Umayyads and Abbasids

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Umayyads and Abbasids

• The Umayyad Period
• The Rise of the Abbasids

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Expansion under the Umayyads

• Late 7th century Islam spread to Asia
• 8th century Spread to India, N. Africa, Spain
• Threatened France, but Islamic armies were turned
  back by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours
  (also called Poitiers) in 732
• Islam dominated the Mediterranean from Spain to
  central Asia

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Quick Expansion center of control changes DBC
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The Spread of Islam
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Umayyad Rule

• Arab conquest state, ruled by an Arab elite
• Army comprised of slave soldiers. Often not
  allowed to convert.
• Muslim/Arab warrior elite ruled provinces
• Rejected assimilation of converts
• Kept governments intact, but staffed them with
  Muslims
• Capital now Damascus

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At first blocked by Byzantine Sassanid
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Defeat at Byzantium

• 717 Caliph Suleiman wanted to end the Christian
  empire once and for all.
• Attacked Constantinople with 80,000 troops and a
  strong naval force.
• Emperor Leo III beat off the attack. Besieging
  armies suffer through a cold winter
• 718 Must of the Muslim fleet destroyed by Greek
  Fire. Suleiman fled.
• Leo III retook Asia Minor. Byzantium will last
  500 years more.

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Greek Fire - exact composition unknown
composition include such chemicals as liquid
petroleum, naphtha, burning pitch, sulphur,
resin, quicklimeand bitumen, along with some
other "secret ingredient".
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Umayyad Decline

• Series of weak self-indulgent rulers
• c. 750. The Merv Revolt
• 50,000 Persian warriors settled in E. Iran
• converted to Islam, fought in battles, but earned
  little booty
• resented corrupt rule from Baghdad
• When Umayyads sent troops to the area, revolt
  broke out!

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The Abbasid Revolt

• Revolt spread through the eastern provinces
• Resented Arab rule the Mawali
• Marched under the Black Abbasid banner
• Abu al-Abbas, Muhammeds uncles g.g. grandson
• Alliance with Shiite factions
• 750 defeat the Umayyad caliph in the Battle of
  the River Zab

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The end of the Umayyads

• Abu al-Abbas wanted to end the Umayyad family.
• Murdered all surviving members at a feast of
  reconciliation
• One escaped, the grandson of the last Umayyad
  caliph, and fled to Spain
• He established the Cordoba Caliphate. It lasted
  until 1492 CE

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The World and the Abbasids Map
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The Early Abbasids

• Capital Baghdad Arabic court language
• Influenced by the Near East idea of divine
  kingship Shadow of God on Earth
• Lots of court pomp and ritual
• When the caliph appeared in public, his
  executioners were with him!
• Bound by Sharia Islamic law but not enforced

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Abbasid Wine Bowl
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Abbasid Glass Work
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Abbasid Government

• Caliph ruled with large, complex bureaucracy
• Manned by Persians and Mawali
• Some aspects of universalism
• Diverse people united by Arabic language and
  Islam
• End of wars of expansion

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Society Under the Abbasids

• Long Distance Trade with Banking and Letters of
  Credit along the Silk Road trade
• Key Export of Mesopotamia agriculture, Nile
  Agriculture, sheep, date palm.
• East Asian crops spread westward, including rice,
  sugar cane.
• Slave state Many Africans working S. Iraq salt
  mines, or in military

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Industry

• Textile Making
• Rug Weaving High Art Armenia, Bokhara
• Chinese trade. Learned paper making
• Perfumes, medicines, cosmetics, art in ceramics,
  metals
• Imported Indian 0 developed algebra and
  trigonometry

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Intellectual Life

• Translated Greek and Roman classical works
• Philosophy, science, astronomy, geography, math
• No interest in mythology, drama or poetry
• Preserved and made additional contributions
• Worked particularly with Aristotles work

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Abbasid Mosque in Nayin
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Medicine

• al Razi (865-925) (Rhazes)
• 20 volume medical encyclopedia
• Translated into Latin 1270
• Printed in Europe 1486 onwards
• On the Fact that even Skilled Physicians Cannot
  Heal All Diseases
• Why Frightened Patients Easily Forsake even the
  Skilled Physician

