The Abbasid Family

If you recall, Muhammad had a number of uncles. Abu Talib raised him, then when Muhammad was married, he and another uncle, Abbas, each took one of Abu Talib’s younger sons to foster. Abbas’s wife became a believer very early, but Abbas fought against the Muslims at Badr. As a captive, he heard Muhammad recount a private conversation between Abbas and his wife, and this convinced him that Allah really spoke to his nephew. From that time, he became a Muslim.

While the family of Muhammad’s daughter Fatimah experienced persecution, so that they were not great in number, the family of Abbas grew and prospered. They were Quraysh but not Umayyads; their clan was the Banu Hashim. As the generations went on after the Prophet’s death, the family of Abbas reminded people that they were Hashimites, not Umayyads. They were one step closer to the Prophet in kinship and in piety.

The Abbasid family settled between Arabia and Syria, at a site now in modern Jordan. They were on a main road and could entertain visitors at their compound. This may be the link that allowed them to become close to some Arabs who had gone with the army out to the east. Now these Arabs lived in Khurasan, which meant the whole general eastern area that was most recently conquered.

The Khurasani Arabs had access to serious money. Some of the non-Arab Muslim converts who felt that the Umayyads had discriminated against them joined their Arab neighbors in dissatisfaction with Umayyad rule. In Khurasan, they also had the ability to assemble an army without immediate detection by the Umayyad state.

The Abbasids and the Khurasanis were joined by one other conspiratorial region: Kufa, and Iraq in general. Iraqis generally believed that the Prophet’s family should be returned to power. They had in mind a descendant of Ali, just as they had recently begun to back Zayd’s rebellion. But the Abbasids were close enough to the Prophet’s family that they could keep options open. The conspirators all agreed that if they could overthrow the Umayyads, the next Caliph would be someone chosen from the Prophet’s family, with the exact choice of an individual held in abeyance until the revolt was successful.

Criticism of the Umayyads had begun much earlier, during the reigns of the short-lived weaker Umayyads. The Abbasids criticized the luxury of the Umayyads to anyone who asked. They chose black as their standard; wearing black was a signal of support for the Abbasids. They promised to return the Umma to pure desert morals and simplicity. When today’s Islamic extremists choose black as their color, they are evoking the Abbasids’ cause, comparing current rulers to the Umayyads.

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Walid II and the Qusayr Amra Murals, 744

Walid II was the Caliph for only a year, but he had been a powerful prince for years before this, so he’s credited with some of the most sumptuous building in Syria. Walid was a party animal, though he also remained a devout Muslim. He had slave girls, alcohol, and whatever money could buy.

He is remembered by archeologists and tourists to Jordan for a small hunting lodge called Qusayr Amra. Its name means “castle,” but it isn’t a fortified dwelling of any sort. It seems to have been a meeting hall with a bathhouse, while guests slept in tents around it. If there were other buildings, they are now gone.

It’s famous for interior murals that cover the walls and ceiling. The stone walls were plastered to make a smooth surface, with the color added to fresh plaster. Over time some of this has chipped and split off, so the images are partial and damaged.

The murals show kings who have been defeated by the Islamic armies: the Roman Emperor, the Sasanian (Persian) Emperor, the King of Visigothic Spain, the King of Ethiopia, and two that may represent China and the Turks. There are scenes of the Caliph and his men hunting wild animals, and scenes of women bathing. A map of the night sky is painted on one domed ceiling.

Walid II’s behavior was scandalous even by Umayyad standards. He loved poetry and horse racing, in addition to parties and slave girls. When he became Caliph, he arrested and jailed Caliph Hisham’s sons, his cousins. One of these sons was a popular and successful general, and Walid ordered him flogged. Another cousin, the son of Walid I and a Persian princess, plotted to overthrow him.

Walid II fled to a castle near Palmyra to escape the coup in Damascus. He wasn’t safe there either. His cousin Yazid sent the son of al-Hajjaj, the longtime governor of Iraq, to find and kill him.

Yazid III became Caliph, but he did not live long to enjoy it. He died of a brain tumor after just a few months. He designated his brother as successor, but another Umayyad cousin had a stronger faction and became Marwan II.

Marwan II ruled for six years, but in reality the dynasty’s power was falling into chaos the whole time. Spies crisscrossed the empire, carrying seditious messages between various leaders, both within the Umayyad family and without. The effect was like termites.

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Zayd’s Uprising, 740

I mentioned in the entry on Caliph al-Walid that he ordered a scholar descended from Ali to be poisoned, as his father had been also. This man, the fourth Shi’ite Imam, was known as al-Sajjad. He had many sons, but two in particular. His oldest son was from al-Sajjad’s marriage to his cousin, so descended from both Hassan and Husayn, the two sons of Ali. This son, Muhammad, was carried along to Karbala when his father al-Sajjad narrowly survived by being stricken by illness and unable to fight. The other notable son, Zayd, was from a later marriage to a girl from Sind (Pakistan).

