brother’s widow and infant sons to flee. He divorced the Lombard princess, since he no longer needed the alliance. We don’t know anything about her personal history or even her name.

Now king of united Frankia, Carolus allied himself firmly to the Pope. The Pope rewarded him by discarding the rights of his baby nephews, while Carolus declared the Franks ready to stand by Catholic rules. This was going to be harder for him than it looks to us…

He didn’t take back his first wife, but when he remarried a third time, he stayed with this one until she died. Frankish custom would have permitted him to set her aside any time for any reason. He began to enforce monogamy and no-incest among his nobles.

No more marrying your own sister, nor even a pair of someone else’s sisters. In fact, for a long time the Franks took the prohibition on incest too far, by mistake. Roman tradition counted degrees of relationship differently, so it sounded to the Franks like they weren’t even allowed to marry distant cousins, and as time went on, it was harder and harder to find a qualifying candidate. Divorce was strictly prohibited. They had to wait for wives to die fair and square before they got another crack at the marriage gamble. For about a hundred years, church courts continued to have Frankish marriage tangles brought for judgment, as the nobles slowly adjusted to a new normal.

Carolus is known to history as Charlemagne, Carolus the Great. He himself had a number of mistresses who bore him eight daughters. He didn’t permit his daughters to marry, almost certainly to keep inheritance simple. Frankish custom required him to divide his land among his legitimate sons, so imagine if nephews from those eight daughters had demanded a share.

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The New Emir of Al-Andalus, 755-79

Posted on December 2, 2021 by Ruth

Prince Abd al-Rahman had traveled into North Africa by 755, with his servant Bedr. The governor of Ifriqiyah then was a great-grandson of Uqba, the original rapid conqueror during the earliest Umayyad years. His given name was the same as the prince’s, so history remembers him as Ibn Habib and his family as the al-Fihris. They had been power players in North Africa and Andalusia for four generations.

Emir Ibn Habib’s first response to the Abbasid revolution was to put out feelers for support, then cut ties and declare himself independent. He forbade prayer for the new Abbasid Caliph in Ifriqiyyah’s mosques. He welcomed Umayyad refugees like Abd al-Rahman.

Abd al-Rahman lived with the Nafza Berber chieftain during this time, in Algeria far to the west. Still, even at that distance, his presence as a leading Umayyad was felt as a threat by the Emir. Ibn Habib changed his mind about sheltering Umayyads and sent men to arrest Abd al-Rahman, but the Berbers hid him. He escaped farther west to Ceuta, Morocco. Now he was right on the coast, facing al-Andalus.

His companion Bedr crossed over to talk to Umayyad generals who still held various cities in Spain. Some Syrian Arab generals were interested in making common cause with the Umayyad prince, but others were wary. They had a lot of independence already, what could Abd al-Rahman add but another layer of taxation? On the other hand, Yemenite Arabs felt pushed aside by the Syrians. They were happy to make a deal to support Abd al-Rahman. He crossed over to Malaga and began his new campaign; it was 755 and he was 25 years old.

Emir Ibn Habib al-Fihri came to Andalusia to put down an unrelated rebellion in the northern city of Zaragoza. But then he was in a good position to confront his new rival. Commanders of units all over Andalusia had to choose sides, and eventually they all met across the Guadalquivir River near Cordoba. In negotiations, Abd al-Rahman was offered the Emir’s daughter in marriage, but he chose to conquer.

The nervous Yemenites on his side noticed that he rode a very fine horse, and they feared he would use it to abandon the battle and save himself at their expense. The prince swapped mounts with a Yemeni chieftain, and that convinced his fighters of his commitment. They unwound a green turban, tied it around a spear as a banner, and followed him into battle. They won.

The many battles to take control of all Andalusia lasted until 779. But long before this, the other Emir’s head had been cut off during a battle at Toledo. It was nailed to a bridge at Cordoba. From that day, Abd al-Rahman was effectively the Emir of Andalusia, though he did not claim the title Caliph. He created a non-tribal “modern” state, rewarding anyone who supported him, instead of restricting rewards to ethnic groups or families as the earlier Umayyads had done.

