Macro Environmental Shift of Baghdad under the Abbasids

Document Type:Dissertation

Subject Area:History

Document 1

It is worth noting that because of the plethora of writings by the modern scholars, historians writing on the history of Baghdad have generally gathered a wide array of literary sources1. In this paper, a similar methodological approach will then follow with texts by famous geographers including Ibn Sarabiyun, al-Ya’qubi as well as Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi. In termination, this paper will use the development of the city of Baghdad (The Round City) under the rule of the Abbasids to help in the explanation of the way in which the Muslim Society in the nedieval period shaped the environment that they currently live in. Keywords: Cosmopolitanism; Baghdad; Abbasid caliphs; Mesopotamia Introduction The Abbasids, whose rule on the Islamic world lasted for over 508 years (from 750 to 1258 AD) witnessed the best era of the Islamic culture.

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This long duration of rule made the dynasty one of the most influential dynasties that has ever happened in the Islamic world. This group formed a coalition of Persian Mawali, Eastern Shiites and Arabs. The Abbasids were in a position to gain the support of the Shiite since they claimed descent from Muhammad through the uncle to Muhammad, Abbas. Their linkage to Muhammad was not through Ali, as the Shiites may have liked, nevertheless, the Shiites still believed that the rule of the Abbasids could be much better than the Umayyads. The general of the Persian Abu Muslim, who gave the Abbasid full support claims to power and led the Abbasid armies. His triumphs allowed the leader of the Abbasids, Abul `Abbas al-Saffah to find his way into the Shiite-dominated city of Kufa in 748 and declared himself the caliph.

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A library, which was regarded as the institute for translators, and in numerous ways an early form of higher education (university), the House of Wisdom hosted non-Muslim as well as Muslim scholars who wanted to translate and collect the snowballing knowledge of the history of humans in a single place, and in one lingo, the Arabic. In the House of Wisdom, ideas of great importance from around the globe were gathered together. The commencement of the Indian numerals, which became standard in the Western and Islamic worlds, significantly helped in scientific and mathematics discoveries. Scholars like Al-Kindi synthesized Greek philosophy and revolutionized mathematics with Islamic thought. Abu Nasr Mansur and Al- amongst countless scholars made essential contributions to astronomy and geometry5.

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he had to get read of the revolts in Persia as well as North Africa, and he removed the Persian Barmakid family from power, who was considered as the source of countless great advisers (apparently after the adviser Ja’far impregnated the caliph’s sister, although perhaps because al-Rashid was fearing that their power would eclipse his own power). Caliph al-Ma’mun who was Al-Rashid’s son, not only continued his father’s support by creating the House of Wisdom, but he also established many important and independent innovations. Al-Ma’mun adopted the radical theology of the Mu'tazili, which was greatly influenced by the Greek philosophy and firmly held an idea that ways of God could be understood only through an inquiry that is based on reasoning, and that practice and belief should be subject to proper reasoning.

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He created the mihna, an investigation in which the devotion of scholars as well as officials to Mu'tazili theology was tested7. It should be noted that failure to adhere to this was punishable by death. Expounding on Caliph al-Ma’mun’s newly established army, he established his own military force comprising slave soldiers known as Ghilman (later referred to as “Mamluks”). As the most intelligent guard of the caliph, these slaves started acting as if they were in some way superior to the people of Baghdad, which stimulated anger and led to riots and demonstrations. Instead of attempting to rectify the situation, Caliph al-Mu’tasim simply moved the capital away from the city of Baghdad and established it in Samarra, which was about 60 miles to the north of Baghdad.

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Far away from their subjects who were still living in Baghdad the caliphs became immune from the predicaments of the territory. Ever more, the caliph’s troops controlled Samaria, turning the caliph little into something like puppet. This arrangement became unsuccessful, though, since the title in fact invested supreme authority in its holder, subjecting the caliph as a figurehead. The End of the Abbasids During the collapse of the Seljuq sultanate in the twelfth century, there was an obvious opportunity for Caliph al-Nasir to try the restoration of the power of the Abbasids over Iraq. His long supremacy of about forty-seven years allowed enough time recapture Mesopotamia and to develop Baghdad further and make it a learning center. Caliph Saljuq’s main rival was the Sultanate of Khwarezm, who ruled over Persia by then.