Muhammad became the fifth Shi’ite Imam and is known as al-Baqir, the one who splits knowledge open. He lived quietly in Medina, teaching many students, caring for his poverty-stricken relatives, and reminding people about what happened to his grandfather at Karbala. The Umayyad Caliphs of this period — Walid, Sulayman, Yazid II, and Hisham — were also establishing schools and bringing students from afar.

Theology and the basic teachings of Islam became matters of dispute. Al-Baqir was centrally positioned to argue against the Kharijites and other groups that formed. One group believed that no sin should be judged, leaving it to Allah alone. Another group believed the Prophet’s family had divine status, while another group introduced some Jewish beliefs.

Umar II, the most pious of these Umayyads, asked al-Baqir for advice and, along with ending the ritual cursing of Ali, he returned some land and other funds to the family. Interesting: his order to begin collecting stories about Muhammad is also a sign of kindness toward the family, since their main possession was a core narration about him. The hadiths eventually collected didn’t follow Shi’ite stories, but apparently at the start, it was a pro-Shi’ite thing to do.

Al-Baqir’s younger brother Zayd was also on good terms with Umar II. Zayd was another leading scholar, and he was said to look most like their great-grandfather Ali. After Umar II’s death, during the short-lived reign of Yazid II, Zayd began to consider if the time might be right for the family’s return to political power. As always, Iraq—and especially the city of Kufa—was the supportive base for launching a revolt.

In 740, long after Umar II’s passing, Zayd raised an army of 15,000 from Basra, Kufa and Mosul. It may have been more of an army in name and on paper than actually in the field, because the first step was to take over Kufa, imprisoning its Umayyad governor. Instead, someone told the Umayyad governor of the plot.

The governor called for the people of Kufa to come to the mosque, where he locked and guarded the doors. With the city more empty than usual, the Umayyads could begin a door to door search for Zayd. Zayd, on his side, had a slim chance of success if he could turn the tables. He and his men overcame the mosque guards and called for the people to come out. But in that moment, the Kufans who had promised to support him let him down. Afraid of the Umayyads, they declared support for the government. Zayd’s rebellion went on a bit longer, but it was just a matter of time until he was captured and killed.

Zayd’s rebellion did not succeed, but for a long time and even into the present, there remained a sect of Shi’ites who believed Zayd was the true Imam, rather than his older half-brother al-Baqir. The sect is called Zaidiyyah and it has been the religion of various kingdoms in Arabia, Spain, Iran, Yemen and Morocco, but today, it is mainly based in Yemen. At the end of the 9th century, a Zaidi set up the Rassid state in Yemen. They had Iman-Caliphs and lasted until 1962. Over 1000 years!

In fact, the civil war in Yemen today was driven by rebels of the Houthi tribe, who are Zaidis. Since 2014, the Houthis have controlled the government in Sana’a. So Zayd’s revolt is pretty relevant still today.

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732: the Battle of Tours (or Poitiers)

In 730, the Land of the Franks appeared to be wide open for conquest. Al-Andalus was securely Muslim, apart from the tiny northern mountain kingdoms. In 721, Arab and Berber invaders had entered modern France in the south—then the Duchy of Aquitaine. But the Duke of Aquitaine defeated them at Toulouse, so they pulled back. Raids continued, darting into the northern territory and retreating with loot. Arabs even settled in the city of Marseille on the coast, the start of a Muslim northern kingdom.

Farther north, the Franks appeared to be the most primitive people the Muslims had yet fought, and their Merovingian kings had become increasingly powerless. The border areas were especially decentralized; until the late Middle Ages, Toulouse was independent and often allied against Paris. The Duke of Aquitaine who had driven the Muslims from Toulouse now chose a marriage alliance with the local Muslim emir. With the defenders divided, France should have been a reprise of the Spanish conquest.

But Frankia was a real homeland with loyal Frankish farmers, not a place like Iberia where the aristocrats were hated by the native peasants. They had settled in tribal groups with chains of loyalty stretching from farmers to barons to kings. We should imagine the Franks much as we picture Vikings, armed with axes and shields. The leaders ride horses, but most of the men are on foot.

Although the King in Paris was powerless, his Majordomo—the manager, or steward—was growing stronger. Majordomo Charles began drilling an army as soon as Muslim invaders settled in Marseille.

In 732, a Muslim rebellion brought the main force of the Arab fighting men into the north of al-Andalus. They killed the rebel emir and surged north to attack his ally (and father-in-law), the Duke of Aquitaine. Their successes devastated the heartland of Celtic-Roman Gaul. The defeated Duke now sent word to the Franks, agreeing to their overlordship in return for help. Majordomo Charles headed south.

For the first time, the Muslim invaders met a defensive army that was large, well-trained, and not caught by surprise. It wasn’t the dregs of a waning empire, it was the first youth of a rising one. Heading north to sack the city of Tours before heading back to Spain for the winter, the Arabs and Berbers found a Frankish shield wall across the top of a wooded hill near Poitiers.

We don’t really know where, there is no archeological evidence or even folklore specifying a spot. But there is an old Roman road running to Tours, and that’s probably what the Arabs were following, and probably what the Franks defended. It ran between the two rivers, crossing the Vienne near the point.’