In 763, Abbasid Caliph al-Mansur sent an appointed Emir to Sevilla to take back central power. Now there had to be a final military showdown. Al-Rahman did something completely new and unexpected: he trained a slave army. He chose imported Slavs, blond and blue-eyed, to be his shock troops, but he also had a personal bodyguard of Sudanese Africans. The slave army had no tribal ties to Yemenis, Berbers, Syrians, or anyone; they would live or die only as they helped him win. At the fortress of Carmona, near Sevilla, the slave army defeated the Abbasid envoy’s army.

Abd al-Rahman took no prisoners; all were executed. He had a special fate for the top officials. Cutting off their hands first, then their heads, he pickled all of these in brine and mailed them to Mecca, in time for Caliph al-Mansur to receive it while on Hajj. By tradition, he responded, “Praise Allah, He placed a sea between me and him!” Later, when asked who he considered to be the bravest of Mohammed’s clan, he named Abd al-Rahman Saqr Quraysh, “the Falcon of the Quraysh.” Because, he said, he rose to power without any support, against all odds, by his cleverness and ferocity.

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Building Baghdad, 762

Posted on December 2, 2021 by Ruth

The city was designed to be a visual representation of the Koran’s idea of Paradise. By the time it was founded, the Empire was at its peak size and vast sums of tribute flowed into the Caliph’s coffers, so money was no object. Work began in July, 764.

Architects and artists planned the city in detail. The very center was a mosque, near the Palace, which included a tall green dome. The houses of top bureaucrats and nobles were near the Palace (an honor, but also a control feature); so were the administrative buildings, guard headquarters, etc. To make the inner city as like Paradise as possible, it was planned with boulevards, parks, gardens, and walks. The inner city had a high wall, perfectly round; it had four gates. Each gate door was made of iron. The gates were named for the distant cities they faced: Kufa, Khorasan, Damascus and Basra.

All bricks would be the same size: massive cubes of 18 inches. Where possible, marble blocks would be used. They built a canal from the Tigris to help deliver building materials. 100,000 construction workers came from around the Empire to build Baghdad, and they completed the task in just four years. After the inner city, the planned Paradise, was complete, a new city ring began just outside its wall. It wasn’t planned as carefully, but it still had the advantage of ample funding, so it was also splendid.

Top officials were permitted to develop and profit from plots of city land. The Caliph’s chamberlain, a freed slave, received a large tract of land to develop and sell, becoming a very rich man. Mansur’s brother and many others of his family built palaces along the river, with canals and gardens. They were joined by the sons of the most powerful Persian families, such as the Barmakids, former Buddhists from Balkh who filled the post of Vizier (Wazir) for several Abbasid Caliphs. These people became the high society of Baghdad, eschewing the Caliph’s austerity and instead hiring singers and dancers for their parties. Gradually, another Persian custom was adopted: for the court to be staffed by eunuchs, from pageboys to commanders of the guard.

Baghdad very soon challenged Constantinople for the title of largest city in the world. It had over million inhabitants at its peak, and half that by the middle of the 9th century. It was the keystone of the Empire’s arch, standing at the middle between West and East. Most of the transfer of knowledge between East and West went through Baghdad. It had a House of Wisdom, not quite a university but definitely a state-funded scholarly community. That’s where so much translation work went on. More on that later.

Baghdad is best known as the setting of the Arabian Nights stories. The most famous (and third) Abbasid Caliph, Harun (Aaron) al-Rashid, was the legendary ruler in these stories. In the stories, he roamed the city at night in disguise, trying to learn about his people (and probably thwart plots). The stories talk about Bengal and China, suggesting that ambassadors and royalty from the far East came to stay in Baghdad. In addition to a teeming underclass of thieves, legendary Baghdad has many minor palaces for officials and merchants. Pearls and gold seem to roll out of every closet and box.

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Caliph al-Mansur and the Shi’ites, 762-5

Posted on December 2, 2021 by Ruth

The descendants of Ali had been living quietly in Medina all this time, building up a legacy of scholarship that by the 700s amounted to a private university. Law and theology were the main subjects, but they included the observational science of the time. If Allah created the world, then studying the world was a way of exploring God’s greatness. Some students specialized in natural science, possibly starting to work with alchemy, which eventually led to chemistry. Two of the sixth Imam’s students went on to prominence under the Abbasids and became the founders of major schools of legal thought, the Hanifis and Malikis.