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Hypothetically, al-Nasir requested the Mongols, the escalating empire of central-Asia, for assistance against Khwarezm. The Egyptian Sultans appointed the Caliph of the Abbasids in Cairo; however, the Egyptian caliphs were even more ceremonial than those who had been in the city of Baghdad14. They were used for legitimization of the authority of the sultans. The power of these Egyptian caliphs was extended stringently on matters to do with religion and nothing else15. Even with this limited power, the Egypt-based period of the Abbasid rule still managed to last for a long period (over 250 years). In 1517, Egypt was conquered by the Ottoman Empire. The early Abbasid state owed much the Umayyad for it acknowledged the debt owed to Abd al-Malik and Hisham.

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Just like Marwanids, the Abbasid family played a part in the government. Branches of the family, in some cases, established themselves as political leaders and property owners in the provinces18. The Abbasid rule’s acceptance was a consequence of being a resident branch of the ruling dynasty. The advisers and the Caliph chose governors from other groups, such as Muhallabcs and the Khurasaniyya, however, these were appointed in areas that the Caliph was powerful thus, had the power of appointing and dismissing the governors. Some reasons existed for the establishment of Baghdad. Baghdad was founded to provide the base for Khurasaniyya. Khurasaniyya needed both houses and economic opportunities. Khurasaniyya were to be available for the services of the military but property and commerce-owning contributed to this prosperity.

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Abbasid Caliphate established courts in the city thus; there was a need for security. Most leaders of the Umayyad were of Arab descent; however, the large proportion of its rank composed the Persian and Iranian Muslims. Negoiþã reports that first planned structure of Baghdad city was based on the caliph, preconceived plan of an individual. The second capital of Abbasid Caliphate was solely designed to glorify and showcase the Islamic system. The layout of Baghdad city reflected imperial symbolism of Islamic empire's time main city. Baghdad city, "The Round City" respected the conceptual structure of the Median model, such that its shape did not resemble another Muslim Urbanism. The concept became part of Islamic mentality during Umayyad dynasty, the dynasty that was incredibly tolerant towards the pre-Islamic structure.

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Early settlements’ spatial organization became composed of powerful tribal character, and this dominated the feature of the urban strategy of the Muslim. Another impact composed the Islamic law. This law contains a series of moral and religious rules that should be strictly adhered to by the Islamic community23. Precisely, Baghdad dealt with a mixed model: First, the Medina solution that another cities’ model and distinct model stemmed from the Greek-Roman period. Because the Muslims supported the Abbasids, Abbasids publicly acknowledged the embryonic Islamic Law. Abbasids, between 750 and 833, raised power and prestige of the empire to promote industry, arts, science, and commerce, particularly during reigns of al-Maʾmūn and Hārūn al-Rashīd. However, upon the introduction of non-Muslim Berber, and Slav by al-Muʿtaṣim, the temporal power started declining26.

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Troop’s conversion to Islam was characterized by imperial unity disappearance. Most officers learned to control the caliphate through killing caliphs that did not ascend to their demands. Again, Abbasids, between 750 and 833, raised power and prestige of the empire to promote industry, arts, science, and commerce. Lastly, Jacob argues that Abbasids adopted cultivations of new attitudes of politics and intensive centralization in creating public elements with orderly vested interests Methodology In this dissertation paper, the methodology similar to the one used by geographers such as Ibn Sarabiyun and Al- Khatib al-Baghdad will be put into consideration. In addition, historical narratives will also be used to help in writing this dissertation. This will ensure the ease of understanding the key aspects of the medieval Baghdad27.