Charles chose his position carefully. The Muslim cavalry had to charge uphill and through trees, which diminished the shock of their attack. They were not able to break the shield wall. Cavalry can’t operate in a wooded place, but shield walls can, in fact shield walls might be all the stronger for including trees.

We see here the power of terrain in battles; the Frankish forest was nothing like the rocky deserts where Arabs and Berbers had been accustomed to fighting. It was certainly no place for camels, as the first Caliph Umar would have pointed out. Additionally, the Muslim army could never get a handle on just how many men the Franks had in the field, since the forest obscured the view.

Frankish victory came when some Franks ran down to the Arab camp in the valley and began freeing their captives. When a party of cavalry rode back to deal with this threat, the rest of the Muslims thought a retreat had been called. In the confusion, their general was killed. As night fell, the Muslim raiders abandoned their camp and fled.

Muslim armies never came that far north again (until much later they besieged Vienna from another direction). Charles became known as Martel, the Hammer. Charles Martel, his son Pippin and grandson Charlemagne built up Frankish military power so that the Muslims were trapped into a Cold War. There were flashpoints around Toulouse and Narbonne, but the Franks were always on hand to aid allies. Three powerful dynasties were established within twenty years of each other; this Frankish one was the first.

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Abd al-Malik’s Four Sons and one Nephew, 715-43

Caliph al-Walid I was the son of Abd al-Malik, son of Marwan I, one of the generation that knew Muhammad but worked to found the Umayyad dynasty. He died in 715. In Arab tradition, rule is taken not by a son, but by a brother who has been standing by as the second-in-command. We see this in today’s Saudi Arabia, where the very last son of the conqueror, King Abdulaziz, is now in his 90s and will hand off power to his son. So when power passes to the next generation, it could be to the youngest son’s son, not the eldest. It could be to the son of a brother in the middle of the line.

In this case, after Abd al-Malik’s son al-Walid died in 715, the next brother Sulayman took power. He didn’t live long. He was followed by Umar II, a son of Abd al-Malik’s brother who had ruled Egypt during much of the North African conquest. Nor did Umar II live long, but was followed by Yazid II, brother to Walid and Sulayman. By 724, Yazid II had also died, replaced by Hisham, the youngest son of Abd al-Malik. Hisham ruled from 724 to 743.

Umar II’s short reign was marked by pious reforms intended to shore up the aristocratic power of Arabs and Muslims. Muslim converts were exempt from the jizya, the poll tax; but their land became community property with full taxation. Umar II ordered some Syrian churches to be handed back to Christians, since the treaty of Damascus’ surrender had specified that churches would not be seized. On the other hand, he laid down edicts such that both Christians and Jews had to follow restrictive rules.

Umar II’s rules began with no public display of a cross unless it was somehow defaced. Next, when Jews or Christians rode on horses, mules or donkeys, they could not use a regular riding saddle that might be mistaken for a warrior’s gear. They could only ride on obvious pack-saddles. The men were not to wear turbans, and instead, they had a distinctive unfashionable short hair cut.

In spite of this, one of the great Orthodox saints lived during the Umayyad period. John of Damascus was a grandson of Mansur, the Christian Damascene who had opened the gates to Khalid, turning a defeat into a less-destructive surrender. John Mansur moved to Jerusalem, where he wrote tracts against the heresies of his time. Having grown up near the Umayyad court, he understood Islam much better than most monks at the time. The last chapter of his work On Heresies was about Islam; it talks about many conversations he had with Muslims, where they called him an idol-worshipper and he fired back that the Black Stone was from an idol of Aphrodite. He was probably not Umar II’s favorite Christian, which may be why he moved to Jerusalem rather than staying home in Damascus.

Umar II stopped the ritual cursing of Ali and his family that had been done in Syrian mosques since Mu’awiya began doing it. He sent emissaries to China and Tibet to invite their rulers to submit to Islam. During this time, of course, the gradual conquest of Transoxiana was going on. In addition, Umar II also ordered scholars to start collecting stories about Muhammad in writing. Before this, they had not written them, lest these stories start to compete for attention with the Holy Quran. The full hadith collections didn’t come until much later, though.

Umar II’s generals also forced some sea battles in the Mediterranean and first encountered the new Roman “nuclear” weapon: Greek fire. Arab ships had pushed up into the Sea of Marmara to support land attacks on Constantinople. Emperor Leo ordered fire ships to attack. These ships used siphons to shoot chemicals across the water. Once set on fire, this liquid burned in spite of contact with water. Some survivors wintered over on shore, keeping their ships out of sight. When reinforcements came with food, from Egypt, they joined the freezing encampment. Some Egyptian Christian sailors decided to defect; they took some small boats to the city and told the Emperor where the remaining fleet was hidden. Leo’s fire ships destroyed most of what remained. “Greek fire” was the terrible fear of all sea battles from that time forward.