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Other Thinkers

• al-Biruni (973-1056)
• Geography, Travels in India
• al-Kindi (d.870)
• reconciled Islam with Neoplatonism
• al Farabi (d.950), Ibn Sina (Avicenna d. 1036),
  Ibn Rushd (Averroes d. 1198)
• All Islamic scholars of Aristotle

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Map of the Abbasid Caliphate
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The Islamic Empire
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Trends Towards Decentralization

• Eventually turned against their Shiite allies
  and other factions
• Large empire lent itself to regionalism
• Numerous violent harem conspiracies and civil
  wars followed by more stable rulers
• Utilized slave armies of Africans, Slavs and
  Berbers that eventually became a political force
  known as Mamluks

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Apex from which to spread the empire

• Harunu r-Rashid is the most famous of the Abbasid
  Caliphs.
• The Abbasid period, is recognized of being the
  one in Muslim history bringing the most elevated
  scientific works.
• The Muslim world continued the achievements of
  classical Europe (especially the 9th and 10th
  centuries), India and former science of the
  Middle East, during a period when Europe was
  unable contribute much to the cultural and
  scientific fields.
• The Abbasid era is often regarded as the golden
  age of Muslim civilization.

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Weakened role in the region

• In 1055 the Turkish Seljuks conquered Baghdad,
  but this had little influence to the position of
  the Caliphs, who continued to play only his
  limited symbolical role.
• With the fall of the traditional Caliphate in
  1258, when the Mongols took over Baghdad, a new
  line of Abbasid Caliphs continued in Cairo.
• In Cairo they played the same type of role as in
  Baghdad, but now even the symbolical role was
  limited by geography.
• This, the last branch of Abbasids, stayed in
  office until 1517.

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Arabic Language writing

• calligraphy beautiful writing is different from
  illuminated writing
• Arabic script has been used much more extensively
  for decoration and as a means of artistic
  expression
• Language identifies and connects Arabs more
  than Latin connects the romanesque)

The basmalah ("In the name of God the Merciful
the Compassionate" - the opening words of the
Quran) is here done in an elaborate thuluth
script with the letters joined so that the entire
phrase is written without lifting the pen from
the paper.
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Arabesque

• Quran does not prohibit the representation of
  humans or animals in drawings, or paintings, but
  as Islam expanded in its early years, it
  inherited some of the prejudices against visual
  art of this kind that had already taken root in
  the Middle East.
• early Muslims tended to oppose figural art (and
  in some cases all art) as distracting the
  community from the worship of God and hostile to
  the strictly unitarian religion preached by
  Muhammad
• all four of the schools of Islamic law banned the
  use of images and, declared that the painter of
  animate figures would be damned on the Day of
  Judgment.
• Wherever artistic ornamentation and decoration
  were required, Muslim artists, forbidden to
  depict, human or animal forms, for the most part
  were forced to resort either to what has since
  come to be known as "arabesque"
• These are designs based on strictly geometrical
  forms or patterns of leaves and flowers or, very
  often, to calligraphy.
• Arabic calligraphy came to be used not only in
  producing copies of the Quran (its first and for
  many centuries its most important use), but also
  for all kinds of other artistic purposes as well
• porcelain and metalware,
• carpets and other textiles
• Coins
• architectural ornament (primarily on mosques and
  tombs but also, especially in later years, on
  other buildings as well).

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Arabic language the great legacy

• Of those people who embraced Islam but did not
  adopt Arabic as their everyday language, many
  millions have taken the Arabic alphabet for their
  own, so that today one sees the Arabic script
  used to write languages that have no basic
  etymological connection with Arabic.
• The languages of Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan
  are all written in the Arabic alphabet, as was
  the language of Turkey until some fifty years
  ago.
• It is also used in Kashmir and in some places in
  the Malay Peninsula and the East Indies, and in
  Africa it is used in Somalia and down the east
  coast as far south as Tanzania.