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The study on the development of the town Baghdad in the hands of Abbasids will be of great importance in the exploration of how the Muslims shaped the environment in which they are known to have settled in. A close look at these chronicles suggested that: The events can be included as universal and world history comfortably. The chronicles can be compared with Early Medieval Western works and placed in the same category as the latter28. There was concern for chronology and time computation as was imposed on the Old Testament records of prophets, their descendants and the rise and collapse of various empires. These histories focused on early, Islamic conquests, the reigns of Caliphs and the teachings and life of the great prophet Muhammed and made an explicitly providential tone.

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However, labeling these works would create a new category that even the authors would not recognize as they are all archaic. Although both sources contained a lot of information, it took some time for the knowledge to be added to the past in Quran as the information had to be put in chronologically30. This process was not recognized as a separate part of Islamic knowledge. The term Ta’rīkh, which was sometimes used for what we would now call »history«, was used to indicate the date of an event. In 987-8 Ibn al-Nadīm, the son of a bookseller in Baghdad, drew up a catalogue of all the books known to him; majority of which have disappeared but some of them still exist.

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The first section is assigned to (akhbār) of the historians (akhbāriyyīn), genealogists and preservers of biographies and events (aṣḥāb alsiyar wa-l-aḥādīth), with the names of their books31. Ibn Habib was renowned to his generations as a legal intellectual than a historian, and he composed several works in a number of genres, most of which still exist to date. Born near Granada, in Elvira, he spend a few years in Egypt, prior to going back to al-Andalus, the place in which he served the Umayyads. The History still exists in one manuscript. It is not the writing of Ibn Ḥabīb only, because it incorporates annals, which proceed to the 880s, three decades following his demise.

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It was common for continuations of the medieval texts of Arabs to be recognized by the names of the most important or first writer32. Therefore, Ibn Habib realized the aim he had asserted at the start of the text. At around the moment that the student of Ibn Habib had assembled the History of his teacher, al-Tabari opened the Kings’ and Prophets’ history on a pre-ordained note: “In this book of mine I shall mention whatever information has reached us about kings throughout the ages from when our Lord began the Creation of His Creation to its annihilation. ” Messengers were sent from God, and Kings were put in mandate, or he caliphs were established in caliphal succession. Earlier on, God had bestowed favors and benefits on a few of them, and they were so grateful and happy for his favors.

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Thus, He gave them more bounty and favors on top of those bestowed upon them by Him on their transient life. Due to his concerns for the scholarly research, all his boos were laid out on one of his residence’s side and then he went through them one at a time. His method of assembling narrative chunks, often giving distinct accounts of similar events, with each led by a long isnads’ chain made for a tedious and frequently long work. No whole History manuscript survives. The contemporary versions are composites of multiple manuscripts printed for the 1879-1901Leiden edition; a newfangled edition, printed in 1969 in Cairo, collated this version with the manuscripts from Topkapi palace library in Istanbul. The manuscripts’ editorial treatment, paired with their sheer sizes, complicate history;s interpretation.

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Noah lived for about 1000 years and between himself and Abraham were 10 centuries, which is 40 centuries. The other 10 centuries passed until Allah deployed Torah to Moses, and that is 50 centuries. Between the Psalter and the Torah were 5 centuries and between the Gospels and the Psalter five centuries and 60 centuries were over. Also, from Jesus to Muhammad, a complete five centuries passed. As stated by Ibn Habib, two centuries remain of the five centuries to the ending of the 70 centuries, but consistent with several other stories there are more years, which remain to the world’s ending. Of course, there are fewer narratives of popular origin within the last part of the History by al-Tabari, but Ibn Habib incorporated multiple accounts in his narration of al-Andalus’ conquest, inclusive of the explanation of the Bolts’ House where the king Rodrigo saw the images of the individuals who would conquest them, as well as the anecdotes, which relate to king Solomon’s presence within the peninsula.