Yazid II took power on Umar II’s death. During his time, the Muslim armies fought against the Khazars in Armenia, the frontier between Syria and the Khazar stronghold north of the Black Sea. The Khazars are interesting on their own. They had come from central Asia, and they are known as Turks, but apparently they were blue-eyed and red-haired. This raises the question of a link to the mysterious Tocharians, who lived in central Asia and spoke an Indo-European language.

Also, there are theories that the Khazars adopted Judaism around this time, because they stayed independent from both Constantinople and Damascus, though at this time everyone was going monotheistic. Apparently there isn’t as much solid evidence for this conversion as you might think, considering that there’s a conspiracy-theory idea that all of Europe’s Jews are actually Khazars. Eventually, the Khazar kingdom crumbled and many of its people joined the Huns in establishing Hungary. This returns them to a more likely Turkic heritage, not Indo-European, since then they could more easily understand the Huns.

The next Caliph was Hisham, the youngest son of Abd al-Malik, therefore a grandson of someone who had known Muhammad—although his reign took place 100 years after the Prophet’s death! The 740 appointment of that last great Arab governor, Nasr, to Transoxiana was Hisham’s doing. Additionally, the push to conquer all of Spain continued—and in 732, during Hisham’s years, the governor of al-Andalus pushed into southern France. We’ll talk about that separately.

Hisham built palaces in the cooler hill country of Resafa, north near the Euphrates River.. The later Umayyad Caliphs spent as little time in hot Damascus as they could. There’s no doubt this played into the fall of the dynasty. But at this time, they had no hint of trouble. The families lived in palaces, the caliphs founded schools and mosques and commissioned grand buildings.

In 740, Hisham sent a large army, 90,000 men, against Constantinople. The main army raided Cappadocia, while a smaller contingent met the Emperor Leo’s forces at Akroinon. This city (now Afynokarahisar, which means Opium Black Castle) was well into western Anatolia. Had the Muslims won the battle, they might have been set up to conquer Constantinople much sooner, but Leo’s forces won decisively. Still, one of Hisham’s sons remained in the field and nibbled back the frontier town by town.

Also in 740, there was a huge Berber revolt, partly provoked by some Arab Kharijites (Rejectionists) who had emigrated to North Africa. Their position was that all authority was corrupt, that only each individual believer could determine truth. They proclaimed people to be apostates and worthy of death. It wasn’t a good theology to migrate and multiply in a new place, but that’s what it did. It took two years to put down the Berber revolt, and by “put down” I mean fight several full-scale battles that finally killed thousands of Berbers.

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Crossing into Spain, 711-5

The Iberian Peninsula has a wide coastal plain facing the Atlantic Ocean sloping up to central plateau and some mountains. To the north, it’s very mountainous. Three major river systems come out of the central hills, draining into the Atlantic. Along the Mediterranean-facing coast, the land slopes up to the plateau quickly, leaving only a narrow coastal plain margin. This coast is crowded with fishing and shipping ports and has always been an integral part of the Mediterranean world. But the plateau tends to be dry, often with thinner soil. It’s good for sheep but not really good for serious farming. The people there have generally been poorer than along the coast. Although the plateau is all part of modern Spain, in the past it has rarely been unified. It tends to be territory that is fought over—and in the Middle Ages, it certainly was.

Before the Arab invasion, Spain was a patchwork of kingdoms made up of native people, Latin immigrants, and Visigothic conquerors. There were the Basques, and there may have been other native people. The generally spoken language was a form of Latin, but the ruling class were Germanic-speaking Visigoths. They had also adopted a form of Christian faith that was Arian, not accepted by the orthodox Christians of Rome and Constantinople. Around the time of Muhammad’s birth, the ruling Visigoths formally joined the Roman theology already followed by their peasants.

The Visigothic kingdom was weak around 710, when the Arabs were looking across from Africa and wondering if it was time to cross. King Roderigo was not the previous king’s son, so he could not draw on a unified military base. Left alone, they’d have had civil war. This was not atypical. Like many other Germanic peoples, they had originally elected kings, and their system in the 7th century was a blend of birth and election that was suited to succession disputes in every generation. This meant the aristocracy was riddled with people who believed their family should have ruled at some point.

Visigothic law tended to be harsh. Blending it with Roman law and 6th century Roman theology, one result was that the law code of 654 was severely anti-Jewish. Passover was banned, as were other holidays. Circumcision was punished by mutilation of the adult doing it. Jewish marriage and burial rites were banned, and following a kosher diet was illegal. Spain had a large Jewish population, since as an outlying Roman colony it had welcomed the Jewish diaspora when they were evicted from Israel. The Jews were probably a majority of the skilled craftsmen, too. So they had no reason to be loyal to the Visigoths.

We don’t have detailed information about how the Arabs conquered most of the peninsula in five years, between 711 and 715. The crossing expedition was led by Tariq ibn Ziyad, who was probably a converted Berber or the son of a mixed Arab-Berber union. His army included Arabs, but its numbers came from the Berbers who had adopted Islam. One problem with using newly conquered loot to pay your army is that you always need new conquests. The Berbers were eager to get a piece of the conquerors’ privilege.