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Influence of Islam up to the creation of the
Arabic Empires

• Centered in Mecca
• Conflict between Mecca and Medina
• Hasan and the schism

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Concepts and terms from Ch. 6

• Bedouin
• Shaykhs
• Mecca
• Medina
• Kaba
• Umma
• Zakat
• Dhimmis
• Wazir

• Caliph
• Abu Baker
• Ridda
• Jihad
• Battle of Siffin
• Karbala
• Mawali
• Jizya
• Ayan

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Concepts and terms from Ch. 7

• al-Razi
• Ulama
• al-Gh
• azali
• Sufis
• Harsha
• Mahmud of Ghazni
• Mahmud of Ghur
• Sati
• Demak
• Malacca

• Harun al-Rashid
• Buyids
• Seljuk Turks
• Saladin
• Ibn Khaldun
• Rubiyat
• Shah-Nama
• Sadi
• Bhaktic cults
• Shrivijaya
• Maleluks

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Succession Abu Bakr (632-34)

• 632 Muhammed died without warning
• Abu Bakr elected Caliph (deputy, successor).
  Friend and early convert.
• Ali, son in law to Muhammed was passed over Too
  young
• Bakr worked and led the movement.
• Success Ridda Wars fought off Bedouin led by
  other Charismatic leaders.

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Islam Spreads

• Bakr continued the Arab unification process
• Recognized the weakness of the Persian/Byzantine
  Empires
• They were at constant war with one another
• Began to take Byzantine territory
• Christians and Jews respected people of the book
• Social restrictions, extra taxes
• Some Christians saw Muslims as liberators

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Uthman (644-54)

• From the old Umayyad family. Former Meccan
  enemies of Muhammed now converted!
• Codification of the Quran Variants destroyed
• 651 Expansion deep into Sassanian territory
  (Persia)
• 654 Uthman assassinated.

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Division and Schism

• Alis supporters name him Caliph
• The Ummayyads rejected him
• Ali refuses to prosecutes the assassins Ummayads
  later declare an open vendetta against him
• Mecca vs Medina Clan tensions
• Syrian and Iraqi factions
• N/S Arabian tribal tensions

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Hasan

• Retired for 19 years to enjoy the good life
• When Muawiya died, he went to Mecca with several
  followers expecting to be named Caliph.
• But the Umayyads appointed a new caliph, who
  surrounded Ali with an army.
• 679 Hasan led a great suicide charge. His head
  was sent to the capital.
• This would result in the Sunni-Shiite split

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But expansion continued....

• 674 Besieged Constantinople
• 700 Umayyads ruled from N. Africa almost to
  China An empire! Why?
• Surplus of military energy and religious zeal and
  well qualified generals
• Weakness of the Byzantium and Persian states, and
  their poor rule over provinces.

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Sunnis

• Sunnis90 of IslamRecognize 4 caliphs as
  legitimateNo Iman

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Shiites

• Shiites10 of Muslims (mainly in Persia,
  Lebanon, Yemen, Afghanistan)recognize only Ali
  and blood relatives as successorsImans
  infallible, divinely guided, leaders of the
  faithGreen turbans indicate a blood relative of
  the ProphetCult of Martyrdom

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Quiz

• What was the fictional account of life at the
  court of the Caliph al-Rashi?
• Give one 3 causes of the disruption of
  agricultural economy of the Abbasid Empire.
• What two practices that began in the Abbasid
  Empire are indications of the changing role of
  women?
• What was the religious splinter dynasty that
  captured Baghdad in 945?
• Who was the Muslim leader responsible for the
  reconquest of most of the territories belonging
  to the Christian Crusaders?

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Quiz

• What was the fictional account of life at the
  court of the Claliph al-Rashi? -The Thousand and
  One Nights
• Give one 3 causes of the disruption of
  agricultural economy of the Abbasid Empire.
• Spiraling taxation
• Destruction of the irrigation works
• Pillaging by mercenary armies which led to the
  abandonment of many villages
• What two practices that began in the Abbasid
  Empire are indications of the changing role of
  women?
• Seclusion
• veiling
• What was the religious splinter dynasty that
  captured Baghdad in 945?
• Buyids
• Who was the Muslim leader responsible for the
  reconquest of most of the territories belonging
  to the Christian Crusaders?
• Saladin