Another student became known as the father of Arabic chemistry. Jabir ibn Hayyan’s books number in the hundreds, though modern scholars raise the possibility that the name became traditional and legendary, attached to books written by others from the Shi’ite university in Medina. In any case, these books present an early analysis of elements. Jabir describes hydrochloric and nitric acid, explains distillation and crystallization, and presents the “sulfur-mercury theory of metals.” Some of his books were translated into Latin, where his name was spelled Geber.

The sixth Imam, al-Sadiq, had a number of sons, including an older one named Ismail, and a younger named Musa. Al-Sadiq quietly chose his son Musa to be the next Imam, but it was not made public for fear of Caliph al-Mansur. During this time, Ismail died. The Ismaili sect of Shi’ism came out of disbelief that Ismail had died (he was hidden as the Mahdi to return someday) and a refusal to believe he had not been chosen as the successor Imam. Ismailis count a line of Imams descended from Ismail’s son.

The fourth, fifth and sixth Imams had insisted that their families and students should stay as far from political power as possible. Most of them did. But a cousin who was descended from both Hassan and Husayn had been among the candidates supported by the revolution in 750. This cousin, Muhammad — whose laqab name was al-Nafs al-Zakiyyah meaning The Pure Soul — went undercover and began gathering support around Iraq and Iran. Al-Mansur sent out spies to find him and arrested members of his family.

In 762, Muhammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyyah moved openly to take control of Medina. He was in control there for about as long as it took al-Mansur to send an army from Iraq, and then he was forced to defend Medina using the old trenches (more irony). His brother Ibrahim started a second stage of revolt in Basra. For a few exciting months, rebels all over Arabia and Iraq moved to support the brothers. It was only a matter of time until these rebellions were suppressed. The rebels and their imprisoned relatives were all killed.

Interestingly, Imam al-Sadiq stayed neutral, even leaving Medina during the rebellion. He never swore loyalty to al-Mansur, but neither did he do anything to support rebels. The Caliph kept the Imam under intense surveillance and arrested him several times, bringing him and the elders of Medina to Iraq. At last, he ordered his governor of Medina to poison the Imam, who thus died the same death of his father and grandfather. He is said to have named five successors in his will, including the actual son he intended as successor, but also including the Caliph himself and even the poisoning governor. This kept the Caliph from carrying out an order to execute the successor.

Each of this Imam’s sons was considered the next Imam by at least some people. The Ismailis believed it was Ismail, who predeceased his father. For a short time, another group held to the next son, believing that age precedence mattered most. He had a physical disability and died soon after his father. The group that held to his Imamate didn’t come to matter in history, since the claim was so weak that most of them later accepted the younger brother Musa, known as al-Kazim. But it’s an example of how the Shi’ites came to be fractured into so many sects.

Who would have guessed that Ismail, dying before his father, would be followed by a sect that is still active today? Ismailis came to power in Egypt during the 10th century, and after fracturing again, the Nizari-Ismaili sect created the powerful Assassin cult. Today they recognize the Aga Khan as Ismail’s successor and have become peaceful.

Even apart from the uprising of 762, Caliph Mansur was harsh to the family of Ali. The story is told by his perfume supplier, who must have heard a lot of court gossip, that in the year he died, he gave a set of keys to his son’s wife. He was going on Hajj, and travel was always dangerous, so everyone treated it as a possible end of life. The keys, he told his daughter-in-law, were for all of the rooms in his palace, but there was one room to open ONLY in the event of his death, and then ONLY by her or his son Mahdi. He died, and they opened the room. In the large, airy room there were many dried corpses laid out, labeled in a systematic way. They were all descendants of Ali, executed or assassinated at the Caliph’s command. Some were children. (Kennedy, 15-6)

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Caliph al-Mansur, 754-75

Posted on December 1, 2021 by Ruth

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.