Tariq’s forces landed on Gibraltar and set it up as a base. Its name “Gibraltar” began as “Jabal Tariq,” the mountain of Tariq. Then they crossed to mainland Spain, and at some point, maybe a month later, King Roderigo met them with his knights. But a block of the knights secretly committed to standing back in the battle so that the king would be slain. The battle was a bloodbath and ended organized Visigothic resistance to the invasion. Tariq sent part of his army to secure the city of Cordoba, while he turned toward Toledo.

The Umayyad governor of Ifriqiyah, Musa ibn Nusayr, oversaw and later joined the expedition. He was a freed slave of the Governor of Egypt, and he became an independent governor due to the vast territory added under his rule. In 712, he too crossed into Spain and conquered Seville. Sometimes meeting to coordinate and fight over treasures, Tariq and Musa wiped out the rest of the Visigothic resistance in every region of Spain except the far north. There, neighboring the Basques, a Visigoth set up the Kingdom of Asturias. In 717, he successfully defended the small mountain kingdom against a Muslim army.

The Muslims called their new land al-Andalus and began minting gold dinars by 716, perhaps recycling gold treasures taken from houses and churches. The earliest of these coins says “There is no God but God”—in Latin. They didn’t set up garrison cities, as the earlier Arab conquests had done. Perhaps the majority Berber men were unwilling to live in towns of any kind. Arabs settled in the cities, Berbers in the country, and all married local women.

Musa appointed two of his sons to rule Andalusia (as we usually call it) and Ifriqiyah when he and Tariq were ordered to report back to Damascus, bringing treasure. His son Abd al-Aziz in Andalusia married the dead king’s widow and went on with the conquest project, taking in the rest of modern Portugal. But his Visigothic wife encouraged him to behave and dress as a king, and this didn’t sit well with the Arab-Berber army. Perhaps on the Caliph’s orders, perhaps on their own, they executed him. His head was sent to Damascus while his father Musa was still there. Musa and Tariq never returned to Andalusia.

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Gypsies from Sind?

Hugh Kennedy in Great Arab Conquests says that there’s one more ethnic footnote to the Muslim conquest of Sind. It may be the origin of some of Europe’s gypsies.

The Zutt tribesmen, who joined Muhammad ibn Qasim’s upriver invasion, also moved westward into Iraq. They were farmers who favored water buffalos for riding and plowing. Umayyad governors of Iraq decided to move some of them into Syria, water buffalo and all. The water buffalo were supposed to scare away Asian lions who preyed on travel. So we know the Zutt farmers, speaking their Sindhi language, at least came into Syria.

But a Byzantine raid aimed at taking back part of Syria took some of these farmers as captives. The captives, including water buffaloes, were taken into Byzantine lands. They disappear from written history, though some gypsies called Atsinganoi are recorded in the 11th century. “Atsinganoi” might be a Greek way of designating people from Sind. It was the hypothesis of a 19th century Dutch scholar that these displaced Zutts became gypsies in Eastern Europe.

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Buddhists and Hindus, 710-5

In 710, the Umayyad governor of Iraq, al-Hajjaj, heard that some Muslim women had been captured by pirates in Sind (modern Pakistan). He sent word to its Brahman Hindu king demanding their release, but when the king disavowed any control over the pirates, Hajjaj decided to send an army led by one of his cousins, Muhammad ibn Qasim. The army was raised from Syrian and Iraqi forces around Shiraz, a garrison city founded in 693 to control Iran.

The army of 6000 marched through coastal Iran, capturing any cities along the way, while supply ships sailed to meet them. This was the most organized, professional invasion yet. When they set up a siege of Daybul (whose name meant “temple” in Sanskrit), they used a giant catapult. It was the kind that needed a lot of men to pull on a rope all at once, lifting and flinging the arm, and it was so large that it needed 500 men. The catapult targeted the tallest building that had a dome and banner; it may have been a Buddhist stupa.

Daybul’s walls were scaled by ladders. The invading Muslims tore down Hindu and Buddhist temples and killed priests. Muhammad ibn Qasim ordered the building of a mosque and a new garrison town for 4000 Muslims.

But at the next fortified town on the Indus River, Buddhist monks came out to meet the army. They argued that war was against their religious principles and negotiated peace terms. This happened repeatedly, so that only one city, where the Hindu governor refused to cooperate with Buddhist peace efforts, was actually destroyed. A nomadic-agricultural tribe, the Zutts, chose to join the Muslims both in arms and as converts, so the army only grew as it went.

Finally, there was a full-scale battle across the Indus River. The Hindu regional king Dahir rode an elephant, one of sixty. His litter also contained female slaves to hand him arrows and betel nuts. His large army stood ready to deny the Muslim army its crossing.

But Muhammad ibn Qasim ordered his men to build a pontoon bridge of boats and swing it into the current while arrows covered them by keeping the men on the far bank under attack. It worked, the Muslim army crossed the river. The king’s litter caught fire from a flaming arrow, and his maddened elephant ran into the river. After the king’s death, Hindu resistance in Sind was over. Captured women were sent back to Iraq and Damascus, although a number of women at court burned themselves together in a house.