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Of course, as shown by Ian Wood, attempts of uncovering such a framework, of developing categories like those of universal history, generate outliers and have basic flaws; that is, works, which would not suit into the suggested classification34. Diverse attempts and exertions have been made in order to save the situation; to clarify away mismatches between the available works and our categorizations of them through positing, for example, that the generic conventions existed and they are even hard to pin down. In addition, for the Medieval Islamic world’s historians, there were so many methods of explaining the past, for which a chronological tale from creation was just a single option. For the histories discussed in this paper, and, through inference, throughout the early Islamic centuries, the main purpose of writing might have been message extension of Quran into chronological past and future accounts of the believers, though after this, providential tales of the past were incorporated into the encyclopaedic enterprises35.

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In addition, he shares with his contemporary and rival, Tha’lab, the distinction of having played a role in the philological education of multiple poets. Some writers wrote Mohammed’s biography in an extensive sense, through incorporating "The Conversations of the Prophet," the hadith literature. In this category, the first two authors’ names need to be recalled: Ibn Hisham and Muhammad Ibn Ishaq. Two of the four jurisprudence schools’ founders lived with Baghdad and applied decisive impact there for a prolonged duration. Abu Hanifa is known already due to his material involvement in the city’s founding. The conviction resulted in the believers denying the eternity of the word of God; hence, to them, the Koran text became a Divinity creation.

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Such a doctrine, with its basis to logic, is especially crucial since three caliphs imposed or executed it formally on the people in an especially unpleasant manner37. Moreover, the religious spirit was to be weakened by the Jahiz, and even much violently, by the Razi. During this period, the Ash’ari, doctors of law, emerged from the ranks of the Mutazilites. He definitively unified and dominated all of Islam’s future beliefs. Thanks to his conceptions’ breadth and his intelligence’s power, he sketched it from its hiding places. He created relationships with the Byzantium emperors, gave them valuable gifts, and requested them to offer him the philosophy books they were possessing. These emperors gave him the works of Aristotle, Galen, Plato, Ptolemy, Hippocrates, and Euclid, which were under their possession38.

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Mamun then picked the most skilled translators and hired them to translate such works to their level best. After the translation was completed as effectively as probable, the caliph advised his subjects to read these translations and urged them to explore them. There were astronomers like al-Khwarizmi (850), whose name attributes to the term “algorithm”; Alfraganus (about 850) who is also known as Farghani; and Yahya ibn Masawayh, the physician, called Mesua within the West. Mamun, the caliph, was accountable for translating Greek writings into Arabic, and he founded the Academy of Wisdom in Baghdad, which took over Persian University and soon became a very active center of scientific innovations. The large library of the Academy was enriched with the translations, which had been performed.

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Researchers of every religion and race were invited to operate there and they were primarily focused on the preservation of the global heritage that was not particularly Moslem and was merely Arabic in language. The supreme had the most excellent experienced specialists of that period come to the city from all over his territory, and talented men were not lacking. Specific mention needs to be made of an individual to whom Arabic science attributes to, the person who could be referred to as the father of Arabic medicine, Hunain ibn Ishaq; he was also a Christian. In the Medieval Latin versions he was called Johannitius. To him, the caliph Mutawakkil reinstated the bureau of translation, which had been initially founded by Mamun.

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Hunain did not work only at the translations; he also directed a group of scholars, and his enthusiasm was liable to great development and success. He can be attributed to having immensely increased the Arabs’ knowledge of science. Kindi, known to the future generations by an honorary title, lived within Baghdad during this greatly intellectual milieu. Due to his convictions of Mutazilite, he achieved the threefold post of astrologer, translator, and teacher. Through him, the Arab intelligence upsurges to the philosophy level. Of the function he contributed, it is sufficient to say he created the doctrine, which was for flourishing in Arabic philosophy, the ideology of conciliation between Plato’s and Aristotle’s position41. Farabi, the successor of Kindi, who lived during the later times at the Hamdanid princes’ court within Aleppo, had his previous training within Baghdad.