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Abbasid Caliph al-Saffah, 750-4

Posted on December 1, 2021 by Ruth

The Abbasid Caliphs needed to work a little harder to remind people that their right to rule was legitimate. Perhaps for this reason, they began a tradition of ruling not in their own given names, but by their laqab name. We’ve looked before at the kunya name, like Abu Sufyan or Umm Salamah. The laqab name was a dignified sort of nickname that tried to capture some quality of the person. When Muhammad was a young man, they say he was given the laqab name “al-Amin,” The Just, to reflect his reputation for unusual honesty.

The first Abbasid to be proclaimed Caliph became known as al-Saffah, or as-Saffah (the L in al often changes to match the first sound of the next word). Al-Saffah meant The Shedder of Blood, because on coming to power, he instigated a bloodbath of Umayyads. Not just the royal family but anyone who had been part of the ruling structure was targeted. Mahdi Mahgreb, in his book on the Shi’ite imams, says that in Mosul, only 400 men survived the purge.

Al-Saffah was the clan chief of a branch of the Banu Hisham, an Arab among Arabians, and born in Syria. But he had a clear mandate to do something different with power. Where the Umayyads had favored Arabs above others, Caliph al-Saffah set out to equalize status among believers. Army officers had been only Arabs, and usually only Umayyad relatives if they were available. In the new Abbasid army, Muslims from Khurasan, Iran, and Iraq stepped into roles of command.

The equalizing went beyond just Muslims, though, and this brings us to a general point about new dynasties. A new dynasty needs friends. Anyone who was even neutral toward the new power can expect to be rewarded in some way. Ethnic minorities suddenly find the sun shining on them, since even their sliver of power is needed by the new ruler. We see the cycle many times in Muslim history: a new dynasty means temporary good times for Christians and Jews. In al-Saffah’s court, Jews and Christians were appointed to posts previously held only by Syrians and Umayyads.

Further, Caliph al-Saffah took up governing in Iraq, living first in Kufa, then in Hirah. This step moved the center of power away from Syria, which was necessary to break up the old dynasty’s grip and to reward new friends. But it also placed the center of power—therefore of money—in Kufa, the old stronghold of support for Ali. Many Shi’ites had been hoping that this revolution would bring in a great-grandson of Ali or Husayn as Caliph, so they were potentially disappointed to find it not so. By living among them, al-Saffah could observe, thwart, and influence them. The leading Shi’ite Imam, Jafar al-Saddiq, was ordered to move to Hira where he could be watched.

The most significant action in al-Saffah’s four years was the far-away victory over the Chinese in the Battle of Talas. Soon after the battle, the first Muslim paper mill was set up in Samarkand. Paper technology was carried eastward by stages during the early Abbasid years.

Caliph al-Saffah died of disease after only a few years. He appointed his brother to be his successor.

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Massacre and Escape at Resafa, 750

Posted on December 1, 2021 by Ruth

In societies that lack procedure for peaceful power transfer—which was nearly everyone in the 8th century—it’s important to move fast to cement your new power. It’s even better for the people, who probably have little contact with the rulers. If you leave things uncertain, there will be civil war, and that’s bad for everyone, but most of all for the poor sods whose farms get trashed while their sons are sent out to die. Somebody has to die; it will be a strategic few or a randomly-chosen many. All this throat-clearing leads up to the next step for the Abbasids: killing the Umayyads.

The wealthy families of the top Umayyad princes lived in isolated but well-known places. The cities may have been sweating on the riverbank or plain, but the houses of the rich have always been located in the cool hills near a fast-moving creek or artesian spring. An Umayyad palace was a place of palm trees, fountains, grass and flowers. The children grew up riding horses and swimming in safe pools, learning the education tools of ruling. They lived in tents that sentimentally reminded former nomads of the old life but actually had many luxuries.

When the Abbasids secured Damascus, a detachment of men rode fast to the main collection of country houses to the north, near al-Resafa. Without warning, they invaded the tents and began killing. Any child who survived, especially a boy, could be used as the figurehead of a future counter-revolution and civil war.