Muhammad ibn Qasim set about governing his new province, and gradually the Brahmin caste put out feelers to cooperate with him. The Hindu king’s widow became Muhammad ibn Qasim’s wife. Brahmins began working for the Muslim regime as tax collectors. Buddhist temples were falling into disrepair because the conquered people were afraid to bring donations to the old religion. But after Hajjaj told his cousin that it was all right to leave the Buddhists alone, their temple customs returned to normal.

The Brahmins convinced Muhammad ibn Qasim not only to restore them to elite status but to continue the old custom of treating the poor peasants called Jats in a discriminatory way. This is interesting because in earlier invasions, the poor tended to convert to Islam quickly in order to be part of the more powerful class for once. That didn’t happen here. The social status that predated Islam just continued, which made Sind much easier to govern.

The military expedition ended far up the Indus River. All the way up the river, cities were sending people out to meet the Muslims with music and dancing. But in the city of Aror, the people first thought that the dead king was still alive and would save them, but Muhammad ibn Qasim showed them the widow, now his wife, and at last they believed. As the city surrendered, many residents gathered at a Buddhist shrine, where Muhammad ibn Qasim took a bracelet from the statue to show its powerlessness. The widow, Ladi, asked Muhammad not to execute the people of the city, not even the soldiers.

These Indus River cities were extremely wealthy, especially in gold. Destroying their social systems would decrease their tribute-paying ability by a lot and bring order into chaos. But Buddhists and Hindus were so obviously idol-worshippers, it was clear that strict application of Islam would require mass destruction. In Iran, they had decided to treat Zoroastrians as if they were Jews or Christians. Muhammad ibn Qasim now decided Buddhist and Hindu temples were just churches. Even unconverted, they could pay the jizya tax and become protected minorities, or dhimmis. Muslims didn’t destroy statues.

Muhammad ibn Qasim’s extremely successful time in Sind came to an end when Caliph Walid and Emir al-Hajjaj both died in 714. By 715, he was back in Iraq being imprisoned and tortured to death. It’s not clear why, except that he was closely associated with Hajjaj, and now the political wheel turned. He was remembered fondly in Sind, where they even grieved over his recall and disgrace. The Muslim government in Sind had been among the mildest and most tolerant.

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Across the Oxus River, 705-750

Hugh Kennedy in his book The Great Arab Conquests notes that it’s at this point that we start to have real contemporary history that we can trust. Two Abbasid-era historians collected everything they could find from this wave of invasion, including biographies and accounts of battles and sieges. The History of Prophets and Kings of al-Tabari, published in 915, preserves what they found. Dates become reliable, not legendary.

The Oxus River is one of the world’s great boundary rivers like the Mississippi or the Danube. Oxus is its western, Greek name; in Arabic it was Jaihoun, and locally it is the Amu Darya River (darya means river). It flowed from Afghanistan’s mountains into the Aral Sea. It is easily seen from space. The area Americans call “the ‘Stans” lies beyond it (except for Turkmenistan and Afghanistan itself). Our mental world maps tend to be blank in this area, so I want to take a little time to fill in the blank before telling what happened there.

In ancient times, the area west of the Oxus River was Iran, while across the river to the east was called Turan. Greeks just called it Transoxiana. It was unknown, wild territory, though rich with possibility. Iran/Persia had always been part of the western world, but Transoxiana was just Other. Its people mostly spoke Turkic languages in 700, not Indo-Iranian ones. They were still very nomadic and the wave of Turks crossing from east to west, out of Central Asia to Anatolia, had just begun.

Transoxiana had the major, ancient city of Balkh, capital of the kingdom of Bactria. In the map below, it’s called “Bactres,” its Greek name.

Balkh was the last outpost of Hellenic culture, built to look Greek and minting Greek-style coins. But by 700, it was a center of Buddhist culture. Balkh had been conquered by Arabs in 653, but Nezak Tarkhan, a Buddhist prince, had driven them out. The Buddhist statues of Bamiyan were already carved out in the mountains. Balkh also had a longstanding population of Jews, probably moved there after Assyrian or Babylonian conquest.

The plain where the river slowed down and moved toward the Aral Sea was called Khwarazm or some version of that during most of the Middle Ages, so I’ll call it that now. It had rich farmlands as well as gem mining: rubies and lapis lazuli. Khwarazm will be featured in later history events, especially as it bore the brunt of early Mongol assault.

To the east, there was another kingdom known as Sogdia, roughly where Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are now. Sogdians were the last link on the Silk Road as it went into China, so their main income was in trade, shuttling silk from China to the Oxus River, where it could be handed over to merchants working in Persia. In the century before Muslim conquest, the silk trade was booming. Silk’s value per pound was much better than the bronze coins China used.

Samarkand and Bukhara were Sogdia’s biggest cities. Both Khwarazm and Sogdia were literate, using a form of Aramaic writing for their Iranian-related languages. We know a lot about the Arab conquest of Bukhara because a native Sogdian wrote a history in Arabic, in the mid-900s.