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However, other than Baghdad, paper was produced in Tiberias, Yemen, Egypt, Tripoli, and the Maghreb. In Spain, Jativa city was known for the glazed, thick paper. Following the paper appearance, the total of manuscripts increased from one Moslem empire end to another. This successful duration for the book selling and publishing was critical for the development of cultures. Therefore, paper was of great importance during the 19th century. Baghdad had turned into an intellectual metropolitan, an accomplishment, which was for overshadowing the efforts made by Basra and Kufa, its two rival cities. The enthusiastic translators’ work was just the start; there was an extremely intimate relationship between the Greek though and the Arabic writers, and the attempted murder was frequently quite effective.

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Sometime later, within Baghdad, there developed the popular quarrel between the culture partisans stemming from the writing of the pre-Islam and Koran poets and their rivals, the Persian origin writers, who controlled the caliphate administration. Sahl ibn Harun, the leader of the writers, was the Academy of Wisdom’s director, and it contributed a significant function in literature44. The debates, which were extremely violent sometimes, were favorable to Arab literature’s development. Ultimately, the writers emphasize that the Islamic political unity’s partition never in any way halted the Islamic faith development. Millions of individuals, in spite of considerable political distinctions, came to adopt the unified Islam. Consequently, the non-Arabic origin Muslims make up Muslim’s population majority today though they all share a customary set of the religious beliefs and practices.

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The partition never brought to an ending the remarkable progresses, which were witnessed in the areas of arts, architecture, philosophy, and several other knowledge fields as shown in several places. Al-Tabari is believed to have completed writing his History towards his life’s ending, and at night. Of course, creation was one global aspect, which al-Maqdisi was explaining rather than the commencement point for eschatological tale. Contemporary historians writing regarding the early mid-ages recurrently try categorizing the sources, probably in the expectation to make studies appear more scientific47. This research assumes that the medieval history scholars too had mental models on which they created their past records. As shown by Ian Wood, attempts of uncovering such a framework, of developing categories like those of universal history, generate outliers and have basic flaws; that is, works, which would not suit into the suggested classification48.

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Diverse attempts and exertions have been made in order to save the situation; to clarify away mismatches between the available works and our categorizations of them through positing, for example, that the generic conventions existed and they are even hard to pin down. Dant, and Scott J. Vitell. "Marketing and Economic Development: the Saudi Arabian Experience. " In Proceedings of the 1989 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference, pp. Springer, Cham, 2015. Princeton University Press, 2016. Cory, Stephen, and Amira K. Bennison. "Honoring the Prophet's Family: A Comparison of Approaches to Political Legitimacy between Abu al-Hasan'Ali al-Marini and Ahmad al-Mansur al Sa'di. Croizy-Naquet, Catherine. Feldman, Noah.  The fall and rise of the Islamic state. Princeton University Press, 2012. Gibb, Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen. "Arab-Byzantine relations under the Umayyad caliphate.

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R. Gibb (London: Broadway House, 1929) Kennedy, Hugh.  The Prophet and the age of the Caliphates: the Islamic Near East from the sixth to the eleventh century. Routledge, 2015. Kennedy, Hugh. Shishkina. "Female labor force participation rate, Islam, and Arab culture in cross-cultural perspective. " Cross-Cultural Research 49, no. Le Strange, Guy.  Baghdad during the Abbasid Caliphate: from contemporary Arabic and Persian sources. Mufti, Malik. "Ibn Rushd's Political Philosophy in Contemporary Arab Scholarship: A Transient Revival?. " Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies 2, no. 1 (2017): 17-35 Nicholson, Reynold A.  Literary history of the Arabs. " British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 44, no. Subrahmanyam, N. , Lal, B. , &Avadhanulu, M. N. Han, and Pramod K. Varshney. "Distributed detection in tree networks: Byzantines and mitigation techniques. " IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security 10, no.

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