Two brothers, one aged 20, the other a bit younger, were on the outskirts of the compound with the four-year-old son of the older brother. With a servant named Bedr, and maybe with some of their sisters, they broke away from the compound and ran. They fled to a village on the Euphrates riverbank, where some people hid them. But their absence was noticed, and their flight was tracked.

A squad of soldiers came to the village to search for them. Escape was high risk, but the brothers decided to leave the child behind (amazingly, he survived) and try to swim the river. The older brother and the servant crossed the river, but the younger brother grew tired and was persuaded to turn back. The pursuers were shouting to them, “Come back! We will spare your lives!” Of course, they didn’t, so the younger brother died. But the two who came out on the other side continued to run.

Prince Abd al-Rahman and his servant Bedr successfully dodged Abbasid search parties for weeks. They made their way back across the Euphrates River, through Syria and Israel, southward into Egypt. Doubtless it was dangerous and terribly uncomfortable, as they must have hid in the bush or desert for days at a time with little to eat, traveling by night, going from hut to hut never knowing if they would be betrayed, trying not to be recognized.

Abd al-Rahman had a definite goal in his mind. Although a grandson of Caliph Hisham, he was the son of a Berber woman, probably a high-ranking slave sent from North Africa by Musa ibn Nusayr. She had spoken Berber/Amazigh language to her son, although of course he spoke Arabic with the rest of the family. Abd al-Rahman was making a beeline for the land of his mother’s tribe, to claim her name and raise his own army.

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Abbasid Revolution: End of the Umayyads, 750

Posted on November 23, 2021 by Ruth

A coalition of pious Muslims who wanted reform of the sinful Umayyads, Arabs who had been left out of the Umayyad aristocracy, and converts who had been left out of even the perks Arabs got finally came together in a successful push to rid Syria of the Umayyads. The money and manpower came from the far east, from Samarkand and all those places beyond the Oxus River.

The key figure in Khurasan was a man known as Abu Muslim; he was the Abbasid agent, but was probably a Persian who became a fanatical Shi’ite. He was able to rally enough fighting men to the cause that they could bring a large army west. It was a long journey and probably few of them got home again, so that was some serious commitment to the cause. Abu Muslim told them that they were fighting to put a special holy man of the Prophet’s family in power, but he didn’t say who it was. It’s likely that many of the fighters believed it would be a descendant of Ali. In 747, Abu Muslim’s Khurasani men took control of Merv, the garrison city on the border of Iran and Afghanistan. This allowed them to march across Iran.

In Iran, they picked up more support. Persian culture wanted to reassert its dominance, after a hundred years of repression by Arab invaders. They didn’t want to leave Islam, rather they could use the puritanical Abbasid cause to take back local control of their cities. Al-Hajjaj’s governorship of Iraq had included Iran in its repressive policies. Persians who had not converted to Islam were persecuted; temples were destroyed and Zoroastrian believers killed. Abu Muslim didn’t give any support to a non-Muslim religion, but he accepted their military and financial support in exchange for more home rule in the next regime.

Back in Syria, the Umayyads had been fighting each other, and there was a major earthquake. Marwan II was still in charge, but he had fewer fighting men than usual. Just like the Roman and Persian armies diminished by years of campaigning against each other, the Umayyad armies had been supporting one or another Umayyad until they, too, had diminished and were tired. Money was growing short, and of course as soon as Abu Muslim took over Merv, taxes from the far east stopped coming to Damascus. Additionally, the Berber revolt in North Africa and a Kharijite rebellion in Yemen took place around the same time.

In 749, Abu Muslim’s army besieged the new garrison town of Wasit in Iraq, the town where Hajjaj had decreed only Syrians could live. A lot of Umayyad forces were trapped in Wasit in the siege, while other Abbasid armies moved on. Arabs who had suffered at Umayyad hands joined them, making it easy to take Kufa.

In Kufa, Abbas’s great-grandson as-Saffah was declared the new Caliph. If they waited longer, some of their conspirators would agitate for a descendant of Ali, and in truth the heart of the conspiracy had always been set on the Abbasids. Marwan II met the invaders in battle, but he was defeated and had to flee to Egypt. The victors entered Syria and captured Damascus.

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