North of Sogdia, across the Jaxartes River (modern Syr Darya), the land became the wide sea of grass, the steppe.

The only major city here was Shash, now Tashkent. The steppe seems to be the homeland of the Turkic tribes. It stretched through Kazakhstan into Siberia and Mongolia. The Turks were not a unified people, but they spoke dialects of the same Turkic language from Lake Baykal to the Amu Darya river and shared cultural traits, chiefly being nomadic. Turkic tribes were moving into the easier lands of Sogdia and Khwarazm, and from there into Persia. Their rulers were called Khagans, or Khans (the middle “g” fading into a “w” or just a long vowel).

The Turkic people were horse warriors even more than the Arabs were. As nomads, they lived with their horses, drinking mare’s milk or even horse’s blood. They were very tough, since they had been surviving on the steppe. Their culture meted out harsh punishments and valued high pain tolerance. They were the opposite of chivalrous—ironically, a later European value system also derived from horses—because in a difficult climate, you can’t afford to be noble. If deceit will save your life and spare some calories, do it.

They put armor on the chests of their horses and trained to shoot bows on horseback. They didn’t form battle lines like Romans or Persians, so the Arabs, having adjusted to these tactics, now had to adjust again. On horseback, the Turks preferred to encircle the enemy as though they were encircling a herd of deer. They chased down escaped enemies, running them off their feet, again as though they were herds of deer. They liked to hide an ambush, feint an attack, retreat, and then spring the ambush. Their greatest vulnerability was the need to feed vast herds of horses, which was fine on the steppe but could be an issue in farmland. Eventually, all this will describe the Mongol invasion, too, but that’s because the Mongols were Siberian people who adopted an essentially Turkic way of life and ran armies that were mostly Turks.

The conquest of this vast land was not accomplished in one big push. Big military excursions were made, and they duly besieged cities and fought battles. But overall, it happened because the Arabs found it impossible to govern the territory (that is, receive tribute) while living in Merv, at the border of Iran and Afghanistan. They really wanted to control Sogdia so they could tax the Silk Road trade. It simply couldn’t be done without making farther-east Samarkand the new Muslim capital.

The battle for Sogdia entailed first contact with the Chinese empire. Both the Muslims and the Sogdians sent embassies asking for Chinese support. The Chinese response was to encourage some Turks on the border to move west in support of the old Sogdian princes, against the Arabs. The battles between Turks and Arabs were many and bloody, with Samarkand ended up as an Arab city because they had to fall back and defend themselves from there so many times.

There are a few notable points in the story. Around 740 Nasr, a new governor for Khurasan and Transoxiana was sent east from Damascus. He reformed the tax system to stop favoring Arabs as much; instead, taxing favored Muslims of whatever ethnicity. No Muslim had to pay the jizya, the poll tax, but all infidels must. It was a way to shore up Damascene support among eastern Muslim converts; 30,000 of them were suddenly off the tax roll. The region became much easier to govern.

The tax policy had two unforeseen long-term results. The newly privileged Khurasani Muslims invested politically in the new system, embracing it rather than tacitly (or openly) resisting. With so much wealth in the east, they quickly became politically powerful and fueled the overthrow of the Umayyad dynasty only ten years later. Oops.

The other result, of course, was to encourage wholesale conversion. Only the cynical and worldly people convert to a new religion just for money, but others need the nudge of special circumstances and hard times. If the jizya tax is going to sink you this year, conversion looks good. Over time, the region became solidly Muslim, but consequently, the jizya tax income fell. The region could no longer be governed as a conquered land paying tribute, which had always been its purpose in the imperial economy. It still brought in taxes from the Silk Road trade, but that wealth more and more stayed local, going to Samarkand instead of Merv or Damascus. This sets up a ripe situation for regional rebellion and independence, and that’s exactly what began to happen, but not yet in the 8th century.

Nasr began only one major military campaign that went into Azerbaijan. He forced the city of Quba to surrender terms, and that pretty much ended the power of the region’s Turks. This marked the eastern extent of the Muslim empire, give or take a few towns. Kazakhstan and Kyrgizstan went on with nomadic Turkic lifestyles, undisturbed, until later Turkic migrations—and eventually the Mongols—changed them.

But there was one more military encounter that is worth noting for its cultural exchange. A Chinese force occupied Shash (Tashkent) and its prince sent for help to Samarkand. In 751, there was a battle at Taraz, the only one in which Arabs and Chinese directly fought. The Arabs won, and prisoners taken from the Chinese at Taraz are credited with bringing the paper-making craft into the Muslim lands. We know it came from China into the Muslim empire around this time, because the availability of paper fueled the next dynasty’s massive translation and publishing project.


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Caliph al-Walid and al-Hajjaj, 705-715

Abd al-Malik handed off power to his son without difficulty. Walid (or al-Walid) had been leading military campaigns against the eastern Romans for some years while his father’s brother was the designated heir. But Abd al-Aziz died in Egypt around the time Musa was fattening his treasury with massive slave income. Walid became the heir, and in 705, his father died.

The three generations of Caliphs Marwan, Abd al-Malik, and Walid shared a genius for administration. Perhaps the key to being good at administration was to be interested in it, rather than in piety (or even conquest). They set up a postal system, which in those days meant literally hiring messengers, horses, and stables, like the short-lived American Pony Express. Ordinary people were asking merchants to carry letters for them, with uncertain results. The Caliphs wanted to send messages to any part of the empire and be reasonably sure of a reply, so that they could maintain authority and guard against breakaway regions.

They also paid attention to coins, the symbol of government authority that people handle every day. During these years, they standardized the way Islamic coins are designed, refusing to put a king’s head or any human representation on them. They minted not only silver dirham coins (as typical in the region), but also gold dinars. Some of these coins have survived to our time, highly prized by collectors. The coins were strictly controlled by the government so that nobody else mined coins and the same coins were accepted from one end of the empire to the other. This was very unusual compared to Europe, even to later medieval Europe, where coins were regional and even local.

Walid’s coins are decorated only with Arabic script. He decided to make Arabic the only language of government in Egypt, which threw native Egyptians into disarray. They had been using Greek since Alexander the Great, and of course many still spoke Coptic, descended from the language of the Pharaohs, at home. Now in order to keep their jobs they had to get serious about learning Arabic. Arabs who had not succeeded in getting good administrative jobs in Egypt suddenly had a leg up. 705 was the beginning of the long conquest of Egypt by the Arabic language.

The flood of wealth from new conquests in North Africa and the far East (which we’ll look at next) made Caliph Walid a very rich man. He built some of the greatest Umayyad buildings, including the Al-Aqsa Mosque next to his father’s Dome of the Rock. He also built the Great Mosque in Damascus — on the site of the demolished cathedral — and the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina. Money for craftsmen from around the empire was lavished on all of these projects, not least the one in Medina. Only the Great Mosque in Damascus, now called the Umayyad Mosque, is still pretty much the same as he built it.

Umayyads were still winning back support in Medina, after its sack in 683. Medinans hated Walid’s building project because he enlarged the mosque—which meant demolishing the old houses of the Prophet and his Companions. He rebuilt it with a larger courtyard, a shrine around the graves, four minarets, and a grand entrance. We today love these beautiful buildings, but Muhammad had considered money spent on buildings to be the greatest waste possible. Medina was the place where the most pious, least ambitious men had stayed on as scholars. Walid may have thought to please them, but it didn’t work. Later, the scholars — the ulama — became powerful in the Muslim community, but for now, the Caliph had his way.

Hajjaj continued as Governor of Iraq during the Caliphates of Abd al-Malik and Walid. He died only in 714, a year before Walid died too. His policies were pro-Arab and brutal. He didn’t hesitate to order executions even on large scale. He decided that more farmers should be out there working, as they used to be prior to the conquest, so he expelled non-Arabs from the garrison cities. They had to pay the tribute tax, jizya, even if they had converted to Islam. Before this, taxation had been on Muslim, not ethnic, identity. He rebuilt canals to help the farmers, but only after forcing them to farm. It wasn’t only in Iraq that this was a problem. In Syria, too, they were having to find native farmers who had fled the land and force them to go back to work.

Hajjaj had to put down both mutinies and Kharijite/Rejectionist rebellions during Abd al-Malik’s reign. He eliminated the Rejectionists as a political threat and got his troops under control, even with pay cuts, but of course he became hated. His response to this was always more brutal repression. In 699, an expedition force from Kufa, sent to fight at the eastern frontier, mutinied. They seized Basra, in addition to their home of Kufa. Syrian troops eventually reinforced Hajjaj and conquered the rebels. The losing fighters fled south into Arabia and Egypt.

Hajjaj founded a new city between Kufa and Basra that would be the seat of Umayyad government, separate from the garrison cities. This town of Wasit was staffed only by Syrians, and across the territory, Iraqis were booted out of power in favor of Syrians. He set up a coin mint in Wasit so he could control the currency. Iraq became a land of Syrian Arab aristocracy, with anyone of part-native descent pushed out of center of power.

In the time of Walid and Hajjaj, they began to see a need to mark vowels in the Quran. Like Hebrew and Aramaic, Arabic had been written only with consonants. In an oral-transmission culture, it makes sense that the consonants would be enough to prompt memory of what it said. Vowels are predictable by grammar and context. But as more non-native speakers were reading the Quran in public, they began to hear simple errors that changed the meaning. Hajjaj is credited with sponsoring an effort to create a regular system of dots and dashes that showed vowels. Eventually, of course, this became a standard part of Arabic writing.

Caliph Walid’s rule is considered the high-water mark of the Umayyads. Politically and in history, that’s good. Morally in human terms, not so good: among other brutalities, he had Husayn’s son poisoned in Medina. We’ll look separately at the conquests of the far East and Spain, which happened during his reign. By Walid’s death in 714, the Islamic empire had reached its greatest size.

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